There's a secret truth that you almost never hear from successful product developers.
"Never think your customer is smarter than you are."
Granted, when talking to them, convince them they're the smartest beings ever to roam the planet because everyone loves that. You know, specify things in ways that are simple observations rather than blunt statements, that sort of thing. People like that.
But they're still not that smart.
There's a lot of reasons for that. i mean, you've been working on this thing for months/years/decades. You live and breath it. Heck, you wrote that file months ago and put it in the spot that you constantly go past as you update stuff. Just because your customers never navigate down three levels into your packaged code isn't your fault, right?
Well, yes actually, it is.
You live and breathe this stuff. You get it. You understand every aspect of it and trod it's darkest regions on a daily basis. Everyone else, doesn't. They don't care about it. To them it's a wing nut or a screwdriver. They're using it to do something else that's far more important to them.
They don't want surprises. They don't want their screwdriver suddenly becoming a Phillips head because that's the most effective screw type. It won't help them tighten all those flat head screws they've got. They don't want their wing-nuts to suddenly start playing Stars and Stripes forever, they just want them to hold stuff down. Sure, it sound obvious, but i'm astounded how many times i deal with products, people or even companies that seem to forget that.
That's when i have to take out Mr. Helpful Clue the Bloodied Baseball Bat.
Don't think of it as brain trauma, think of it as being more in your customer's mind set.
