A bit of a back story on that quote…
This particular quote was inspired by something I read a few years ago in one of my all-time favorite design books, “Design for Real Life“, by Eric Meyer & Sara Wachter-Boettcher. The original quote came from a tweet referenced in it, by a designer named Evan Hensleigh, and went like this: “Edge cases define the boundaries of who and what you care about”. In the book, the authors make the case for talking about “stress cases” instead of “edge cases”, arguing that those who live on the extremes of the human experience (due to disabilities or other circumstances) can indeed sometimes put some stress on the situation, the experience, or the design of things, but should not be dismissed because of those things. That rather, we, as speaking professionals, designers, content creators, etc. should embrace those extremes, embrace the stress they create, and use that energy as a catalyst to design more inclusively, so that those who live in the middle of the human experiences (oftentimes referred to as our average users), can also benefit from our broadened perspective as to how we’ve designed “the thing” (let’s say a presentation, a website, a PDF document, etc.). As a general rule, I’m fine dismissing a feature request as an edge case, but I have a much harder time dismissing a person as one. Maybe you agree, too.
