One Word to summarize this section: "Empathy"
The word "empathy" effectively encompasses all of Chapter 4's section on the Curse of Knowledge of Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen.
Separate Yourself!
When designing, it is often easy to design for ourselves, or for other computer scientists. This gets you nowhere. If you are unable to put yourself in the shoes of the person who will be using your interface, than your interface is sure to flop. This is why navigating the "Curse of Knowledge" (only fathoming a complex subject the way you do now that you've intensely studied it) is so important, and why Garr Reynold's tips of designing via the SUCCESs system is so key. We should be creating UI's that are simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and that tell a story. All of these come from empathy -- we need to think about what the user will want, NOT what we want, which is simple to say out loud but in fact quite difficult in practice to pull off. To me, empathy in creation is not a one-stop endeavor -- it has to be/ become a permanent state of mind, which is still something I am training myself to do.
Credit
Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas On Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA, New Riders Pub, 2008.