5 Things to keep in mind when designing for humans

These are not the only things to think about when designing, but these 5 are some of the most important principles:

1. Not everyone is like you — we tend to design things that we like and that make sense to us, but unless you are exactly like your target audience (you won’t be), designing for yourself won’t necessarily work for everyone else. You have to get to know your target audience, design for them, and then test to be sure.
2. People are easily distracted — it’s possible (and likely) that when people are using what you’ve designed they are not even paying that close attention. They are talking with someone, or walking through an airport, or thinking about something else. You have to evaluate your design from the point of view of a distracted human.
3. People make mistakes — no matter how carefully you’ve designed your product people will make mistakes. Prevent as many as you can, but also be forgiving — make it easy for them to back up and make changes.
4. Too many choices = no choice at all — People like to have lots of choices, but if you give them too many choices they won’t choose anything. You have to find a balance between enough options, but not so many that no choice is made.
5. People gate out information they don’t need — Just because you put something on a screen doesn’t mean people “saw” it.  People only pay attention to what they need to know in the moment and forget everything else. Don’t assume that seen = remembered.

Remember: the more you know about people the better you design.