Lazy, Vain, and Selfish
Inspired by Anuj Rathi episode
Anuj Rathi designs for reality: users are lazy, vain, selfish. Toddlers are even more so, and they're not hiding it.
Anuj Rathi designs for users who are "lazy, vain, and selfish." They want maximum result for minimum effort, they're skeptical of everything, and they only care what's in it for them. Stop building for aspirational users. Build for the reality.
Your toddler is professionally lazy. They'll collapse on the sidewalk in full meltdown rather than take three more steps to the car. They're deeply vain - the wrong trousers mean the entire outfit is unwearable and we need to start over, obviously. And they're gloriously selfish in a way that would get an adult fired from society.
So you design for the user you actually have. Make the right choice the lazy choice. Give them two shirt options so they can care about their appearance without you losing an hour. Build "what's in it for me" into every request - brush your teeth AND THEN we read the book, not "please brush your teeth because dental health."
You're not spoiling them. You're just accepting that your user isn't even pretending to care about your roadmap.
