Content
Introduction. What this article is about
Objectives and disclaimers
Part 1. Good product
Part 2. User experience (UX). What is it?
Part 3. Architecture of choice
Part 4. Architect of choice
Part 5. Cognitive biases and User experience
Link to the full version of UX CORE (105 examples of the use of cognitive biases in team and product management)
Part 6. Today
Part 7. Not only distortions
Part 8. Epilogue
Part 9. Material that qualitatively complements this article
Introduction. What is this article about
In this article, we will talk about cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and the errors (distortions) of our brain. We will look at how understanding brain errors and human behavior patterns can help us deliver high-quality user experience (UX) in digital products. Basically, we will talk about software for mobile and desktop platforms. The attentive reader will be able to apply this knowledge broadly beyond both these platforms and software in general.
For the last ten years, my main hobby has been learning how people make decisions. This path led me to study a wide range of cognitive sciences, in particular, cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
At some point in my life, I changed my profile from a technical specialist in the IT field, with which I worked for about 6 years (LAN / WAN / DevOps / InfoSec), to Product Manager. My main activity in this position is to analyze the expectations and decisions of users in order to create a more comfortable and desirable product.
Testing and evaluating the practical benefits of the information in this article took about five years of work in various companies and projects of varying degrees of complexity (from business card websites to the development of the world's first levitating camera ,esports ecosystems , esports tote , civil aviation software and the world's largest digital publishing platform ). In total, I worked with more than a hundred specialists of various professional levels, which brought tremendous benefits in the form of a number of confirmed and refuted concepts; only a useful part of which will be described below.
Targets and disclaimers
The material outlined here is best understood by experienced IT professionals who develop and design software on a regular basis. Nevertheless, any reader, regardless of the type of activity, will benefit from this material.
The goals I set in this article are as follows:
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I deliberately omit business issues such as âproduct rationaleâ, âmarket analysisâ, âcompetitor analysisâ and others, as they have little to do with UX. A product can be of high quality regardless of demand, the feasibility of its release on the market and the strength of competitors.
I have deep respect for everyone whose names appear in this article. I am infinitely glad to have the opportunity to get acquainted with the works, thoughts and ideas of these people.
The size of the article turned out to be much larger than I expected. However, you will have access to synopsis of the most important research in neuroscience and cognitive sciences from the past 70+ years. Studying these studies in detail and comparing them to âreal worldâ conditions would take you at least two years of regular training.
Part 1. Good product
We will not go into abstract reasoning about what a product is, a la "this is what benefits its owner, market and end users." Many people will disagree with the idea that a quality product can remain quality even after failing in the market, so I will say a few words about this separately.
So, just above, I removed the questions about markets, competitors and the appropriateness of the product, because I proceed from the premise that a quality product is, first of all, a product without internal contradictions. Such a product is ideally connected both by its "ideological" components (history of creation, its mission, all used images, text and printed materials used for its development and promotion, etc.), and technical (back end, user interface, interaction elements and design, color business, customer support instructions, tone of voice of the company, and more).
With all this, it is important to understand that a quality product can enter the market, turn out to be of no use to anyone, become history and still be a quality product.
There can be a wide variety of reasons for failure, for example:
- poor timing (the market situation has changed, people have not yet realized the seriousness of the problem being solved by the product, etc.);
- human factor (leaks within the company, cleaning lady who knocked over a bucket next to the servers on the day of release, etc.);
- poor management skills of the leadership (the founders of the company began to discuss profit distribution too late, which created conflicts; excessive pressure on the development team led to massive layoffs and disrupted investment negotiations, etc.)
- banal bad luck, the importance of which is widely ignored by both novices and experts in business (Black Swans by N. Nassim Taleb).
Therefore, in order not to go into dull philosophical speculations on business issues, in this article we will remember them, at times we will "touch" them, but we will not focus on them.
Part 2. User Experience (UX). What is it?
Since at the moment the concept of UX is much more often referred to as UI design, my "opponent" in the discussion of this issue will be Joe Natoli. Joe is a veteran designer with over 30 years of experience, one of the world's most popular IT experts in UXD (User Experience Design), the author of a number of books, as well as the most popular UX video courses on Udemy. Natoli has spent over thirty years advising on user experience design (UXD) to Fortune 100, 500 and government organizations. He calls himself âUser Experience Evangelistâ on his website, which means I can refer to his statements made publicly in his books and video tutorials.
In one of his lessons, where Mr. Natoli explains the concept of User Experience, he refers to Peter Merholz:
âPeter Merholz, who is a business partner of Jesse James Garrett (author of the term User Experience and The Elements of User Experience â UX Bibles of All Time), says that the user interface (UI) is a component of the user experience. But there is much more, and this much more includes things that are relevant to cognitive science. It has to do with people: what they want, what they need, what they want to use and why they react to things the way they react. "
Another UXD expert is Bill DeRouche (Senior Product Manager / Workflow Experience Lead at Zendesk). In the discussion, UXD says the following: âFor UXD ... you don't even need a screen. UXD is any interaction with any product, any element, any system. "
Having looked through all the available materials of the above, as well as a number of other UXD specialists, I noticed one important pattern - they constantly use the scientific achievements of cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists and behavioral economists. Almost the entire ideological part, the entire âback endâ of their speeches is based on cognitive sciences, however, this is rarely emphasized. More often than not, they do not want to "complicate" the material for the listener and too often use phrases such as "we use the things that we understand", which sets a rough framework that does not allow taking into account many important factors.
For example, even if we have access to an application, we will almost never use it if the expected actions of us are at odds with the values ââof the socio-cultural environment with which we identify ourselves. Another UXD specialist may subtly notice this by saying, âVisual design must be in line with socio-cultural values ââto be acceptable,â which sounds nice, but does not show the whole picture that needs to be taken into account in making decisions about the product.
Please note, I am by no means saying that books and video tutorials are useless. At the moment, in order for a person to understand what UX is and how to work with it, he needs to go through a lot of scattered materials in books and video tutorials. In this article, I want to show the scientific origins on the basis of which all these books and lessons are created.
So, almost all UXD experts agree that UX is a concept that goes far beyond interfaces. Their consensus is that UX is the actual experience a user gets when interacting with a product / company.
Due to the fact that experience is the result of interpreting feelings that arise in a person when interacting with a product / company,user experience creation is a psychological game with the goal of nudging the user towards a particular thought, emotion, action, or choice. And here we come close to such a concept as âarchitecture of choiceâ.
Part 3. Architecture of Choice
The concept of choice architecture was popularized following the collaboration of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein on Nudge Theory. Together they wrote the book Nudge Theory, which allowed the many different professionals responsible for âcreating choiceâ for users to look at their work from a new angle. In order for the reader to understand the significance of the above persons, I will give a brief description of them here:
Cass Sunstein is the co-author of nudge theory. Following the publication of Nudge, President Obama offered Sunstein a position in the Division of Information and Regulatory Policy. This gave the researcher ample opportunity to implement the ideas of psychology and behavioral economics in the work of government agencies. On September 10, 2009, Sunstein was appointed head of OIRA, which is part of the Office of Management and Budget of the Presidential Administration. OIRA oversees the implementation of public policy and reviews draft regulations. The post of the head of OIRA is considered one of the most influential, given its ability to influence the texts of adopted laws. The media informally call this post regulatory czar. OIRA Sunstein was in charge until August 21, 2012.
In August 2013, Sunstein became a member of the NSA Oversight Commission (Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology). In addition to him, there are two other former White House employees on the commission: the largest specialist in counterterrorism and cyberwarfare Richard Alan Clarke and a former deputy director of the CIA.
Richard Thaler is the author of Nudge Theory and winner of the 2017 Alfred Nobel Memorial Economics Prize for his contributions to the field of behavioral economics. A new unit was created under the British government to apply the principles of behavioral science to government tasks. The unit's official name is the Behavioral Insight Group, but more commonly both within and outside government, the Nudge Group. Thaler is one of the advisors to this group.
So, these gentlemen have worked for many years on a theory in which they carefully described how you can "push" a person to a certain choice using cognitive distortions (we will talk about them very soon). The idea and the described methods were so liked by the leaderships of different countries (not only the USA and England) that special government departments were created to edit bills to push citizens towards a healthier lifestyle and healthier food without limiting their choice.
Even now, thousands of scientists work for governments every day, studying the human brain and its inherent errors in order to optimize our choices, to enable us to choose the âbestâ where possible, and at the same time not limit our choices.
In fact, the architecture of choice isa description of the thoughts and cognitive distortions that the target audience is exposed to , on the one hand, and decisions on the placement of elements involved in the choice , on the other.
With a good understanding of both sides of this equation, the choice architect can smoothly nudge the user / consumer in the direction the company needs.
Part 4. Architect of Choice
The concept of "Architect of choice" was introduced by Sunstein and Thaler, describing it as follows:
"The architect of choice is the one who is responsible for organizing the context in which a person makes decisions."
Thaler and Sunstein proved the effectiveness of "nudging" by the example of decision-making in the development of draft laws. In this context, the job of an architect of choice is extremely difficult, as it is subject to colossal legal and moral constraints.
We are interested in the IT sphere, in particular, the development of various kinds of applications. In this area, there are also certain limitations, however, there are much fewer of them, which makes it possible for the architect of choice to realize all his scientific potential.
In a company like this, it's easy to understand who the architect of choice is. This is the one who is engaged in "organizing the context in which the person (user) makes decisions in the application", or simply the Product Manager.
Organizing the context in which users make decisions is a key responsibility of the Product Manager. To create the best conditions for choosing and nudging users to choose a profitable business, the Product Manager must know the patterns of human behavior and, most importantly, the deviations in this behavior. It is these systematic deviations in human perception, thinking and behavior that are called "cognitive distortions." They can be considered "bugs" because most of these distortions describe failures in the processing and analysis of information.
Part 5. Cognitive Distortion and User Experience
So, we have come to the main material of the article.
Next, I will lay out a number of cognitive biases known to science, which have been scientifically derived and documented. As a separate link, I posted an online tool that I called "UX CORE" . In it, you can find 105 cognitive biases with examples of their use in management and in application development.
To structure the material, I used the "Code of Cognitive Distortion", categorized and structured by Buster Benson in 2016 (link above for design by John Manukyan III). In addition to the new form of presenting distortions, to each of them I have added an example of use in software development, and in some cases, in team management. The most modern practices for managing teams and companies (PMP, PMI ACP), as well as product development were taken into account.
Many of the examples I have described below are quite radical. This was done on purpose, since according to the contrast effect, such examples are better remembered. The main purpose of the examples is to provide food for thought. I did not strive to achieve their absolute accuracy, because such an example requires a thorough description of the work situation and the task at hand, and this would take dozens of pages of material. I am deeply convinced that this work will help readers learn a lot for themselves and draw certain conclusions.
Clicks on the names of distortions in the table open pop-ups. All links in pop-ups open in new browser tabs, so you can surf the content calmly without worrying about accidentally closing something.
So, as Buster Benson rightly noted, the essence of the outlined cognitive biases is to help us solve 4 problems:
- Working with large amounts of data. When there is a lot of information;
- Vague, insufficient data. When meaning is lacking;
- Not enough time. When we react quickly;
- Different priorities for information. When we remember and remember.
Every cognitive bias exists for a reason - mainly to help the brain conserve energy and spend less time thinking. When you look at distortions from the perspective of the problem they help solve, it becomes easier to understand why they exist, how they are useful, and what trade-offs we have to make in this regard.
# 1 Availability Heuristic [P]
The process by which a person estimates the frequency or probability of an event by the ease with which examples or cases come to mind, ie. easier to remember.
In application development, understanding this distortion is essential for consistent interface design, content design, and user communication. If the action that we need the user to take is associated with something negative (especially if it is covered or covered in the media not so long ago), the likelihood that the action will be taken is greatly reduced. Understanding this allows us to design content (text, images, etc.) so that a person associates it only with what we need. The same distortion allows us to reflect on the current conjuncture in the world and on the market in order to choose the most convenient "tone" of our messages.
Another example: bitcoins and all sorts of ICOs. The topic of cryptocurrencies was so often negatively boosted in the media that at some point, investors simply decided to avoid everything connected with it, without going into details. Ordinary users realized that being blinded by the heightened volatility of these markets did nothing good. The hype on this topic has come to naught, and many really high-quality blockchain projects have faced serious difficulties in development due to the highly distorted reputation of everything associated with blockchain, bitcoin and crypto in general.
The last example is that I chose the topic of software design and blockchain technologies to describe the availability heuristic. The first topic is obvious to me because of my profession (product manager), the second topic just easily came to my mind when I asked myself the question: "What direction in IT was full of hype, and then quickly faded away?"
# 4 The effect of familiarity with the object [P] The
psychological phenomenon of expressing sympathy for an object only on the basis of existing acquaintance with it. The more often a person sees someone, the more pleasant and attractive this person seems to him.
It is important to emphasize that we are talking not only about people, but about objects in general.
Let's say we have a successful application that we want to promote in Spain. If we use Spanish flag descriptions of our app in our digital promo materials (unobtrusively, of course), it will give a âfamiliarâ feel to Hispanic readers. Another example is that we place a very faded, monochrome image of the Sagrada Familia over the background of a white page that describes the benefits of our application in Spanish. If you add majestic, bombastic words to the text, coupled with a background image, they will quite give the effect of "familiarity" and increase the likelihood of converting potential users into actual ones.
Another example: we use standard buttons in our application of standard colors and sizes for us, and our entire interface is âuniversalâ. The day comes when we need to notify our users about the new features of the application. We can do this unobtrusively using a standard pop-up, with the same buttons used in other parts of the application. Or, conversely, if we need to sharpen the user's attention in such a way that he has a persistent sense of novelty - we move away from our standard system and use a slightly different window color and slightly different size of buttons in the pop-up. At the sight of such a window, the very first thing that comes to mind of our user is a feeling of "novelty", the intensity of which will be proportional to how long the user has been using our application.
# 6Forgetting without prompts [P]
Is the inability to recall a memory due to the lack of stimuli or cues that were present during memory encoding.
In the context of an application, we can use our knowledge of this distortion to "remind" the user of what he can do with the system.
I will give a simple example on an online betting site, where many users place bets. Obviously, the âaverageâ user both wins and loses. It is in the interests of business to âsupportâ such a user at a difficult moment when he has lost everything. Since in the mind of a player who has experienced a series of âdefeatsâ there are only defeats, the system can remind him of a whole series of victories according to a certain pattern, reviving in him the whole series of good memories that he experienced. This can be done unobtrusively with a message like "Dear% username%, we just wanted to remind you of your incredibly successful streak of victories for three days in a row playing% game_names%." Obsessive? Maybe. Let's change the message to "You are in the top 20% of our players thanks to your win streak in% game_name%!" Not so intrusive, this is already statistics ï.Of course, doing this is not ethical from a moral point of view. Therefore, bookmakers and casinos licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA), Curacao and others agree in advance that they will not push players to gamble. In any case, this example clearly illustrates how you can benefit from business, knowing about such a simple mistake in our brain.
# 11 Base Percentage Error [P]
This is a mistake in thinking, when faced with general information about the frequency of some event (base percentage) and specific information about this event, a person tends to ignore the first and focus on the second. For example: people believe the readings of a test that signal the presence of a rare disease without taking into account that a rare disease is generally rare. Or another example: the fear of terrorists and plane flights. The bottom line is that our brains tend to exaggerate a particular case at the expense of statistics.
Understanding this error enables us to take a closer look at developing textual content for applications. Thus, a message describing a potentially negative outcome in the event of performing an action will be perceived differently by users:
âYou are about to start the disk defragmentation process. With a 99% probability, the operation will be successful. "
âYou are about to start the disk defragmentation process. There is a 1% chance that the hard drive will be destroyed and your data will be irretrievably lost. "
By the way, it is for this reason that it is very important to provide high-quality technical support. A frustrated user who could not find a reasonable explanation for the error occurred in the program may leave negative feedback about the application. And this will cause much more damage to the product than it might seem at first glance.
When people see 15,800 laudatory reviews and 50 extremely negative reviews mixed in with them, they tend to consider the product less valuable, out of proportion to the fact that negative reviews are less than 0.1%.
# 13 The effect of humor [P]
Funny things are easier to remember than non-humorous, which may be explained by increased cognitive processing time to understand humor, or emotional arousal caused by humor.
The best use of humor is in the ubiquitous memes. A lot of big IT companies use memes to promote their products, and "humor effect" is exactly what they are betting on.
It is very important to understand here that we are talking about memorizing humorous things, but not about a positive attitude towards them. So, if in the process of working on an important action (filling out a form, saving data), the user gets to an error page (500 (Internal server error), 502 (Bad gateway), 503 (Service unavailable), 504 (Gateway timeout)), then humor like "Ho ho! Our pirates are working on a bug and soon everything will be restored! " will be out of place. In this case, humor will be noticed, remembered., and is likely to anger the user in a way that makes the event more memorable. If such an event occurs several times a month, in accordance with the availability heuristic , the next time the user thinks about the quality of our product is likely to give a negative assessment. Even if in 99% of cases the application coped with the task ( base percentage error ).
A good user experience in this situation will be a page with an error, where the company takes the blame, explains the essence of the error and notifies that soon everything will be restored and the page will update itself.
# 21 Discrimination error [P]
There is a tendency to view the two options as more distinctive when judging them simultaneously than when judging them separately.
Understanding this error gives us the opportunity to approach the development of the information structure for our application in different ways. For example, if we want the user to clearly see the differences between one service plan and another, we can put the service plans in a row with the characteristics and prices of each (you have seen this on many websites in the "Price" section). If we want the user to consider our service plans "almost the same" (for whatever reason), then instead of placing them horizontally in a table, we can place them vertically - one under the other. This will prevent the user from evaluating the differences between service plans at the same time. we will have to scroll the page, and thereby increase the likelihood that we will achieve our goal. This error is also one of the reasonsaccording to which online sweepstakes and all kinds of casinos do not show the "deposit amount", "winnings" and "losses" on one page. It is convenient for the user, but does not meet the business goals of the project, because the user will place greater emphasis on the difference between wins and losses. At the same time, it does not matter what he attaches more importance to. The very fact that the user has feelings and thoughts that cannot be controlled will create risks for the business.will create risks for the business.will create risks for the business.
# 36 Probability Neglect [P]
Cognitive bias, according to which a person tends to ignore small probabilities when making decisions under uncertainty. Small risks are usually either completely ignored or grossly underestimated. The continuum between the extremes is ignored. As Rolf Dobelly explains, the reason this happens is because we do not have an intuitive understanding of risk and therefore have difficulty distinguishing between different threats. In fact, the more serious the threat and the more emotional the topic (eg Radioactivity), the less encouraging the risk reduction is.
The use of this distortion brings hundreds of millions of dollars every day to various casinos and sweepstakes around the world. This distortion is also the reason why we tend to click on "I accept the terms of the license agreement" without actually reading it. Understanding this misstatement enables companies to communicate sensitive information to users in a way that makes them more likely to ignore the risk. Or, conversely, we can push the user to the actions we need using specific formulations.
For example, knowing that our users ignore the possibility of complete data loss, we can push them to create backups with a message like âDear% user_name%, the last time you backed up your data was 571 days ago. We strongly recommend that you create a backup to avoid the risk of complete permanent loss of your data. " We are not talking about the probability of loss here. It could always be equal to 0.1%, but by writing a message calling for emotions ("complete irrecoverable loss of your data") and converting the conditional 19 months into 571 days, we are more likely to achieve user action (system backup).
Link to the full version of UX CORE (105 examples of the use of cognitive biases in team and product management)
I repeat that everything I have written here serves solely as an example, and in each individual situation, an integrated approach will be needed to identify the best solution. Moreover, in almost any problem being solved, it is necessary to take into account a wide range of distortions, and not one specific one.
Also, obviously, another important "variable" in the process of creating an architecture of choice is business goals. And these business goals, together with the imposed legal and moral constraints, must be considered when designing solutions.
Finally, I would like to tell you about the GI JOE errordocumented by Professor Laurie Santos just a few years ago. The error concerns the widespread statement that âknowing is half the battleâ, which, however, has no scientific basis and is a false statement. In fact, knowledge alone is not enough to change our behavior patterns. Real change is impossible without our purposeful actions. You can memorize all cognitive distortions and the mechanism of their work, but if you do not change your model of behavior under the knowledge gained, the value of your âknowledgeâ decreases. Moreover, such "knowledge" will not be "strong", you will have to regularly return to the table and repeat what you have written so as not to forget. If you not only understand, but also take certain actions to assimilate the material, change your way of thinking, your life,then the very best product decisions will be surprisingly obvious to you.
Part 6. Our days
Unfortunately, the lack of good product managers is a major obstacle to creating quality products in the marketplace. The situation is complicated by the fact that most companies still do not fully understand the difference between Product Manager and Product Owner, sometimes, even prescribing them in vacancies with "/".
At this point, looking at the market and the requirements for product managers of the "best companies", you can find descriptions and "questionnaires" that will be answered by almost everyone who has completed the PMI-ACP. In fact, the lack of a clear understanding of the role of the Product Manager leads to the fact that they are assailed by the responsibilities of Project Managers, Scrum Masters, and others.
I will make a reservation that we are talking primarily about the CIS countries, although in the European market there is absolute clarity about product managers; how to find them, how to interview them, and what to expect from them, too.
I think things are better with the United States because product management development comes from there.
Another problem on the road to creating quality products is, of course, the ego of the immediate managers, under whom the product managers work. Bloated ego is especially common among technical co-owners of a product. These âmanagersâ usually assume that their programming knowledge to write the functional part of the product is also proof that they are good product managers. In fact, such leadership is more likely to be exposed to the Dunning-Kruger effect.and the blind spot effect . Working with such a manual by default increases the complexity of the product manager's job. Now, when he needs to develop a solution for a problem, in addition to doing the actual work, he, at the same time, is forced to "come up with a bicycle" and "sauce" under which the whole thing needs to be twisted and submitted to the management so that their fragile ego can agree with the proposed solution ...
I would also like to show the other side of cognitive biases, namely: their colossal, underestimated potential that they hold for HR professionals. Although, alas, I did not have the opportunity to work with competent HR specialists, I am sure that they are somewhere and with a careful study of distortions, they will be able to create new procedures for better selection of personnel. I think the most bureaucratic organizations will find it difficult to imagine how cognitive biases can be integrated into the hiring process. However, for freer companies willing to experiment, I would recommend using knowledge of bias to identify candidate weaknesses. In addition, this knowledge will make it possible to determine the "flexibility" of the candidate. In certain cases, one can even analyze the "fragility of the ego" of the candidate,testing its propensity for the blind spot effect.
In general, such distortions as the overconfidence effect, irrational amplification and the reverse effect can be quite easily âtestedâ, and in the case of an adequate response of the candidate, with a high probability, they can save a lot of man-hours of searching for âthe right peopleâ. Seeing all these opportunities and realizing that they are not used because of the wildest human laziness, it becomes sad, and nevertheless, I am sure that there will be people, public authorities who can push our IT community to develop in the right direction, away from bureaucracy and closer to science.
Part 7. Not only distortion
I would also like to touch upon those aspects of product manager knowledge that have received little attention in this article, but which are no less important to understanding than distortions.
Of course, deep knowledge of cognitive biases, as we can see, plays a significant role in the management, development and management of products, however, it would be naive to argue that this knowledge is sufficient for the success of the product.
So, the manager should not forget about the importance of the business and the benefits that the business pursues. At the heart of any business product is the desire to increase profits or reduce costs. And understanding exactly how a company wants to do this is very important for a product manager when designing any solution. To do this, the product manager must follow the decisions of partner companies and competitors, study their style of work; how they communicate with users and how users perceive this communication. If the product is aimed at making a profit, you need to understand the pricing mechanics, existing business models, their advantages and limitations.
In addition to knowledge of business and the operation of companies, knowledge of the legal field is obviously required. A product manager is obliged to know the law and modern restrictions that are imposed on IT products, enough to, if necessary, contact lawyers with verification of only small details, and not a general idea, which has already been spent significant time.
A separate item is knowledge about the most common social cultures and subcultures, religions, lifestyles on different continents, international holidays, memorable dates and a thousand other things that make up the general conjuncture of the world at the time of product development or its features.
In certain cases, the manager may even need knowledge of existing armed and / or ideological conflicts in the regions.
Also, obviously, a product manager should be more than an advanced user of modern websites and mobile applications, have a good understanding and experience with Agile principles and practices, and also understand the technical component of the project. Technical knowledge, such as the basics of front-end and back-end programming and database systems, are also very important, because solutions developed taking into account the technical subtleties of the project, in the end, save tens, and in some cases hundreds of man-hours.
All this and much more are the very details that are important to consider from the very beginning, and the absence of which, often, is found out too late and is expensive.
Without attention to detail, it is impossible to achieve high quality.
The importance of details and the ability to work with them are much more important today than general ideas.
Part 8. Epilogue
In the final part, I would like to explain why, of all the knowledge that is important for a product manager, I especially highlighted psychology, in particular, the critical importance of understanding cognitive biases.
The reason is that of all the aspects of a product manager's knowledge listed above, the psychological component is not something that can be easily âunderstoodâ, âacceptedâ and âimprovedâ. A wide variety of people who want to use the knowledge of cognitive distortions in their regular work will have internal contradictions, a struggle with their previous "attitudes". In other words, the human ego will not allow accepting easy and obvious correct answers, since in order to âacceptâ them, you will have to change the established model of thinking and behavior - to leave the zone of your psychological comfort.
I'll try to explain it differently. Regardless of the ideological component of your life, your "style" and public image, you can enroll in SCRUM courses at any time, study this framework, read about several others, understand Agile ideas and get a job as a project manager in some company. You can also take a couple of online courses and improve your knowledge of front-end and back-end programming, understand the principles of databases, and it will take you literally a month. In another month, you can learn HTML and CSS yourself, play with the markup, put together several layouts and understand the general idea of ââJavascript.
In fact, you can gather enough knowledge in three months to understand the technical component of a project, and this is more than enough for a novice product manager. To understand trends, you can download the latest apps, go through the list of the most popular online platforms, sign up for producthunt, betalist, techcrunch and stay on top of what's going on. It is easy to fill the news information gap by regularly reading Google News and hackernoon.
However, when we touch on the psychological component of work, the situation changes slightly. Decisions on the developed features of the product are made, first of all, based on the understanding of our users, their expectations and concerns. Psychology plays a key role here, so an âabstractâ understanding of the issue (as in the case of the technical component) will not work. To apply cognitive biases, itâs not enough to read this article or look at them all in the table. Even reading a few books or watching a couple of video courses is not enough.
In order to truly "apply" this knowledge and create a beautiful solution that takes into account the mistakes of our brain, it is necessary not only to remember these mistakes, but also to involve them in your life. And such involvement cannot but lead to a change in one's line of behavior, ideology and life views.
That is why those for whom this article was just a "cool article" would be better off continuing to live the way they lived, and those for whom most of what was written here was obvious because of its consistency may think about building my career around product management. You are the ones who, at some point, will help turn the page of callous, crude software that has flooded the market and will lead all of us into a new world where the design of any product begins with feelings of empathy and compassion for users. You are the one who is capable of creating revolutionary products, methodologies and practices for developing quality software.
I want to end the article with a provocative thought.
But what if studying cognitive biases at an early age (say, in universities) is a direct way to make our society more conscious, sensual, and empathic?
What if it is the study of distortions and user experience that is the key to ensuring the rationality (the essence is the absence of contradictions according to D. Kahneman) of the individual?
As D. Kahneman himself says: "Whatever the organization does, it is a factory for the production of judgments and decisions." And sooner or later, due to the need to improve the quality of these judgments and decisions, the approach to product development and company management will be based on empathy and compassion, and methods of dry data analysis will be used much less often.
A person, in terms of the number of judgments and decisions made, is not inferior to any company in the world (we leave the issue of consciousness outside the scope). We donât have to wait for large companies to give âpublic approvalâ to use cognitive biases as the basis for developing different solutions. We can use this knowledge to change our lives now.
In any case, in order for ideas to become popular, they must be discussed by recognized authorities. Discuss more and more. There will definitely not be harm from this, and the potential benefits cannot be overestimated.
Thank you very much for your interest.
I sincerely hope this article has given you food for thought.
I will be very happy to meet people with similar interests, so if you are studying cognitive sciences and / or their application in product development - add me on LinkedIn or Facebook.
Also I am always open to discuss new ideas. The more ambitious the better. Write.
I will be glad to help everyone in my power.
Part 9. Material that qualitatively complements this article
- Daniel Kahneman - Think slowly ... Decide quickly;
- Nicholas Nassim Taleb - Black Swan;
- Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - Nudge;
- Richard Davidson - How Emotions Control the Brain;
- Mihai Csikszentmihalyi - Stream;
- Jim Collins - Good to Great;
- Jesse James Garrett - The Elements of User Experience (2nd Edition);
- William Lidwell - Universal Principles of Design;
- James Clear - Atomic Habits;
- Erin Meyer - The Culture Map;
- Joe Natoli â UX Design Fundamentals Udemy Video;
- Joe Natoli â UX & Web Design Master Course: Strategy, Design, Development Udemy Video;
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