Don (et al),
Thanks for the message, and the link to your article. Great piece.
It seems to me we largely agree. Perhaps the greatest point of disagreement
is on labels. While I understand your rationale, I think that you may be
giving more import to the connotation of "bias" as a value judgement - and
the implied imposition of one's perspective on others - than I do. I use
"bias" in the statistical and cognitive sense.
I don't presume a bias is detrimental, only that it can be. Biases affect
decision-making. If a bias causes a decision to be made that prevents
attainment of the goal for which the decision was made, then one would
benefit from at least being made aware of the bias if not being offered the
tools and methods (if they exist) by which the bias can be mitigated or
even eliminated.
I'm not advocating for imposition of anything on anyone. I'm advocating for
understanding and teaching to those who want to learn.
\V/_
Filippo A. Salustri, PhD, PEng
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil
On Feb 26, 2017 8:38 PM, "Don Norman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
*When a bias is not a bias, when a weakness is actually a strength*
I write in defense of people
On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 4:18 PM, Filippo Salustri <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I've become quite a fan of Kahneman's "Thinking, fast & slow" which
details
> many experiments highlighting the biases and glitches that afflict most of
> us. What I find most interesting is that once one understands those
biases,
> one can at least mitigate them. That is, that there are rational ways to
> account at least a bit for those biases - i.e., we oughtn't give up trying
> to understand what's "best" (however that's defined).
>
Those are only biases if you are a rationalist, believing that people ought
to follow your laws of economics, of reasoning, of logic, and of behavior.
Once you accept that fact you can see that human behavior is perfectly
suited for living in the real world, not the artificial world of economists
and engineers.
People are people. We need to accept them the way they are, not try to make
them into what they aren't. Yes, we should understand real human behavior,
but let us not call them biases. Call them human behavior. And we can
design to take advantage of our understanding, thereby making our designs
more easily understood and used by the people we are designing for.
Do I have a recency effect? Does the last experience that I have make it
easier to think of other similar experiences? Yes, and yes. That helps us
get through the world. If you look at the various clever questions that
Kahneman and Tversky subjected their respondents to, almost none of them
reflect any actual situation that real people encounter. They are
artificial situations, presented out of context.
The lesson to be learned is not that we should change our methods to try to
get people to generate the answers we want but rather we should change our
designs and our theories of economics to reflect real people in real
situations. (I didn't have to say to change our theories of people to
reflect that as well, because thankfully this is not necessary because
psychologists and cognitive scientists have long studied what people
actually do, not what others think they should do.)
I recently published a component of this in Fast Company, arguing that
people are not distractible. People are curious, attentive to changes in
the surround. This is what makes us creative and responsive. The problem
is that designs force us to act like machines, always paying attention even
when nothing is happening, being precise, accurate, and repetitive -- all
the things we are bad at. So, technologists make us do the things we are
bad at, and then when we are bad at it, they blame us. Bah. They say we
are distractible. No. we are curious and attentive to changes. You call
that distraction. I call that powerful modes of creative behavior.
The real question is, why do we allow technologists to design things that
transform the very behavior we are good at (curiosity and attentiveness to
change) into something bad and dangerous (distractibility).
------------------------
*Technology Forces Us To Do Things We're Bad At. Time To Change How Design
Is Done*
*Fast Company Co.Design. *
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3067411/technology-forces-us-
to-do-things-were-bad-at-time-to-change-how-design-is-done
also available on my website as
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_forces_us.html
Don
Don Norman
Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
[log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
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