The Say-Do Gap
What people say they do and what they actually do are often different.
This gap isn’t dishonesty, it’s the nature of self-report. People rationalize behavior after the fact, forget details, aspire to ideals, and lack awareness of their own patterns. Direct observation reveals behaviors that interviews miss.
The gap works in both directions: people overstate desirable behaviors and understate undesirable ones. But they also fail to report behaviors they consider unremarkable, the workarounds and adaptations that feel “obvious” but contain design insights.
This is why “Look” methods (observation, shadowing, fly-on-the-wall) exist as a distinct category from “Ask” methods (interviews, surveys). Both are necessary. Neither alone is sufficient.