Think like a user. That’s the basis of any good approach to usability.
The trouble is that it has become meaningless. It is easy to say I am considering user experience, but how do I hold myself to the standard?
I actively try not to think like a technician. I try to remove from my brain the knowledge of how web sites and applications are made. When I jump too quickly from problem to technical solution, I am grasping at what is easiest to implement, not what would be best for the user. Sometimes I have to ask, simpler for whom?
Technical knowledge can be a burden. It can cause one to see a problem from the wrong direction. Having a non-technician plan user experience is sometimes a perfect fix. If he doesn’t know the guts of how hard a perfect solution is, he isn’t tempted to tweak the user experience in the name of easy coding.
On the other hand, the non-technician might hand a web developer something unnecessarily difficult or impossible. It’s not his fault, because he doesn’t know a database or Javascript or whatever works that way. I think that is a pretty good trade-off.
Like the incrementalist and completionist, the non-technician and technician can work together to make something great. And if you’re patient and focused, you can even play both roles.
Beginner’s mind, grasshopper.