Design for Cognitive Bias

Your mind takes shortcuts to get through the day. We call these cognitive biases. Usually they’re harmless. Even helpful. But what happens when they’re not? In this talk we’ll identify some particularly nasty biases and the kinds of design and content strategy steps we can take to keep them in check, or even turn them to a user’s advantage. The talk focuses on biased design that disproportionately affects marginalized communities. It also discusses the biases that affect us as designers and how a key way to combat them is to redefine our jobs (kind of like a Hippocratic Oath) in a way that allows us to treat each other and our users like humans instead of just customers.