Good UX comes from proximity to problems.
When something frustrates us, we wonder how it got shipped that way. Often it’s simple: the people making decisions rarely feel the consequences.
Distance makes it easier to become indifferent to problems. The further you are from the problems your product causes, the easier it becomes to ignore them. “Users will figure it out.” “It’s not that bad.” “We’ll fix it in the next version.”
The best designers I’ve worked with can’t escape their own product. They feel every problem personally, and that frustration drives them to fix it. Distance reduces that urgency.
This goes beyond studying user problems from a distance. It’s about experiencing them yourself as close to real usage as possible. The closer you are to the friction, the less willing you become to accept it.
Most broken experiences aren’t malicious. They’re simply much more likely when builders live in a different world than users. Proximity isn’t everything, but without it, even talented teams miss obvious problems.