Comment by alexpotato

I spent the early part of my career (mid 2000s) working on a registration system for sports tournaments.

I had two jobs:

1. Writing the actual software for the registration website

2. Going to the events and managing the registration tent where people actually checked in

Doing 2 gave me a VASTLY better understanding of who the users were and how they thought. e.g. I assumed it would be tech savvy, organized people like me in their mid 20s. It was actually a mix of 40 something team dads who weren't tech savvy at all (b/c mid 2000s) but very organized and teenagers who were the opposite.

It meant effectively managing two completely different customer bases in the same product.

Coupled with the fact that cable modems were a new thing but not evenly distributed meant that we had to design the site accordingly.

At the time, I remember Joe Spolsky mentioning that at Microsoft they did two way mirror usability testing and it totally made sense. I wish more firms did that today.