User experience design is difficult.  A sage once said the making something foolproof is difficult, because fools are so ingenious.  A major goal of UX design to make software that is easy for customers  to understand, which is difficult because customers have so many different perspectives – in other words, there are so many ways that software can be misunderstood.

No single person can build foolproof software, but a group of people can come pretty close if each one brings a different perspective and points out potential problems.  The UX team has a lot of experience, but we will always miss some problems.  This is why we appreciate everyone’s help in identifying potential problems, so please point out UX problems that you come across.

Even this, of course, still does not replace testing or feedback from beta tests and actual customers.  We plan to have a testing program, and we all need to work together to ensure that valuable customer feedback is not lost.

A quick reminder, while we’re on the topic of customer feedback.  As valuable as feedback is, we should not always adopt solutions proposed by customers or let customers design our software, lest we forfeit the principles of good design.  Customer feedback is valuable information that we must use to find solutions that are consistent, good UX practice, and meet the needs of all customers, not just the ones giving feedback.