When it comes to user experience, it’s easy to talk about the importance of focusing on the user, but even easier to design while completely ignoring them and focusing on what we would think or what we would do. We view the world through our own eyes, so seeing something through the perspective of another human is naturally a little more challenging. But what if we could change this by simply changing the way we speak?
Changing your language can have a powerful impact on your own consciousness, fundamentally changing the way you think and behave. The words you say influence your thoughts, which in turn influence your decisions. When it comes to designing for humans, changing your language from a phrase like “If I did this, I would expect this result“ to “If this person did this, they might expect this outcome” puts you in that person’s shoes, influencing you to think as they would, ultimately causing you to design in a way that helps them achieve their goal. This tool is called user advocacy, and it lies at the core of user experience design.
User advocacy is a powerful tool to use when designing for humans. And coupled with usability testing to help validate your assumptions, it can be used to create products that are truly meaningful and effective to humans, and you’ll be able to reference the data to back up your design decisions.