One of my biggest pet peeves as a designer—and honestly, as a human—is when a question, behavior, or mistake gets dismissed as “stupidity.” As a designer on a custom software team, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard things like:
- “That’s just user error.”
- “They should be able to figure that out.”
- “People don’t like to read.”
- “It’s right in front of them!”
These aren’t helpful insights. They’re excuses to avoid the deeper question: Why didn’t the page communicate what we thought it did? The user isn’t stupid.
If They Missed It, It Wasn’t Clear.
Communication is hard. Even in face-to-face conversations, we misunderstand each other constantly. Communication through a user interface (UI), through a rectangle of pixels, is far more fragile than most people realize.
Users closing your bright red warning modal? It’s not because they’re careless. It’s because the internet has trained us all to close bright, intrusive things—they’re usually irrelevant at best, and scams at worst.
Users ignoring a large banner at the top of the page? They’re not oblivious. They’re filtering out noise because they’ve been conditioned to assume banners are ads.
Users struggling with your form? Maybe your validation is inconsistent, or unclear, or appears at the wrong time—or maybe the language is confusing.
Users not following on-screen instructions? Maybe it’s because your instructions take longer to read than the task itself. Humans are not bad at reading; we are good at conserving effort.
Users “not seeing” the button? Maybe it’s obvious on your screen, but on their smaller one, it’s hidden out of view. Context changes everything.
Good design is not about assuming users will succeed. It’s about designing so they can. Good design isn’t about making people smarter. It’s about making systems clearer.
Empathy Isn’t Just for Users.
As designers, we’re responsible for advocating for users. But there’s a catch: it’s easy for us to fall into the same judgment we criticize.
When a teammate or stakeholder dismisses a user behavior, it’s easy to think,
“Why don’t they get this? It’s obvious!”
But if we respond to their misunderstanding with frustration, we’re doing exactly what we’re asking them not to do to users.
Our teammates weren’t hired to think like designers. They haven’t watched user tests, studied cognitive load, or seen people miss giant buttons five times in a row. That’s our job. Their expertise is different—engineering, strategy, deadlines, budgets. Ours is understanding users. Of course they see the problem differently.
The Real Point.
Good design isn’t just understanding users – it’s understanding humans on both sides of the product. When we show empathy to users and teammates, arguments shift from “who’s right” to “what’s true.” We build trust, make better decisions, and we design products that actually work in the real world.
At the end of the day, no one in the room is stupid.