Be Aware: Cognitive Bias Alert!

Transcript

1. UX Australia 2019 -29th August, Breakout session (AUUXAU2908B) SARAH STOKES: Hello, everyone. Waiting for my slide to come up so you know what I'm talking about. I'm here today to talk about cognitive bias. I really am. I'm going to make a start anyway. So, I'm a human test designer and a coach and I'm interested in what makes us human and how we use our humanness in our work. So last year, I did a 10-minute talk on how we listen and then I did a talk on empathy at design research and so today this is how we use our brain. Or not, as the case may be. So, I guess cognitive bias most people know the concept but it's about the thinking eros that we sometimes undertake when we think too quickly. So, what we're going to do today is talk a bit about cognitive bias, do some experiments and see how it relates to us in our UX world. So, this quote here is from - sorry. The quote from Daniel (inaudible) who wrote Thinking Fast and Slow. The world makes much less sense than you think, the coherence comes from the way your mind works. So, the way we make sense of the world is not always accurate but it's fast and efficient and partly due to cognitive bias. So, Daniel and Amos (inaudible) - I am not sure how to pronounce that - they point the concepts of cognitive bias in a 1974 science article and since then researchers have identified numerous other cognitive biases, so many in fact there are over 180. These guys became known as the behaving of - as the fathers of behavioural economics because it led to the industry of behavioural economics. Prior to that, the thought was people were more rationale in our thoughts. -- rational in our thoughts. I don't know if anyone has seen this before. I found this online. There's over 180 cognitive biases, so Buster Benson who was on four weeks paternity leave decided to tidy up the Wikipedia page and John Moynihan did it for us. It puts the cognitive biases into four different areas. This shows us that when we're faced with things like too much information, not enough meaning, needing to act fast what we should remember we make things up a bit. So, for example, we see patterns where they don't exist, we favour relatable things in front of us. We reduce efforts to - events to their key elements. Now we don't have to know all of these biases because it's a bit overwhelming. But knowing that these biases exist is a great start and the fact that we can do something about it in our UX role and in fact the UXs we have quite a lot of tools in our tool kit that can help to mitigate these. So apparently, we make 35,000 decisions a day. Now, I couldn't find the source for this article, so it might not be true but everybody else is referring to someone else who said there was 35,000 decisions that we make every day. Maybe that is a cognitive bias, I don't know. That is a lot for a brain to undertake every day. So, Daniel (inaudible) is thinking fast and slow spoke about system 1 and system 2 thinking. System 1 is thinking fast and quick to judge. That is unconscious and effortless. System 2 is slow and analytic and deliberate and thinking about an example of deliberate thinking, that would be when we're thinking about a career change or where we want to move to. System 1 would be more like, well, which apple am I going to take out of a bowl. I am not going to think pros and cons of which apple might be the best. So system 1 is 97% of our decision making and system 2 is 3%. And system 1 is where cognitive bias coming in. I will do a bit of an experiment with you, I hope you don't mind. I am going to show you a picture and ask you which line is the longest. So just shout out. Top, middle or bottom? OK. I know
2. UX Australia 2019 -29th August, Breakout session (AUUXAU2908B) Page 2 of 3 what's going on. Your eyes are telling you that the middle is the longest but in fact they're all the time. And you may have felt some kind of mental tension at one point and that is system 1 and system 2 having a dance off in your brain. So cognitive bias, which is - which comes from system 1 really, is when we make fast decisions. So, system 1 increases our mental efficiency and enables us to make fast decisions. But it also distorts our thinking and kind of leads to false judgments which is fine when' we're looking at straight lines but when we're thinking about the global financial crisis, Chernobyl and ineffective responses to Hurricane Katrina, the false judgments can be quite dangerous. So, I've got another experiment for you. You may be familiar with this. If you are, please don't give it away. I will tell you a story about Linda and ask you two questions. So, Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student she was deeply concerned with the issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti- nuclear demonstrations. Which of the following is two alternatives is more probable? Number one, Linda is a bank teller. Number two, Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement. Hands up for number 1. Hands up for number 2. That's about right. So apparently the question is which is more probably - statistically more probably that Linda is a bank teller, but we have earned that Linda is a bank teller in a feminist movement which 80% of people put their hands up for number 2. So that's our rational brain, it's not a rational decision or choice we're making there. We're saying based on the information you've given me, I am going to say it's number 2. So, I'm going to share a very designedly cognitive bias here. You may have heard of this, the Ikea effect and it's known as the Ikea effect in the literature, I'm not making it up. So, I'm sure that we've all most of us have had the experience of making Ikea furniture and if it's a bit wobbly we quite like it. Am I right? So, we place a higher value on something that we've made which if you think about that from a design perspective we tend to potentially make a higher value on the designs that we've made. So that could actually lead us to losing strategic foresight in what we're putting out into the world, if we put out what we like rather than what is the best. So cognitive bias plays a part in every human interaction in user experience. SARAH STOKES: And I'm not going to talk about cognitive bias in terms of how we can leverage in terms of how people interact with our products. I've chosen research, storytelling and decision making. Sorry, in research, biases come into play when we're thinking about as designers, we have something we want to approve or disprove, so we might be closing our minds to what we're seeing. And then when with ask customer s questions or see people doing research how are we framing those questions? The two biases that come into play there are the confirmation and the frame effect. So, the tendency to seek evidence that backs up our limiting beliefs and please don't ask someone in the research question whether they like something or not because that might not be the thing. Storytelling and showcases so it's really important when we present information the order that we put things in because that's how people remember things.
3. UX Australia 2019 -29th August, Breakout session (AUUXAU2908B) Page 3 of 3 So, there's two cognitive biases that relate to that. The anchoring effect - people tend to take in the first piece of information they hear and then the serial position effect is the order in which you present the information, makes a difference as well. So, what you begin with and what you end with is what people tend to remember. So, when you're running a showcase, think about how you start, doing a solid balanced executive summary and a big finish because people might walk away with what you want them to walk away with. Decision making - this is where group thinking comes in. And here are two biases that relate to group think. The band wagon bias and the more consensus effect. Now, with band wagon bias, that's accepting the ideas that are adopted by others in the group because you don't want to stand out and this is an evolutionary thing where you want to be part of the group and if you're not part of the group you get shun. In these situations, it's good to nominate a devil's advocate. So I've got three top tips for you to talk away with -- walk away with today. Now we know more about cognitive biases, what can we do? Making sure we do something about it them. Even when you are in a project mapping your assumptions, making sure that you're aware of what you're thinking and being aware of other people and what their biases might be. Aim for diversity of input. So avoiding confirmation bias, aiming for empathy and good listening in that context. Using structured approaches. So an example might be using a DVF process to prioritise concept s when you have people representing the customer, the business and technology. That is a good structured way to mitigate cognitive biases. Another way is looking for evidence that separates fact from fiction. So I will leave you with a Jimi Hendrix quote because that's what I did last year when I did a 10-minute talk. In order to change the world you have to get your head together first. So now I think the thing about cognitive biases it's all very well knowing them and understanding them but it's about doing something about it. So maybe thinking what action you will take. Thank you very much.