Decisions, Money & Entrepreneurship
Understand The User
This lesson helps students understand users by looking at real needs, habits, and problems. They practise using evidence instead of guessing.
What you will learn
- Understand clearly that designing for yourself almost always produces something that fails real users, and notice the assumptions you have been making.
- Identify a real user's context, friction, and unmet needs by looking at what they do, not what you assume they do.
- Gather useful observations from a real user (or yourself in a structured way) and capture them in a form you can use later.
- Turn raw observations into one clear, defensible User Insight Card naming a specific user need with evidence.
What happens in this lesson
Chapter 1: The User Is Not You
Understand clearly that designing for yourself almost always produces something that fails real users, and notice the assumptions you have been making.
What you make: A saved assumption gap note showing the difference between three assumptions the learner had and what real users likely think.
Chapter 2: Context And Pain Points
Identify a real user's context, friction, and unmet needs by looking at what they do, not what you assume they do.
What you make: A saved user context map showing one real user's situation, friction points, and unmet needs.
Chapter 3: User Insight Capture
Gather useful observations from a real user (or yourself in a structured way) and capture them in a form you can use later.
What you make: A saved user insight capture sheet with at least three specific observations from one real user research session.
Chapter 4: User Insight Card
Turn raw observations into one clear, defensible User Insight Card naming a specific user need with evidence.
What you make: A completed User Insight Card naming one specific user need, with evidence from real observations.
Chapter 5: When Evidence Disagrees
Compare observations from different users, spot patterns and contradictions, and decide which insight is strong enough to trust.
What you make: A saved evidence comparison note that ranks two or three user observations by strength and explains which insight is most defensible.
Key terms in this lesson
Competitor
Anyone the customer might choose instead of you. The toughest one is often 'do nothing'.
Market
The group of people who could buy what you are selling. Defines who you compete with and for whom.
Target Audience
The specific group of people a product is designed for. Trying to please everyone usually means pleasing no one well.
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