Blinking thoughts

"One of the things that occurred to me while listening to these stories is that they illustrate a well-known principle of usability testing, which goes like this: people are remarkably poor reporters of their own behavior. For instance, ask any computer user to tell you the steps they take to perform a task. Now, watch them actually perform the task. What they say they do and what they actually do don't match. We skip small steps, we report how it should work (not how it does work), we report how we'd like it to be. People's reports of their likes and dislikes seem similarly unreliable. Ask them what they like, they'll tell you one thing; observe what they buy or use or watch, it'll be something else.

The lesson, I think, is much like what Gladwell reports in Blink: if you want to know the truth, observe behavior. Don't listen to what people tell you then want, observe what they really use when given the opportunity. Now, isn't that the essence of user centered design?"