I came across this principle in my Behavioral Science class. The principle states that it is extremely difficult for experts to convey ideas/teach to the less fortunate in those areas of expertise. The reasoning was that experts assumed the amount of knowledge that audience had. Thus they do not think novice users are novice enough. This is easy to imagine. Some things just come automatically to experts but would not come to novices. However, since these things come automatically to experts, they do not notice them and do not think that others would not be able to do them.
The curse of Knowledge is that it makes you less considerate for those without the knowledge.
I could connect this to quite a few examples of great sports personalities not making very good coaches or great academicians not being very good professors.
So what does this have to do with Usability or Design? Well i think it is important to take this principle into account when designing or testing for any system. One has to remember that the designer/tester have become the experts of the system and the system, its paths and all its corners have become automatic to the designer/tester. Hence things that the designer might think to be obvious might not really be obvious to the users.
As designers and usability professionals we should keep in mind that “Obvious is not always obvious….”
