Is the "curse of knoweldge" holding you back?

My friend Ralph had a job at a fast-food restaurant in high school and he complained about customers who would ask for a complimentary cup, despite the big sign on the wall that said “no complimentary cups.”

The thing is, the sign is very obvious if you’ve worked there 15 hours a week for three months. It’s not as obvious if it’s your first visit. You can’t expect people to read every sign everywhere they go.

That’s an illustration of something called “curse of knowledge,” which is a cognitive bias that occurs when you understand something and assume everyone else understands it too.

It’s something to watch out for in
* customer service,
* website design,
* project management,
* sales …
it creeps up all over the place.

Remind your customer-facing staff, like my friend Ralph, that they have special knowledge and familiarity that your customers don’t share.

When designing a website, you and the programmers have been poring over it for months, and you know what everything does and why. But your visitors don’t. So here are some ways to combat the curse of knowledge.

* Where possible, use the standard features everyone is used to. Or in other words, when in doubt, copy Amazon.
* Before you roll out a design change or a new feature, have several people who know nothing about the project review it.
* Have Apple users test your Android instructions and vice versa.
* Create reporting mechanisms to track problems. If you expect people to follow a certain path, check to see if they’re behaving the way you expected.
* Make it easy for customers to report when they’re confused or frustrated.
* Reinforce the attitude that if a customer misunderstands, you have not communicated well enough.

The curse can get in project management as well, and I’m afraid I can be guilty of this one.

“The updates are always in that spreadsheet I shared with you during the kickoff meeting. Didn’t you bookmark it?”

Just because you said something doesn’t mean people heard you, understood you or took action based on what you said.

In this context, the curse of knowledge can also go the other way, where the technical people are aware of a problem, but the project manager is out of the loop. They assume he knows.

Here are a few general things you can do to combat the curse of knowledge.

* Overcommunicate. Yes, it’s annoying, but it’s better than miscommunication.
* Avoid buzzwords and industry lingo. People might not know what you mean, and they don’t want to look stupid by asking for clarification.

Hint – always ask for the clarification. As Lincoln almost said, it’s better to be thought a fool now than to remain ignorant and prove yourself a fool later.

Here's a longer treatment of the subject.
https://martech.org/how-the-curse-of-knowledge-may-be-hurting-your-business-and-what-to-do-about-it/