communication
Building around how the work is actually done
Designing for the conditions the user actually works in, their language, their output format, their tolerance for being taught a new tool, rather than for the developer's convenience.
Usually invisible when it is done well, and obvious when it is not: an interface in the wrong reading direction, a report that cannot be handed to anyone, a tool that assumes its user will open a terminal.
Evidence3
Case-tracking system for a legal department
I built Arabic and right-to-left in from the start rather than adding a translation layer later, and what it prints carries the office's letterhead and signature, because what they hand over is a document somebody files rather than a screen somebody looks at.
This site, as a career database
The evidence for a claim sits on the claim itself, and a compiled demo only loads when somebody scrolls to it.
Microscopy image processing and 3D reconstruction
I wrapped the pipeline in a GUI, because the people who need the output are not going to run Python to get it.