I spent three months watching people fail to click a button that was right in front of them.
Not metaphorically. Literally watching. Coffee shop stakeouts. Screen recordings. The whole creepy surveillance routine. The button was large. Blue. Centered. Labeled "Continue." Nobody clicked it.
Turns out they couldn't see it because they were holding their phones with both hands - one hand stabilizing, one thumb stretched to reach the next input field. The button sat in the visual blind spot created by their own thumb. Users thought the form was broken. They refreshed. They cursed. They left.
I discovered this by accident when my phone battery died and I borrowed a coworker's ancient Android. The screen was cracked. My thumb covered half the display. Suddenly I understood why the analytics showed a 40% drop-off at that exact moment. The interface worked perfectly for right-handed developers testing on pristine devices. For everyone else, it was an invisible button.
The fix wasn't moving the button. It was making the entire bottom section of the screen tappable - a 200-pixel dead zone that caught the thumb-reach attempts. Conversion improved by 4%. Not 23%. Four percent. In UX terms, that's winning the lottery.
Here's what actually happened next: I started testing interfaces with my non-dominant hand while simulating real conditions. Cracked screen protector. One-handed use. Standing on a moving bus. The failures multiplied beautifully. Buttons too small for winter gloves. Text contrast that vanished in sunlight. Haptic feedback too subtle for users with neuropathy.
The ADHD insight came from a different project entirely. Three years later. A productivity app where users with ADHD kept refreshing the task list, convinced it was broken because nothing moved. We added a subtle pulse animation on the loading spinner - not decorative, just enough motion to signal life. Daily active users increased by 12%. Not tripled. Twelve percent. Still worth the three days of work.
Test with your non-dominant hand. Test with gloves. Test on a cracked screen. Test while walking, angry, and holding a crying baby in a pharmacy line.
The button was always visible. The users just couldn't see it through their own thumbs.
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