Have you ever felt foolish because you face-planted into a door not knowing whether you should push, pull or slide? Sometimes even automatic doors seem designed to trap us in a glass cage. What if user error wasn't about the user at all? What if it's the story we tell ourselves to feel better?
When something goes wrong, blaming the user is comforting; it protects our self-image. Our brains are wired for self-justification; the discomfort we feel when our actions conflict with who we believe we are drives us to seek confirmation, ignore contradictory facts, and let small rationalisations snowball into major distortions of reality.
User error persists because we perceive it cognitively, we want to believe it motivationally, and our teams reinforce it socially. But mistakes rarely exist in isolation; they're part of a web of justifications and systemic factors we have to be willing to pull apart.
User error should never be the conclusion of a root cause investigation. It should be the starting point. Why did that action make sense to the user? If it made sense for one person, it might make sense for many.
In this talk, I'll take you on a guided tour of the psychology of the mistake, leaving you with a new lens for evaluating failure and a practical toolkit for the next time your team reaches for user error.
Because if I can't figure out a door, maybe the door is broken.