Does having more experience in the UX industry enable you to make better design decisions by intuition? Does user research ever become a waste of time if some research already exists in academic papers? The answer, it seems, is not that simple. In this episode, UX Specialists Alita Joyce and Therese Fessenden discuss why, after all these years doing independent user research, you should still test your interfaces and research with your own customers. Free resources cited in this episode: Viral video (by @tired_actor) "The Square Hole" (TikTok video) The False-Consensus Effect (free article) The “False Consensus Effect”: An Egocentric Bias in Social Perception and Attribution Processes (PDF of full study by Ross, Greene, and House) 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design (free article) How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation (free article)  10 Usability Heuristics Applied to Video Games (free article) Don Norman - Changing Role of the Designer Part 2: Community Based Design (4 min video) Adam Grant - The "I’m Not Biased" Bias (Tweet about NBC Sunday Spotlight feature)  Other resources cited in this episode: The Human Mind and Usability (UX Certification course)  Persuasive and Emotional Design (UX Certification course)  Democratizing Innovation by Eric Von Hippel (book) Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (book)