5 tips to overcome cognitive biases in user research

Humans are biased. Period. Designers are just as vulnerable to being biased as users are. Cognitive biases can affect our thinking as well as our actions which can lead to seeking confirmation of existing beliefs or failing to remember events the way they actually happened. The job of a UX Designer is to overcome these biases. Why? Because product design and user-centered design are influenced by findings in user research. Researchers and designers have to ensure that the collected data through quantitative and qualitative research is not manipulated through cognitive biases and provides meaningful value to the end-users. According to Jeff Desjardins, there are 188 known cognitive biases in existence. I would like to discuss the 5 most common cognitive biases in user research and provide tips on how to overcome them. 

Confirmation Bias

What is it about?

One of the most common biases as it stands with the foundation of humanity. It is natural human behavior to seek confirmation on what we believe in, on what we see, or on what we hear. We unintentionally seek out situations where our hypothesis gets validated though credible resources which can result in ignoring inconsistent information. During user research, the following can happen which can lead to falsified findings:

Researcher: ‘Do you use app xy to perform action xy?’

Most likely the interviewee will answer: ‘Yes, I do.’

Is this really what the user is doing? The interviewee’s data provide an answer to the question ‘what?’, but it will not provide an answer to the question ‘why?’. The designer’s job is to get to the bottom of the question ‘why’. For that, questions like ‘why did the user take that action?’, ‘what was the process involved to take that action?’, ‘was the process enjoyable?’, will give the designers insights into reasonable and valuable data. If these kinds of questions get answered and data gets collected throughout the research phase, it will open the designers up to the hypothesis that was created, and they will become more open to taking ideas that can disturb their beliefs.

Tip to overcome it: 

Play the devil’s advocate to your thoughts and hypothesis consistently to avoid confirmation bias.

Sunk Cost Fallacy‍

What is it about?

People often think that their decision-making process is rational, however, sunk cost fallacy describes that your decisions are influenced by our emotional investments accumulated. The more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it. Sunk costs can show up in business as well as in your private life. Let’s imagine the following scenario: A local gym is considering developing its own fitness app. They spend $10,000 on market research. The research reveals that the market is too saturated in their niche and developing their own fitness app is not likely to be profitable. They don't move forward with the development, and that $10,000 is a sunk cost.

Tip to overcome it: 

Balance your efforts and rewards. You need to embrace an open mindset and become at peace with the fact that losses and failures are an unavoidable part of life.

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Serial Position Effect

What is it about?

Imagine when asked to recall a list of items in any order. Most likely you will recall the first and the last items of that list but struggle to recall the middle part. This tendency is called the serial position effect. That means that the users of your product will most likely also recall information with more accuracy that is at the beginning or at the end of a list than somewhere in the middle part. 

Tip to overcome it: 

Knowing the importance of the serial position effect and that it can affect the user experience, it can be helpful to break the information up into smaller pieces to minimize the effect on the user. You can consciously reduce the user’s memory load by limiting distractions and categorizing particular chunks together. 

Clustering Bias

What is it about?

It is natural human behavior to bring order to the chaos. Humans tend to cluster things and see patterns and trends in what are completely random outcomes. Have you caught yourself saying ‘I am having a run’ simply by clustering the outcome of positive events that weren’t related to one another? That is clustering bias. In UX design this bias can have drastic implications when relying on qualitative analysis. It appears to be nearly impossible to not see patterns that might be just smaller sets of randomness that appear to have a commonality.

Tip to overcome it: 

An effective way to overcome or counter clustering bias is to arrange totally diverse sets of users when conducting user research and prototyping. It can also be avoided by having a quite brainstorming session before reviewing findings with the stakeholder. Again, try to involve more diverse stakeholders to increase the chance of possible biases getting eliminated. 

Implicit Bias

What is it about?

It has been shown that 98% of our thinking happens in our subconscious mind. This is where we store our implicit or unconscious biases. This bias is the result of the brain working highly automated to make fast decisions as a legacy of our survival instincts. Rather than being neutral, humans have a preference that exists in many forms, including race, gender, culture, age and religion. A rather common example of this is ‘...seen in studies that show that white people will frequently associate criminality with black people without even realizing they’re doing it.’ - PerceptionInst. During user research, it can happen that this bias shows subconsciously when we talk to people from certain demographic, racial or ethnic groups of whom we already have preconceived notions and generalizations about. It might lead us to behave in certain ways which might not be totally necessary.  It is the designers' responsibility to be conscious of this natural bias as they are predominantly making the final design decisions of a product. 

Tip to overcome it: 

Write down all the preconceived notions about the person before going into the interview. Knowing as little as possible about them before speaking to them helps to overcome the implicit bias. 

In summary, these are the 5 biases that can influence your user research dramatically if you haven’t thought about them before conducting your interviews. 

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1. Confirmation Bias —Humans tend to only look for evidence confirming their own hypothesis.
2. Sunk Cost Fallacy — Humans tend to stick to their goals when invested financially or emotionally.
3. Serial-Position Effect —Humans tend to remember items at the beginning/end of lists more.
4. Clustering Bias — Humans tend to see trends and patterns amongst randomness, when there are really none.
5. Implicit Bias — Humans have implicit associations about certain groups and their behavior.