There were no instructions or anything to indicate that this was necessary. As the elevator climbed to my floor, I thought about the many things people encounter that are not well designed. We all know of that one merge onto the highway that is way too short, and angled to abuse a blind spot. Or the door that we try to push open when it requires us to pull. VCRs, microwaves, and downtown streets are all sources of confusing and frustrating interactions.
People tolerate bad design every day, even before they turn their computers on.
The first insight for me was that bad design is everywhere. The next day at the conference I spent more time talking to software and Internet users. People like us who build things for a living are intimate with the technology and have a mental model for how it works. The problem comes when we design how the thing is operated. Because our eyes are biased toward how it was built, the complexity of the inner workings is revealed in the interface.