Perspective

We test through our own experience

A tester's lived experience can reveal friction other people miss. It can also create blind spots.

Every tester brings a body, brain, history, devices, habits and expectations to an interface.

That is useful.

A neurodivergent tester may notice hierarchy, ambiguity or cognitive friction that colleagues genuinely do not experience as friction. A screen-reader user may notice semantic problems a sighted mouse user would never encounter. Someone with limited dexterity may immediately encounter costs hidden by a precise pointer.

But the inverse is always true.

There are barriers each of us will fail to notice because our own way of interacting makes them invisible.

That is why lived experience should neither be dismissed as “subjective” nor treated as universal representation.

It is evidence from a perspective.

One useful QA habit follows from that:

When something feels obviously usable to me, ask what my way of using it allowed me not to notice.