Every service inscribes a standard user: one person, acting alone, who can see the screen, whose name fits the box. This week — the screen-reader user the bank form never imagined, the attorney with no digital channel, the name that won't fit the field, and the carer who does 95% of the portal work but isn't on the file. Nobody writes the standard user down. You can read it off the people it leaves out.

Plus: what I changed my mind about this week — the part you only get on the podcast.

Read the full essay: thelisteningloop.com New episodes every Wednesday.

Every service you use was designed — or it wasn't. The Listening Loop is a short weekly podcast about the hidden choices inside everyday services. The missed notification. The form that asks for data the service already has. The small print nobody costed. Every Wednesday, host Adi Prakash — a service design lead based in Toronto — pulls one of those choices apart: a real moment, the pattern hiding inside it, and one thing you can try at work the next day. About seven minutes, plus one thing he changed his mind about that week — the part you only get here. New episodes every Wednesday. The written version lands in your inbox the same day at thelisteningloop.com.