Cognitive Design

  Cognitive biases are short-cut ways that we use to perceive the world, make decisions, solve problems and behave in social situations. They are rules of thumb for dealing with complex situations fast and effectively. Turns out that when we use them outside the area they are intended for (and we do this all the time) we make systematic errors. This is why we can look and behave so irrationally.    

Researchers have documented a wide array of cognitive biases. Check out the list of 100+  cognitive biases that Wikipedia has complied.  In cognitive design, since we are concerned with designing things for how minds work, we must understand which cognitive biases are at work in our application and how we plan to manage or paternalistically leverage them.

A classic example is the Save More Tomorrow pension plan that lets you save some portion of a future raise (rather than your current money) out of respect for our bias to undervalue future resources and over value current resources.  Turns out emphasizing what you currently have (a bird in the hand is worth to in the bush) is a great strategy except when it comes to savings. Vanguard Investments has taken this idea even further with their Autopilot 401k  savings plan that is designed to accommodate all the latest findings in behavioral finance.    

Cognitive biases are hot. Best selling or popular books focus on them – Freakonomics, Blink, Gut and many others.  A recent addition to this list that I just finished is Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.  The authors provide many detailed stories that illustrate three common biases including loss aversion (over valuing current resources), diagnosis bias (inability to rethink our initial assessment of something) and the chameleon effect (taking on the behaviors and properties that others have attributed to us).  I am recommending this book to designers as a good way to sharpen your instincts for detecting and dealing with cognitive biases as a constraint and sometimes enabler in the design process.