Thread by @paraschopra

1/ A thread on COGNITIVE BIASES that lead to POORLY DESIGNED PRODUCTS.

If you are a startup founder, product manager or designer, this thread is for you.

2/ WHAT'S A COGNITIVE BIAS?

I like to define it as: a systematic error in perception due to the environment that one is embedded into.

3/ The word systematic suggests that such kind of errors aren’t due to randomness.

Imagine a cognitive bias to be like being born wearing ROSE TINTED glasses, not ever knowing that these glasses colour your entire world pink and then fighting with everyone who disagrees with you

4/ INTELLIGENT people are MORE PRONE to cognitive biases.

because your sharp intellect works on biased data to derive erroneous conclusions, but you don’t doubt your conclusions because you’re confident of your intelligence.

5/ For thousands of years, humans believed that sun and planets revolved around Earth.

Geocentricism was an UNDERSTANDABLE cognitive bias because sun rising and sinking is what people saw every single day.

6/ Similarly, A CHICKEN is HAPPIEST just BEFORE it is SLAUGHTERED.

In its world, some kind hearted person feeds it every single day. That's a cognitive bias.

7/ The key idea to remember about cognitive biases is that our ENVIRONMENT SHAPES REALITY. We rarely perceive reality as is.

I have also previously wrote about general cognitive biases and how to avoid them on my blog: invertedpassion.com/hacks-to-avoid…

8/ As far as product professionals are concerned, take a look at the environment they live in. I'm referring to product managers, designers and startup founders.

They have all sorts of IMPLICIT GOALS (such as career progression, good relationships) that nobody would admit openly

9/ IMPLICIT GOALS are dangerous because nobody even admits their presence, although they shape the reality of product professionals.

Many product managers _think_ they're making a good product while they're trying to do interesting work. That's a cognitive bias!

10/ With all the context about cognitive biases and product people’s goals, we’re ready to dive into product-specific biases.

I have identified SIX cognitive biases. If you have more, lemme know.

11/ Cognitive bias #1: confirmation bias during user interviews.

This excellent cartoon by @marketoonist illustrates what typically happens when talking to customers.

12/ When we ask loaded questions such as: “do you like this feature?” or “would you pick feature A or feature B?”, customer gets sided in a corner and she will say something.

Customers are nice and will cook up an answer that isn't rude to you. You'll interpret it as a 'yes'!

13/ People, including customers, are story tellers and the answer they give depends very much on how the question is phrased.

One book that I highly recommend to learn how to do user interviews is 'The Mom Test' by @robfitz momtestbook.com

14/ BTW confirmation bias also happens when WE RESEARCH ONLINE: we see competitors launching features that we personally wanted to launch or if we are in love with flat design, we see it everywhere.

This comic by @chainsawsuit illustrates this bias.

15/ Cognitive bias #2: EFFICIENCY BIAS for keeping engineers busy

16/ This is a common bias because it pains to see teams sitting idle. Not just their managers, people themselves feel guilty if they’re not working.

@PHDcomics knows this feeling perfectly!

17/ Being constantly busy works in a world where humans manufacture identical widgets, but for products that get built over time (software!), this urge to constantly add something new actually backfires.

ALWAYS BUSY ENGINEERS = COMPLICATED PRODUCTS.

18/ But, YOU CAN'T run away from EFFICIENCY BIAS because your manager can't see you idle. You're paid to 'work'.

How would you convince your manager that you’re creating value by not working?

19/ Cognitive bias #3: CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT BIAS that neglects moats

20/ I’ve previously written about moats and what they are. I recommend reading that post, but if you’re short on time, know that MOATS are product or business FEATURES that make it HARD for your CUSTOMERS to SWITCH to a competitor invertedpassion.com/network-effect…

21/ Because moats make it difficult for customers to switch, YOU'D NEVER hear customers asking you to build them.

This means _just_ relying on customer input can lead you to build INDEFENSIBLE BUSINESSES.

22/ Cognitive bias #4: SELECTION BIAS that only selects for vocal customers

23/ Most customers are busy living their lives, and your request for feedback or getting on a call is something they’d have to do at the expense of sipping a coffee or finishing their deadline driven project

People really are NOT very INTERESTED in talking with a business

24/ When you ASK for FEEDBACK or select users for interviews, only either the most frustrated or the most happy customers respond. The fat, middle average customer is busy living her life.

25/ This biased selection of customers who give feedback leads to biased conclusions that lead to over-engineered, complex products.

26/ Cognitive bias #5: COMPLEXITY BIAS that reduces simplicity

27/ Have you ever wondered WHY user interfaces go from SIMPLE to COMPLEX?

Every couple of years, a new software claims to revolutionize simplicity. Products like iPhone, Slack: all were actually simple to begin with. But with time, they became more and more complicated. Why?

28/ when a new product person joins, she is interested in talking to all customers. All conversations are new to her

Over time, as her understanding gets better, she seeks out customers with evolved needs. She starts building ‘advanced features’ because ‘basic features’ are done

29/ Cognitive bias #6: BEAUTY BIAS that leads to bad design

30/ To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Similarly, TO a DESIGNER, EVERYTHING looks like a DESIGN PROBLEM.

Comic by @satukyro

31/ I’ve written about this bias much more extensively in another post. The core idea is that the designers care about their taste and worldview much more than the customers’. It's VERY HARD to empathize with users who aren't like YOU.

growth.wingify.com/when-beautiful…

32/ This OVER-INTERPRETATION by designers happens all the time.

33/ To SUMMARIZE this thread, here are the SIX COGNITIVE BIASES that lead to BADLY DESIGNED PRODUCTS (and how to prepare for them).

34/ As a general advice on COGNITIVE BIASES, I love @ESYudkowsky's advice: BIND YOURSELF TO REALITY lesswrong.com/posts/WjpA4PCj…

35/ That's all! I blog all my tweet storms on invertedpassion.com (you can subscribe to get email updates from my blog)

If you have a cognitive bias for product design that I didn't capture, let me know!

RT for your product and design friends :)