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The User is Drunk

squareweave · 274.7K views · 2013-01-16 · 4:23

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Overview

A short talk by Will Dayble of Squareweave arguing that you should design software as if the user were drunk: distracted, impaired in attention and vision, and prone to misreading. It is a user experience talk built around that framing.

On Hacker News

HN users recommend it as a memorable, short way to build empathy for users' confusing mistakes and to design for distraction.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2014–2021

Topics

UX & UI design
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uxuser interfacesusabilitydesign empathyweb apps

What people said

mrtksn · 2014-07 · Strong recommendation

Somebody took "the user is drunk" UI design method quite literally :) Here is a video about the "the user is drunk" idea: [VIDEO] Basically, the idea is about assuming that your user has an attention and a vision of a drunk person, not designing a UI for literally drunk people. I highly recommend the video.

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Geeflow · 2021-02 · Recommendation

I wouldn't be much surprised. The amount of things people do _not_ notice is staggering. When I do usability tests there's almost always something that doesn't get noticed although I thought it obvious and/or important. Personal anecdote: I managed to buy paper for my printer and only noticed upon arrival that it was the wrong size. The product photo looked right to be. I did not bother to check the details - or even the product title. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, regarding "if the person isn't drunk": There's a great short talk called "the user is drunk" which makes one much more sympathetic to such seemingly unexplainable comprehension fails that sometimes drive product designers mad: [VIDEO]

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fireworks10 · 2015-03 · Recommendation

"The User is Drunk" is explained better in video by Will Dayble of Squareweave: [VIDEO] Also, OP's post seems more like "The UX Consultant is Drunk".

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Sources

Video by squareweave, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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