Master of Evil or Noble Hero? Designer Stereotypes & Biases
A presentation by Unn Swanström, UX Designer. @unnderbar
A presentation at STHLM Xperience Conference in November 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden by Unn Swanström
A presentation by Unn Swanström, UX Designer. @unnderbar
Unn Swanström works at Doberman, helps Spotify
Villains have a really low threshold for innovation. Super quick to adopt new ideas, just look into the lab of Despicable me! Gru bred an entirely new species - the Minions! Lava lamp guns, guns that shoot piranhas, cookie robots. Supervillains have ambition and drive! They all have quests! They don’t want happiness, happiness often means you try to enjoy the world the way it is. Villains are originals, who try to create the world they see I their mind. Not just sit back enjoy!
How can we work like villains but think like heroes?
The psychological difference of working defence or offence.
Villains are always trying to bring down the status quo. Think like an underdog. When I was working on an innovation project for Ica we flipped the script and started brainstorming ideas that could put ICA out of business. Then we turned around again and looked at these ideas from Icas point of view. Picking out the most promising innovations and made plans to realize them.
Apart from the refreshing position of playing offence rather than defence something we need to keep our eyes on is BIAS.
What is bias?
Our brains are constantly looking for short cuts. So when we try to understand something new our brain tries to map it against other things we know or believe that we know. Our jobs as designers and product managers contain constant problem solving. So our brains sometimes make leaps that are a little to big while trying to stitch together understanding and a solution to the problem at hand. It’s when our brain makes these leaps that we are prone to making cognitive mistakes. Mistakes that we then trip us up in our pursuit of making good design decisions.
If bias sneaks into your ways of working you run the risk of getting an end result that doesn’t really match up with what you intended to do. And you won’t reach the users that you set out to help.
Effort Bias A belief that the value of something is attached to the amount of effort put into it.
High value Effort vs Value 01 Oktober 2018 3. Idea 1. Idea 2. Idea Hard to do Easy to do Low value 8
@unnderbar Effort Value 1. 2. 3. 9 Prioritize with a Matrix Checklist with goals & user needs Test with users
@unnderbar Confirmation Bias A tendency to seek out evidence, or interpret evidence in such a way, that is consistent with pre-existing beliefs. 10
A tendency to express a preference for stimuli following brief exposure.
Whenever you do dot voting. Give everyone a Wild Card-vote. What idea is a little cray cray but also excites. This way you might combat the exposure effect in idea selection.
Bias = thinking shortcuts that can lead to errors. Today we’ve looked at three highly relevant biases in design work:
Want a more exhaustive list? Check out this paper → Confirmation & Cognitive Bias In Design Cognition, Hallihan & Cheong, 2012. They write academically about:
Unn Swanström @unnderbar
