Design for Cognitive Bias

What is cognitive bias?

Our brain has to make around 950 billion decisions each day.

Most of those decisions are made on autopilot. Scientists estimate that about 95 percent of cognition happens below the threshold of conscious thought. These shortcuts help us to make our reality plausible and benevolent.

What are the consequences?

Some biases are amusing and harmless, like the illusion of control bias (Example: We think that we can affect the outcome of throwing dice by the intensity we throw it). But some can cause harm, like, for example, confirmation bias. Bias can find its way into a product and get amplified. This is why it is important to be aware of your bias and its consequences.

How to counter cognitive bias?

Countering bias is not easy, and knowing a bias doesn't actually help preventing it. The anchoring effect, for example, keeps us track sticking to a biased decision. The best medicine against bias are other people with different backgrounds challenging our biases.

Workshop

The goal of this workshop is to help participants recognize and address their cognitive biases in product development by examining their own intersectionality and identity and then applying this understanding to identify and address potential biases in the product development process.