Judgemental Heuristics and Biases During an Design Process

Judgmental Heuristics and Cognitive Biases during a Design Process

Niels Kinds

Master Industrial Design Ghent University, Campus Kortrijk Kortrijk, Belgium

Abstract — This paper gives an overview of the most common cognitive biases designers face when undertaking a design project. I hope to inform designers on how cognitive biases could influence their choices and eventually lead to problematic situations. This paper is a work in progress. It aims at providing a foundation to stimulate further investigation on this topic. Keywords-heuristics; behavioral economics cognitive biases; design process;

representativeness, dependance on the degree of similarity or match or fit, availability, dependance on ease of recall or construction, and anchoring and adjustment, which is the dependance on adjustment from an initial value [1]. All of these heuristics have cognitive biases that are associated with them, these will eventually lead to errors in judgement and decision-making. Every designer has his own way of thinking, his own rules to designing. However, the making of a decision is based on a certain universal structure of thinking. It consist of two processes: The process of generating a plan and justifying that plan [4]. This explains why cognitive biases are a danger for every designer. Hall Arkes [5] states that awareness of the presence of a bias is not enough to eliminate that bias in it’s whole, but it certainly helps in the process . As stated before, heuristics are used to solve complex design problems with limitation of time and resources. They are efficient and effective in a lot of cases, but they can be associated with biases that can lead to critical errors in design. In the next chapter we will have a more detailed look on these heuristics and their illusions. III. HEURISTICS AND THEIR BIASES

I.

INTRODUCTION

Tversky and Kahneman provided a research foundation which has been the starting point of the judgment and decision making literature...