Too little
The foolish user
“Anyone can see how this works.”
The maker protects an assumption by belittling the evidence.
Humility
Let evidence of a failed assumption change the way you proceed.
Openness to recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge and importance.
Humility recognizes the limits of one’s knowledge and importance. Makers know the route they intended; users reveal the route the offering actually makes available. Taking that experience seriously helps a useful idea become easier to use.
Humility gives room to learn from the user
You designed an elegant sliding latch for a storage case. At the trial, a customer pulls the handle you added for decoration. You nearly explain that opening it is obvious, then notice that your own hand has moved to the handle too. You watch another attempt and ask what the case seems to invite. The decoration has applied for a more practical job.
An illustrative scene.
Humility: finding the balance
A maker observes a user following a cue the design did not intend.
A fitting response
Curiosity about a limit
“Show me what you expected to happen.”
The actual attempt becomes information for the next design.
Pursued too far
Expertise abandoned
“Every request must be correct.”
Useful knowledge is discarded instead of brought into conversation.
A request may conflict with another user’s needs. Humility invites investigation; it does not make the latest opinion decisive.
What Humility makes possible
A maker who can learn from use has more ways to improve an offering. The conversation may reveal an unclear cue, a different task or a constraint the workshop never encountered. Admitting the gap lets expertise do further work instead of merely defending its reputation.
Humility in ordinary life
An unclear instruction
Ask someone to show where they lost the thread before rewriting it.
A support colleague’s observation
Ask what users actually struggle with before defending the design you intended them to understand.
Nearby virtues, different work
Contrition
A mistaken assumption calls for learning; wrongdoing may also call for Contrition. Failure alone is not proof of a wrong.
Honesty
Honesty describes present knowledge truthfully. Humility remains ready to discover its limits.
Humility and its counterfeits
The modest speech
Calling yourself “only a beginner” counterfeits Humility if it prevents anyone from offering concrete criticism.
How to cultivate Humility
Watch a voluntary trial without narrating every step.
Ask what the person expected, then compare it with your intention.
Keep the useful part of your expertise while changing the failed assumption.
Try it today
Invite a willing person to try a short instruction you wrote. Ask where it was unclear and revise one cue; do not collect private information.
Questions worth returning to
- What does knowing the design make easy for me to overlook?
- Which observation would change my explanation?
Keep the practice proportionate
These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.
About these practicesQuotations and further reading
Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.
Who would succeed must thus begin: first let him ask The thoughts of them who throughly know the task.
Tiruvalluvar · Tirukkural
Couplet 677, The Method of Acting, printed p. 94
Tiruvalluvar · G. U. Pope, The Sacred Kurral of Tiruvalluva-Nayanar, W. H. Allen & Co., London, 1886.
Translated by G. U. Pope (verse translation; prose commentary excluded)The couplet turns to people who understand the task. The designer learns how the case invites use by watching and asking the user.
We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour, and endeavour to imagine what effect it would, in this light, produce upon us. This is the only looking-glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of others, scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct.
Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Part III, Chapter I; paragraph beginning “In the same manner our first moral criticisms are exercised upon the characters and conduc…”
Adam Smith · J. Beatty and C. Jackson, 1777; Project Gutenberg #67363.The maker can observe how the handle invites a use instead of treating intention as decisive. Smith’s perspective-taking explains the intellectual work of receiving that correction.
The advantages were mutual: we were both unconsciously and consciously teaching each other.
Elizabeth Gaskell · North and South
North and South / CHAPTER LI. MEETING AGAIN.; paragraph beginning ““I have not the elements for popularity—if they spoke of me in that way, they were mistake…”
John Thornton, in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South · Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square, London; title page undated in preserved Project Gutenberg #4276 capture.Thornton describes learning with workers rather than simply improving them from above. This fits the maker who discovers what a user’s action can teach.
The wisest princes need not think it any diminution to their greatness, or derogation to their sufficiency, to rely upon counsel.
Francis Bacon · Essays
THE ESSAYS OR COUNSELS, CIVIL AND MORAL, / Of Counsel; paragraph beginning “THE greatest trust, between man and man, is the trust of giving counsel. For in other conf…”
Francis Bacon · Project Gutenberg #575 transcription; underlying print edition not specified in the preserved capture.Bacon separates taking advice from loss of competence. The experienced maker can consult users without pretending that expertise has become worthless.
Wedgwood called to his aid the crucible of the chemist, the knowledge of the antiquary, and the skill of the artist.
Samuel Smiles · Self-Help
CHAPTER III. The Great Potters—Palissy, Böttgher, Wedgwood.; paragraph beginning “Wedgwood called to his aid the crucible of the chemist, the knowledge of the antiquary, an…”
Samuel Smiles · Popular Edition, John Murray, London, 1897; Project Gutenberg #935.Smiles’s account shows a manufacturer drawing on different expertise. The case designer similarly improves by accepting knowledge beyond the initial drawing. This is a historical account by Smiles, not a quotation spoken by Wedgwood.
The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.
Adam Smith · The Wealth of Nations
Book I; CHAPTER II. OF THE PRINCIPLE WHICH GIVES OCCASION TO THE DIVISION OF LABOUR.; paragraph beginning “The difference of natural talents in different men, is, in reality, much less than we are…”
Adam Smith · Project Gutenberg #3300 transcription; underlying print edition not specified in preserved capture.Smith challenges the vanity that converts different training into natural superiority. The product maker can learn from a user’s practiced experience without ranking the user below the designer.
I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it.
Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography
Autobiography — Virtue-improvement narrative: Humility; paragraph beginning “I cannot boast of much success”; paragraph beginning “I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good d…”
Benjamin Franklin · Harvard Classics, edited by Charles W. Eliot; P. F. Collier & Son, New York, 1909; Project Gutenberg #148.Franklin candidly distinguishes apparent humility from the disposition. This checks the maker’s temptation to perform receptiveness without actually learning from the user. The virtue in question is Humility.
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Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.