Desire Paths
How observation is more important than thought
This is a phenomenon from the world of architecture1. It basically means people have an instinctive drive to find the shortest or most comfortable way:
The same applies to systems. However you build your systems, people are going to use it in ways you never even imagined. But, if you observe those behaviors, it will tell you a lot about what people want out of the system.
This lets you build systems that align better with people and their work.
For this, you need tools that allow you to be a fly on the wall and observe silently — like Microsoft Clarity (beware of privacy concerns).
Let me know if this helped you build a better system. Adios!
Here’s a fantastic article by Chaz Hutton: https://open.substack.com/pub/chazhutton/p/drawing-desire-paths?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web ↩