Common Prejudices that UX/UI designers should know (Part 1)

As defined on the Wikipedia, prejudices "are opinions that have been formed before being aware of the relevant facts or knowing the relevant information of a specific event". ​​

Prejudices appear everywhere, in diversified situations and significantly affects a person's decisions. They can help them to make decisions more quickly, but can also bring negatively affect and lead to wrong conclusions.

Therefore, understanding these biases will support the product team to recognize and limit the negative influences. Then they can make proper decisions during the product design process as well as understand the different perspectives when they put themselves in users' situations. Let's explore common prejudices via this article of GEEK Up!

1. Anchoring

Our minds are naturally connected to events and phenomena, thus the order in which the information we receive will determine the rest of the evaluation process. In short, the first thing people review will influence their judgment in the next.

Humans tend to focus on original piece of information. This information affects the way that they estimate value and make further decisions.

This bias is often used in Pricing Plan, where UX Designers will list the highest price first, making other options more appealing.

2. The sunk cost fallacy

People regret what they paid for. This stereotype is most commonly applied in UX design: there are many steps in the design process, Designers will design a progress bar to show users two things: (1) how long it will take to complete and (2) what they will lose if they give up now.

3. The availability heuristic

People tend to overestimate previously available information. This bias often affects the content of the product, through:

• The content should emphasize the business problem, products are solving customers' complaints
• Ensure customers are fully informed about how your business or product will solve their problems
• Save the most powerful information in the golden time when customers are considering choices.

During the product development, the product team should collect and listen different information form diversified resources instead of trusting in the first information that team receives.

4. The curse of knowledge

When a person understands something, he usually assumes that others will too. This is easily observed when many people tend to read different types of knowledge, and forget the efforts to acquire it. Thus people often assume these are obvious things that everyone needs to know without explanations or guidances.

As a result, never forget to build a process of "Onboarding" or "Coach Mark" (introductory messages) for your product, even if those functions are not unfamiliar to users.

5. Confirmation bias

What people support will confirm their beliefs. When people support something, they will tend to accept only relevant information and ignore one that contradicts their belief.

A popular method of soliciting support from users is to provide “Personalization” options, which are meant to make users feel at home and enjoy being valued. From there, it is easier to conquer users.

6. The Dunning Kruger effect

The more you know, the less confident you become. This is a fairly common effect in today's work. It mentions when people begin to know in a certain field. They will tend to appreciate their abilities and skills – until they do more, gain more experience and knowledge, unfortunately, they just realize that "they are nothing".

This effect has a close connection with “Paradox of the Active User” that you can read more in the continuous parts.

Read more: Common Prejudices that UX/UI designers should know (Part 2)