Last year at a friend’s bachelor party I smoked a cigar. Apparently an expensive Cuban one too. I had never smoked anything in my life. It was kind of an interesting and awful experience.

Today as I walked home a smoker spat right in front of me, leaving a spot of spit on the sidewalk which I sidestepped. “Why do people do such disgusting things?” I wondered.

The experience of smoking that cigar rushed back to me. There was an awful aftertaste you get after a couple mouthfuls of smoke that my body simply did not know how to respond to except by spitting. That night, standing outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, I spat more than I would in the next six months. The poor bushes outside the gallery were drenched by the spit from our group’s first time smokers.

The lesson I took from that night was that I should never smoke again.  Tonight, however, my mind wandered to design research, and feeling your users’ pain.

Spitting on the streets was a behaviour that perplexed me, because I’ve never smoked before. Smoking that cigar was such an awful, visceral experience, it made the whole behaviour make sense instantly. I felt the smoker’s pain right in the roof of my mouth, and I spat just like any smoker would.

Perhaps that’s what user research is about. That perplexing user behaviour we sometimes see is a symptom of a user pain. As a designer, I must experience and empathize with the user’s experience in order to understand their behaviour.

I now understanding spitting, at least a little. Smoking still perplexes me though.