The Observer is the Observed in User Research
In Product Management, we often look for 'pain points.' But our own biases—our desire for the product to succeed—distort what we see. Inspired by Jiddu Krishnamurti, this essay explores how 'choiceless awareness' leads to deeper user empathy than any traditional data set.
When conducting user research, we enter with questions, frameworks, and hypotheses. We seek patterns, validate assumptions, and identify pain points. Yet in this very act of seeking, we introduce a fundamental distortion: the observer becomes separate from the observed.
Jiddu Krishnamurti spoke of a state he called "choiceless awareness"—a quality of attention without the filter of judgment, without the pressure to conclude. In user research, this translates to a radical proposition: what if we approached our users not as problems to be solved, but as complete systems to be understood?
The traditional research paradigm operates on separation. There is the researcher with their clipboard and the user with their behavior. There is the pain point to extract and the solution to impose. But this separation is an illusion that limits our capacity for genuine insight.
Consider a product manager conducting interviews. They have invested months in a feature hypothesis. Every user's hesitation becomes evidence against their idea. Every positive comment becomes validation. The observer is not neutral—they are desperately seeking confirmation in a sea of ambiguity.
True user empathy emerges not from better frameworks but from recognizing this fundamental entanglement. When we see that our desire for the product to succeed distorts what we observe, we create space for actual understanding. The user's reality and our interpretation of it are not separate phenomena.
This has practical implications. It means sitting with uncertainty rather than rushing to conclusions. It means listening to what is said in the silence between words. It means acknowledging that the very act of research changes what we are researching.
The most valuable insights often come not from what users tell us directly, but from what we notice when we stop trying so hard to understand. When the observer and the observed are no longer in opposition, something new becomes visible—not a pain point to exploit, but a human system trying to solve its own problems.
In this state of choiceless awareness, user research becomes less about extraction and more about recognition. We are not mining for insights; we are witnessing the ways people already navigate their reality. The distinction is subtle but transformative.
The question then is not "What problem are we solving?" but "What system are we entering?" And perhaps more importantly: "How is our presence in this system already changing it?"