The myth of the "average user"

"I still remember the moment I realized I had spent weeks designing for someone who didn't actually exist. The 'average user.' The imaginary person who supposedly represents most of our audience. The one we build entire products around. And then, during a round of usability testing, everything fell apart. The 'average user' struggled. The user with partial vision struggled. The user multitasking in a noisy environment struggled."

"That's when it hit me: the average user is fiction. A convenient one, yes. But a fiction nonetheless. And in 2025, with the European Accessibility Act reshaping how we build digital experiences, designing for 'most people' may be the most expensive mistake a team can make. The dangerous comfort of designing for the middle Design teams love the idea of a typical user because it feels efficient. One profile. One journey. One set of needs."

Designing around an 'average user' creates a fictional target that fails to capture real human diversity. Usability testing revealed that users with partial vision, users in noisy environments, multitaskers, and even confident power users struggled with the same interface. The 2025 European Accessibility Act increases legal and practical pressure to build accessible digital experiences. Relying on a single profile creates apparent efficiency but leads to brittle designs, higher remediation costs, and exclusion. Inclusive design requires testing with diverse users, accounting for edge cases, and intentionally designing for varied contexts and abilities to improve usability and reduce long-term expenses.

Read at Medium