6 Cognitive Biases Entrepreneurs Must Overcome to Build Successful Products

User-centered design is essential to designing good digital products. But, in order to do so, we have to talk about psychology. (What? Psychology? Surely not.) No, really. Remember: there are actual people using the software that you are creating, and humans are complex and irrational beings. Yes, you have to design for that. All human beings have biases, and a lot of those biases exist in our brains (cognitive biases). A cognitive bias is a shortcut our brain takes to make sense of the world around us. These shortcuts can be helpful, but they can also distort our thinking and lead to bad or wrong conclusions. And the worst part is, we are largely unaware of them.

Overcoming cognitive bias is vital at every stage of the product lifecycle. Whether you are creating a brand new product, brainstorming a new idea or feature, or gathering feedback from your existing customers. Here are five biases that are especially important to be aware of plus some tips for overcoming them.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. When gathering feedback on your idea, you might ignore pain points that users are suffering from because those points simply don’t fit with your existing assumptions.

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

Sunk-cost fallacy is our tendency or likelihood to continue an endeavor that we’ve invested time or resources into, regardless of whether the current costs outweigh the benefits.

False-Consensus Effect

The false-consensus effect refers to people’s tendency to assume that others share their beliefs and will behave similarly in a given context. From NNGroup:

The false-consensus effect was first defined in 1977 by Ross, Greene, and House. They showed that unlike scientists, “layperson psychologists” (that is, all of us who are put into the position to guess how others would behave) tend to overestimate how many people share their choices, values, and judgments, and perceive alternate responses as rare, deviant, and more revealing of the responders.

Don’t assume everyone thinks or behaves exactly as you do. You don’t want to design a solution for a problem that only you face.

Recency Effect

The recency effect refers to information learned more recently is given more weighting in our brains. Put simply, you’re most likely to remember the thing you added to your grocery list last than what you added first because its recency is given more weighting in your brain.

Social Desirability

Social desirability is our innate human need to please other humans. In other words, people tend to make more “socially acceptable” decisions when they are around other people. A person’s behavior might be completely different when they are left alone and acting independently. (This is why doing ethnographic research observing users in their natural habitat is so important, and why focus group can enhance the social desirability effect).

Wording Bias

This bias occurs when you frame a question in a way such that it prompts the user to answer in a certain manner. An example could be “How difficult was it to complete that task?”. The way in which the question is worded suggests that the task was difficult. A better way to ask would be “Describe your experience completing that task.”

Tips for overcoming cognitive biases

Know what assumptions you are making.

At LunarLab, we are big believers in frameworks that aid decision-making, like the Knowns and Unknowns. You need to understand what you know to be true, what you assume to be true, and what you need to know. Explicitly list all of your knowns and your assumptions. Your knowns will be things that are observable and provable with data (ex: “I know that 72% of our mobile app users are on iOS.”) Your assumptions is not currently provable (ex:”We think that people prefer browsing over searching for items.“ or “We think this new feature will be valuable to our end users.”). Frameworks like this are great ways to understand and contextualize the assumptions you may be making, thereby minimizing your cognitive bias.

Talk with people

Sounds simple, right? In order to create user-centered software, you gotta talk to people. Yes, people (not your mom. No, really. We LOVE moms. We ARE moms. But we also know moms are there to love and support you, not give you honest feedback. (Although we also know moms who are great at that as well). The best way to overcome cognitive bias is to test your assumptions (hypotheses) with your target audience. Who do you assume will use your product? How will they use it? When and where will they use it? And, crucially, will they use it? Observe and interact with people in an environment that is as close to their everyday lives as possible. And when you talk with them, phrase questions as neutrally as possible.

Biases aren’t inherently good or bad, but it is essential that entrepreneurs are aware of the biases that color their decision-making abilities every day. Pivoting and staying relevant competitively is only possible when you can make decisions with clarity and insights. For other advice for entrepreneurs, check out What I Learned by Talking to 50 Startup Founders Last Year.