Designing out bias

A quick way to find out what biases you might be bringing to what you’re creating is to visualise your first instinct of who you see using your product.

1. Draw or write down a description.
2. Look at what you drew. What does it tell you about your assumptions?

Nothing is “normal”

Remember that, actually, nothing is “normal”. Your normal is different to the next person’s. We all bring different cognitive biases from our backgrounds, upbringings, school life, work life, relationships with people and every other previous experience each of us has had as an individual.

Cognitive bias

Learn more about cognitive bias, and how we can avoid it. Some great resources:

• David Dylan Thomas’s website, author of Design for Cognitive Bias
• Dr Paula Dootson’s article ‘Considering Bias’
• Buster Benson’s ‘Cognitive Bias Cheatsheet’
• John Moore Williams’ article ‘Please enter a valid last name’
• Lou Downe’s book ‘Good Services’