Find the Cognitive Bias in Your Design – STAT!
Believe it or not, the blue dot on the top of the cube and the one on the shaded side to the right are exactly the same. I borrowed this image from Wrong By Design. There are other examples that are fun to check out.
The image illustrates an important concept in cognitive design namely:
when designing for how minds work there is nearly always at least one powerful cognitive bias at work. You need to uncover it and decide to mitigate, leverage or ignore it.
Perception, memory, learning, decision-making, problem solving, creativity and all other mental processes are loaded with limitations, quirks and biases that must be understood if we are claiming our designs are optimized for how minds work.
Magic, music you cannot forget, lottery tickets, movies that make us cry and viral videos all leverage well-known cognitive biases. Cognitive biases left unchecked lead to poor decision-making, the high failure rate of planned change and safety issues. We now have catalogs of dozens of known biases. Our first step as cognitive designers is to make them as visible as the blue dot in the cube.
