Design and Decision Making
Why are UX Designers naturally skilled decision makers?
I’ve spent two years working alongside a team of user experience (UX) designers and researchers at IBM. Although I don’t have a design background myself, I’ve been observing the ‘design thinking’ process from the side and inevitably picked up a few skills and vocabulary along the way. What I did end up studying in college and incorporating into my job is a field of study called Decision Science, which examines how we make decisions in our lives and how to improve that process (a bit self-explanatory).
I’ve recently been reading Farsighted by Steven Johnson, a book that discusses how we’ve made long-term decisions throughout history and what are some best practices that we could adopt. I couldn’t help but notice how some of the decision making theories that Johnson writes about strongly remind me of some tools and methods that I see being used in the field of UX Design.
A Little More About Decision Science
Decision Science examines how can we make the most optimal decisions in a world of uncertainty. The field includes studies from psychology, statistics, and economics, and uses these to help us make better, more rational choices, either on the individual level or as a group. By looking at factors like human biases and heuristics and combining them with statistical modeling methods and empirical research, Decision Science can affect how we make life-changing choices, either personal ones such as choosing career paths and marriage partners or on a grander scale such as how we decide jury verdicts or create nation-wide policies.
If you’re a UX Designer, you may already be making connections to the work that you do just from the description above. I’m going to outline here several ideas and practices that I find paralleled in the fields of Decision Science and UX Design.
Looping and Mapping
To start off, there are some methods and tactics that UX Designers use when solving design problems that mirror certain decision-making tactics proposed in the Decision Science field. Ultimately, both of these fields emphasize the importance of pushing past the first instinctive solution to a problem at hand, and working on an alternative solution that may not be obvious at first.
Design Thinking
‘Design thinking’ has become a commonly used term in the field of UX Design, and has become somewhat of a buzzword as UX has become more widespread and more central to businesses and organizations. Design thinking is, in basic terms, a strategic method of planning and brainstorming that pushes UX Designers to think outside of the box when creating an optimal user experience. Throughout history, ‘design charettes’ has also been used to describe this method. Essentially it involves designers working off of several main problem statements that are based on their users’ needs, and working in loops of testing their solution prototypes, getting feedback from a sample of users or another external audience, and going back to improve on their ideas. The idea is that designers are constantly testing out and refreshing their inventory of solutions to the problem they’re addressing, instead of settling on a first instinct solution.
Influence Diagrams
Decision Science introduces us to a selection of decision-making tactics that have the same goal — to push decision makers outside of their mental comfort zone and force them to think beyond the obvious and instinctual solution. The tendency of people to settle on their first decision is sometimes phrased as an anchoring heuristic. People tend to anchor their decision based off of one factor, such as cost or familiarity, instead of considering all the factors involved in the decision. One example of a tactic that addresses this type of bias is an influence diagram. When making an influence diagram, the decision maker writes down possible solutions to the problem they’re solving, and maps out the possible consequences and events that might result from each solution they’re thinking of. This type of diagram helps the decision maker get a better prediction of where their decision might lead and helps them think of an alternative, less obvious solutions to avoid the pitfalls they see might happen.
The Value of Diversity
Decision Science and UX Design both value having diversity as part of their respective practices. UX Designers include designers with diverse experience and backgrounds, as well as diverse perspectives throughout the entire design process in order to achieve the best results. Decision Scientists will say that having a team of individuals with diverse perspectives will help make the most rational choice in a given situation.
Job Roles & Specialties
UX Designers rely on teams with diverse experiences, job specializations, gender, nationality, skills, interests, and more in order to create the best possible user experience. At IBM design teams consist of visual designers, front-end developers, user researchers, and UX Designers, and it takes all of these people with specialized knowledge to come together and design a product. I also see designers collaborating with product developers and project managers to get input on their work from different areas of the business. All of these people with different job roles and levels of experience are necessary as they provide something unique to the product that’s being designed. Designers can make the best design choices for their users from the standpoint of the users’ needs, as well as from the standpoint of the business and product development requirements and limitations.
Diverse Teams Are Unbiased Teams
Decision Science has a pretty similar idea when it comes to diversity. Studies in decision making show that diversity among decision-making teams encourages people to remove bias throughout the decision process. Including people with different perspectives, specialized knowledge and experiences, as well as gender, race, and nationality, and more increases the likelihood that decision-makers will push themselves to think outside of the box rather than settle on first instinct.
Johnson describes in his book a study that examined how a mock trial jury worked to come to a consensus. The researchers found that a jury that was predominantly white tended to not spend too much time debating their decision or considering alternative options and scenarios. The consensus came rather easily and quickly, and there wasn’t much argument involved as the group didn’t spend too much time considering alternatives to their first instinct. However, in a jury of mixed race, the group spent more time discussing their opinions and decisions and were more welcoming to opinions outside of their own. When comparing the results of the two groups, the jury consisting of people of different races had a much higher chance of reaching the correct conclusion than the homogeneous group.
Adopting New Perspectives
Both UX Design and Decision Science largely rely on the ability to consider a perspective outside of your own. The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, or look at a situation from an alternative perspective, gives you the power of making a better decision, and being better adjusted to the reality that you’re dealing with.
Empathy for Others
‘User empathy’ is a widely-used term in UX Design, and generally describes the process of UX Designers working to understand the needs of their users. This is an important part of the design process, as designers need to fully understand the problem that their users face in order to inform their design decisions and solutions. Having empathy for their users also reminds designers that they are designing a solution for another person to use it, even though they may be working on a piece of software or a commercial product. User empathy bridges that gap between the product being designed and the people that the design will ultimately impact. There’s a wide array of tactics and tools that designers use to put themselves in their user’s shoes. Generating user personas, use case problems, user empathy maps — all of these tools are meant to help designers understand and predict what their users will need, and make design decisions based on these findings.
Devil’s Advocate
Decision Science reinforces this same principle — putting yourself in someone else’s shoes will give you the information that you need to make better decisions. One example is the idea of a devil’s advocate, a method used in mock debates or other types of argument training. By putting yourself in your opponent’s shoes and imagining what they would think or how they would feel in response to your arguments, you can develop a better strategy to structure your argument.
Johnson describes a more structured method of using a devil’s advocate approach in his book. The military often uses what are called Red Teams to help plan military strategies. A team within the military organization is assigned to be the Red Team, and acts as the opposing side when the military is testing out battle strategies or running practice missions. The Red Team actively tries to stop the military teams from reaching their mission goal. Running practice drills with a team acting as an opponent helps the military consider all possible situations they could find themselves in as they are preparing to face the real-life scenario.
Decisions are everywhere
Decision Science is such a broadly applicable field that most other fields and professions probably share a lot of common ground with it. After all, our lives, from our careers to our relationships, are composed of the decisions we make. This article outlines probably just a fraction of all the Decision Science principles and ideas that make an appearance in the UX Design field. The more connections I make between Decision Science and UX Design, the more I see that UX Designers are already natural decision makers, wearing many invisible hats to navigate around human bias throughout all of their problem-solving.
Sasha Kerbel is a member of IBM Studios in San Francisco. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
