I’ve asked myself this a dozen times. As a developer, it wasn’t the first thing I’ve always thought about, but fixing problems is. Problems themselves appear in all areas—even in the systems of the support teams. From working at TLT, while I’ve enjoyed my experiences with everyone, I’ve found there are a few confusing parts to it, and I asked myself: what is the best path to fix such confusions? Here I am now, in this internship.
Today, I’m learning to use WordPress more as a user, than just as an admin. There’s a difference: Admins might make a dozen ‘hello world’ posts, but not any real content, just tests. Once the tests are done, they’re gone. Users are the ones that find the real problems, those that crop up after days of perfect functionality. With me having seen both positions, I can see the bugs from a user’s perspective, then immediately think on how to get it fixed.
A senior consultant must do exactly that: be a scout for problems that only users would see, and get them fixed through the correct channels. That experience would come from having been in the user’s shoes at least once.
A concrete example of these abstract problems I reference: simply finding a way to remove the comments link. A simple solution: On the post edit page: Screen options at top > Check discussion, then uncheck allow comments in the ‘post box’ (the CSS name for those boxes with options). As a developer though, my first thought is to lookup how to disable the PHP code that affects comments. This is simple enough, but (a) no user should be expected to do that, and (b) I don’t have permission to do that here, not being an admin anymore. I instead learned to search as a user would, and found the screen options trick.
Ironically, such a procedure leaves more questions: why was this hidden? Rather than a UX-design argument which I would prefer not going into, I will simply say that most options up there are not everyday settings, and to save screen space, hiding them is a viable option.
The lesson here: For each different perspective seen, a new problem and old solution may arise, always along with more questions.
