Making a Murderer: Lessons for UX Research
I watched this documentary called Making a Murderer on Netflix, because pretty much everyone else already did. What I liked about it is that it didn’t have that “stand up and cheer” quality to the ending — life is like that. Debates on such complex case would never arrive at the crisp conclusion where heroes and villains are unequivocal. More importantly, the film focused on the incessant search for truth — whatever that truth may be — through debate and dialogue, at times skewed towards divinely intuitive rather than analytical arguments.
Sure, there are debates on whether you can even call this work a ‘documentary’ as it intentionally leads the viewers to develop empathy for its character Steven Avery. But what really stood out for me were interviews and interrogation methods displayed by public workers of Manitowoc County. The thought of poorly trained investigators and psychologists roaming the criminal domain made me uneasy about the entire justice system. And I bet, quite a few of my fellow UX researchers who watched this film felt the same way.
Here’s what an interview conducted by Michael O’Kelly (MOK) might look like if he ever became a UX researcher:
MOK: The two things I don’t know is, do you like this design and what do you like about it. Those are the two things I don’t know. I know everything
else that I need to about this design except for those two things. What I want you to do is make a decision. I want you to look at the design, and then we’re going to fill out a questionnaire together.
User: [reads questionnaire silently]
MOK: What do you like about this design?
BD: I don’t know, I don’t really like anything about it.
MOK: User, look at me. If you don’t like anything about this design, then I can’t help you. What I don’t want to do is ban you from using our product. Can you look at me? Do you want me to ban you from using our company’s product? You did a very bad thing by saying you didn’t like the design.
User: Yeah, but I really don’t like it.
MOK: User, you haven’t told me the truth yet. Listen to me carefully. This is your choice. Other users have already cooperated and told me the truth about the design. I’d prefer you do as well. We already know what you think, but just want to make sure we hear it from you. If you tell the complete truth about the design, the complete truth, not just part of the truth, then we can work together.
User: Can I go home if I tell you the truth?
MOK: Yes.
User: I like everything about your design.
This, in a nutshell, is a complete absence of natural skepticism and inquisitiveness. Go back to the original script of the interview and you’ll notice that I changed very little about it, all the keywords are still there. In research — be it design or justice related — nothing should be taken at face value, everything must be scrutinized and considered, and only then accepted (or not, as the case may be). Unfortunately, our minds are, in their default state, averse to such approach, which is why it’s an absolute necessity to recognize limitations of our brain, abandon emotional attachment, and take a scientific approach to the problem at hand.
Here’s a few UX research related lessons I learned from Making a Murderer:
- Be mindfully alert to the world around you: Just because we see (perceive with our senses), doesn’t mean we observe (absorb into our brain the data provided by our senses). There was a number of conflicting pieces of evidence. Yet, confirmation bias ruled the court room discussion.
- Keep an open mind and think laterally: No matter how odd or surprising a finding is, we must keep an open mind to all sorts of extraordinary possibilities. After all, an outlier can often be a guide rather than a hindrance. Having our presumptions knocked to pieces can be an extremely unnerving experience. In fact, when findings are too neat, most likely a mistake was made in the design of experiment.
- Choose your partners wisely: Dean Strang and Jerome Buting are the former attorneys for both Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey. Equally competent, intelligent, and compassionate, Strang and Buting’s attributes amount to the the type of partners many people would want on their side. I really enjoyed glimpses into their socks-off discussions in the evenings. Nothing clears up a problem so much as stating it to another person whose knowledge of the domain matches or (even better) surpasses ours. If there are gaps in our thinking, talking over our deductions with a bright partner we trust is a sure way to expose them.
- Improve your logic and deduction: If we find ourselves guessing too much due to the lack of data, we are dodging a fantastic opportunity to hone our deductive skills. Even worse, as in the case of Steven Avery, is when all the data is there for the taking, and yet the possibility of ignoring some of it, knowingly or not, is real. Something can catch our attention — whether due to salience, recency, or priming effects — weigh too heavily on our reasoning and make us forget other details that are crucial for proper deduction. In short, we don’t like to admit our initial intuition to be false and would much rather dismiss the evidence that contradicts it.
Our world is changing. We have more knowledge in a form of data than ever, but presence of data is only half the story. It’s easy to be fooled by seemingly scientific context — after all, scientific knowledge is so easily accessible these days! And the more data we have at our disposal, the more details we see, the more abbreviations and jargon terms we hear, the more likely we are to believe that a thing described is true. Conversely, it’s all too easy to think that because something sounds too improbable or crazy, it must be false. In both cases, our beliefs take over and decide for us. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt summarizes the dilemma in The Righteous Mind:
We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favour, just as we are good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs.
Gathering data is only half the story, the other lies in our imperfect brains ridden with bias and skewed logic. We are not perfectly reasonable, but we can approach our emotions thoughtfully, and in so doing create a better process for understanding and interpreting the world around us that errs on the side of truth, rather than belief.
