32
Cognition
Curse of Knowledge
Expert-Novice Asymmetry.
The article
If
Once you know a thing, you cannot easily imagine not knowing it. Engineers write docs, error messages, and APIs that are obvious to themselves and opaque to the next person who has to use them.
Then
“Before shipping documentation or a public API, have someone who has never touched the system attempt the task while you watch silently. Their confusion points exactly at the assumptions you forgot to spell out.”
Unless
User Testing / Onboarding Buddies / Documentation Reviewers Outside the Author's Team
Source
Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein & Martin Weber, The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings: An Experimental Analysis (Journal of Political Economy, 1989).
Go to the sourceSee also