After years of building products — from aviation systems to Evernote to fast-moving startups — I learned something uncomfortable: most user errors aren’t user errors. They’re design failures we coded into the system without realising it.

In this talk, we’ll look at anticipatory design as a practical engineering skill, not a design buzzword. I’ll walk through real examples of how small interface choices lead to big support costs, security mistakes, and “why did they click that?” moments. We’ll talk about why users behave unpredictably (even when you think the flow is obvious), and how developers can build guardrails that guide behaviour instead of reacting to it later.

You’ll learn how to spot friction before users do, how to design for “mistake paths,” and how to create safer defaults that reduce both cognitive load and technical risk. We’ll also explore how anticipatory design reduces accidental data loss, misconfigurations, and security vulnerabilities — and why it’s one of the most underrated tools in a developer’s career.

This is a practical, experience-driven session with concrete examples you can apply to any codebase. If you want to write software that feels intuitive, breaks less, and takes care of your users before they get confused, this talk is for you.