In the twelve years I've worked on Internet and software projects, I've observed a lot of design hubris, which dismisses any problems the users encounter as user-error, not design flaws. In the interest of exploiting cutting-edge design, the designers toss long-standing UI principles out the window, and the users find themselves unable to retrace their steps, caught in endless loops, wishing they'd trailed breadcrumbs behind them so that they could navigate their way out of the forest.

And that's not acceptable.

Admittedly, it's not sexy to put the NEXT button in the lower right corner, but that's where users expect to find it. Sure, if you've paid thousands of dollars to develop a flashy Flash splash screen, you don't want to add a "skip" link, but your failure to do so will cause a lot of users to bail before they ever get to your home page.

Good UI is often not sexy. Cases in point: Google, Yahoo, eBay. Not a lot of eye candy, no cool Flash elements, no bells and whistles --- but the user can immediately jump in and initiate whatever the intended task is and execute that task in a couple of keystrokes.

My favorite test subject: my Mom. If she gets tied up in knots trying to complete a test case, then I have failed. If she succeeds, then I have succeeded. She's not the lowest common denominator: she's smart and savvy and spends a lot of time online, but she also doesn't tolerate deviations from UI convention. If Jakob Nielsen sported a bouffant hairdo, he'd be an awful lot like Ma Nichols.

So, most all of my work is Mom-tested, and I design better User Experiences because of it. She's my secret sauce.