Why is it important to maintain a beginner's mindset while building empathy for your user?

Maintaining a beginner's mindset is crucial when building empathy for users because it helps you set aside your preconceived notions and assumptions about their needs and experiences. When you adopt this mindset, you approach situations with curiosity and an openness to learning, which encourages you to truly listen to users and understand their perspectives. This openness allows for gathering genuine insights about how users interact with a product, leading to more effective and user-centered design decisions.

By avoiding the imposition of your own assumptions, you can create solutions that are more relevant and helpful to the actual user experience, rather than what you think the experience might be. This aligns with the principles of empathy in design, which prioritize the user's voice and experience over the designer's biases.