Deadly biases every designer needs to live with
There are two kinds of biases —
Preferential: from a liking of some things over others.
Dispositional: from inherent qualities of mind and character.
As a designer I have a personal and preferential bias toward tasteful, neutral colours and a dispositional bias toward organised and structured systems. One is a choice and the other is an innate tendency.
Our dispositional biases are much harder to grasp than our preferential ones. Their existence owes to our proficiency in certain kinds of thinking – such as design thinking – which we often forget doesn’t come naturally for everyone else. And this is especially tricky for us designers considering the number of design decisions we make on behalf of our users.
Here are a few dispositional biases that may feel familiar to you.
Consistency bias
The belief that users regularly notice irregularities and inconsistencies and find them significant.
Consistency in patterns and visuals to leads to a more streamlined experience, but sometimes it should be ditched in order to make something work better in a particular context. For example, just because buttons tend to be right-aligned across a product doesn’t necessarily mean they must be right-aligned in every instance. Having it left-aligned might make more sense within a particular context, in which case forcing it to be consistent to other pages is only serving consistency for consistency’s sake. The button placement needs to make sense for the user, not just the design system. Most of the time the two go hand-in-hand, but not always.
For us designers, making things consistent is more than just good practice, it’s dangerously convenient. Consistency allows us to defer visual hierarchy to a simple structure of repeatable styles and themes. It’s so convenient that sometimes we run the risk of blindly applying it without checking whether it makes sense or not.
Design merit bias
The belief that a design’s sophistication or quality translates to value for the user.
We as designers favour design solutions that are clever in concept and construction. However, we need to remind ourselves that this alone doesn’t bring value to the user’s experience.
We’ve all heard the story of NASA inventing a pen that could be used in space. True or not it illustrates that engineer While such a thing would be an impressive feat of engineering, in the end, the cleverness of the pen’s mechanics has no real significance to the astronauts who use it. Their relationship to a pen is that it can simply put a mark on a piece of paper in zero gravity environments. Something a simple pencil can also provide.
Systems-thinking bias
The belief that users seek to understand the relationship between components and how they function together as a system.
As design thinkers, we’re attuned to creating all kinds of systems. Navigation schemes, user flows, page layouts etc. It’s become so natural that we tend to forget this sort of thinking is absent in the minds of many of our users (even if they happen to be designers).
A simple example is the assumption that users become confused or distressed if a control or function exists in multiple locations in a product. This imagines that users routinely think about products holistically and seek to understand the overall system of organisation behind the design. In reality, users tend to be less concerned with knowing exactly how everything works and more concerned with quickly finding the one thing they need — something known as ‘satisficing’ behaviour. Shoppers just want to find that polo shirt, not rationalise whether it belongs in ‘Tees’, ‘Shirts’ or ‘Tops’. Whichever category they end up choosing comes down to something as simple as which of the three they noticed first.
Optimising mindset bias
The belief that users actively try to develop better ways of using something.
The habit of finding better ways to do things is inherent to the way designers think. Our minds are wired to analyse, spot problems and devise solutions. The unfortunate reality is, not only are users typically less interested in optimising their use of a product, but they can be highly sensitive to the friction of having to learn new workflows.
It’s therefore dangerous to blindly assume that optimisation information (such as pointing out a different way of doing things) will be well-received and appreciated. Many detailed onboarding processes have been created by designers with good intentions, that end up annoying users who don’t have as much of a desire to receive it.
Aesthetics bias
The belief that users place a high value on visual aesthetics.
The Nielson Norman Group describes the aesthetic usability effect as users being tolerant of minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing. It’s the principle we use to conveniently justify spending time on aesthetics. But could we be over-indexing on its impact on our users?
As visual thinkers, one of our strongest tenets is that good aesthetics is a virtue. So strong is this idea that we take our years of experience in what ‘good aesthetics’ looks like for granted. Not only do users typically think less about whether something looks good, but they might not have an opinion on what ‘good’ is. Often users simply find appeal in what they find familiar and easy to understand. What some designers consider ‘safe and boring’.
There are no hard or fast rules around dealing with the aesthetics of a visual design. While it depends on a number of factors, it pays to remember that the rest of the world sees things differently to how we do and notably, in a far less academic way.
Living with designer biases.
Thankfully dispositional biases can be easy to manage using a few techniques:
- Think of these biases frequently.
Keep these dispositional biases top-of-mind and you’ll notice the way they affect your thought patterns and mental models. Over time, you will build up a habit of self-checking for them. - Test with users often and consider these biases when drawing insights.
User testing and research illuminate the inadequacies of our initial assumptions and hypotheses. Always frame these dispositional biases in your mind when you analyse user data to ensure they don’t pollute your insights. - Reflect on key design decisions you’ve made and look for evidence of these biases.
The problem with dispositional biases is that they’re habitual and can run through your thoughts undetected. Self-reflection helps you better understand the threads and gaps in your thinking. - Share and discuss these biases with your design peers.
Being surrounded by people who understand these dispositional biases can strengthen everyone’s resilience against them. Most importantly, it also mitigates the group-think that can amplify these biases in design huddles and design feedback sessions.
While dispositional biases are yet another concept we need a mindset for, they’re worthwhile to think about because well… they’re unavoidable. Don’t feel apologetic if these biases are pervasive in your own thinking.
They’re simply a sign of your remarkable strengths as a design thinker. All it takes now is knowing when to switch them off.
