Articles by Ian Stevens

Are you repelling users with your product design?

2020-12-16T00:00:00Z

Good product design attracts, bad product design repels. Yet not everyone experiences bad design in the same way. Too often, marginalized and underrepresented users experience unintended product outcomes like anguish, anxiety, and a feeling of alienation. This can happen when a product's entire userbase isn't fully considered in its design. How do you avoid repelling and alienating users and build a product that's inclusive and welcoming, one with a truly universal appeal?

I'm regularly reminded of the importance of inclusive design, particularly in children's products. Both of my children are Black, and our family is often disappointed when characters in and on clothes, toys, and books don't match our children's skin colour and hair texture. As an example, the only way I was able to get a Black Lego minifigure was to buy a Women of NASA kit which included Mae Jemison. Lego doesn't think it's a problem.

Here's one example of short-sighted design in an electronic product for children. I'll tell you what wrong, why it might have happened, how it could have been avoided, and walk through how the design could be improved. Frankly, I was disappointed when I learned how the team responsible for the design's shortcomings addressed them.

Both my children have Nabi Jr. tablets, full-featured Android devices loaded with educational and fun apps for kids aged 3-5. They're locked down, but parents and caregivers can enter "Mommy Mode" with a password for software settings, app store access, and other utilities.

You read that right: Mommy Mode. Icons for apps requiring internet access are greyed out and overlaid with "Account Required. Ask Mom." If that wasn't enough, the top-right corners of these icons have what looks like a red ID card with a bob-haired silhouette and a tiny gold lock badge. Tapping the icon brings up a modal dialog titled "Ask Mom!". The silhouette is revealed to be a smiling white-presenting woman with a pink hairband. That same "mom" also appears in a menu which slides out from the top of the screen. At least the messaging is consistent.

(L-R) Mommy Mode app icon overlay, slide-down top menu, and dialog. Hands up if this looks like you or your mother. These devices are geared towards children aged 3-5. How many that age can read and understand these text labels?

To be fair, it does say "your mom or dad" in the text of the dialog, but even this messaging is inappropriate for many use cases. Consider how it might affect a grandmother or a step-parent as primary caregiver. How would a child in foster care or an orphan feel when reading it? These aren't "edge cases", they're people. Over 2 million children in the States live without either of their parents.

That microcopy and design also does disservice to many millions of other children and parents. Would a child of gay parents — or the gay parents themselves — see themselves in this Mommy Mode? What about people of colour and their children? My wife is Black. This digital mom doesn't represent her. The design doesn't fit, as it wouldn't for millions of other parents and children in North America. This is a huge oversight.

Why weren't these many parents and children considered in the design? To say the Nabi product team didn't care is probably far from the truth. It's more likely they weren't tuned to gender and racial bias. Bias affects us all and can lead to irrational decisions. Many people are biased towards mothers as caregivers and wouldn't give a second thought to this design. It wouldn't be surprising, then, if the team in charge of design and microcopy held this and other biases.

Similarly, a biased view of Nabi's users as white likely stopped its product team from considering alternatives to the fair-skinned bob-haired mother. Had the team been made up of active fathers, ex-foster or adopted children, people who grew up in mixed-family homes, as well as people of colour, someone would have noticed the limits of the Mommy Mode design and seized the opportunity for inclusivity.

Another possibility is that the team didn't fully consider their userbase. There are the children who play with the Nabi, sure, and there's also a parent or caregiver who supports it. Broadening that support userbase beyond mothers — and fathers — opens us up to many different considerations. Let's briefly consider a few user personas and pair a supporting user with each child. They're contrived, light on detail, based on assumptions, and would later be validated through interviews:

Ofei - 5 years old, two parents; Mother Esi and Father Kofi as supporting users
Lee - 3 years old, single Dad with a nanny; Father Tim and nanny Laura as supporting users
Han - 4 years old, lives with grandparents; Grandfather Chen as supporting user

With these personas, a stereotype of a mother as primary caregiver — and a white one at that — just won't do. We need something else, something which conveys "give this to a grownup" to a child who probably can't even read. Too much detail could alienate the child and her supporting users. What we need is an abstract representation of stereotypical grownup-child interaction.

One such abstraction could be of a child handing a tablet to a grownup. We could use pictograms, as in the image below. More details could be added, like eyes and facial expressions, and the figures could be styled to fit existing aesthetics. Finer detail — clothes, hair, skin colour, etc. — could take away from the inclusive design we're trying to achieve. Cartoon animals and other non-human characters could also be used here, but tread carefully. Our biases and stereotypes are readily applied to cartoons if not kept in check.

Pictogram of a child handing a tablet to an adult. Placed in the context of the Mommy Mode dialog, this is a signifier for the children and should be prominent.

That takes care of the dialog. What about the icon overlay and menu that bring us there? Those two locations have less space for our pictogram, so we need something even more abstract. In this case, we can zoom in on the hands reaching out to each other and add a bit of detail. Again, this image could be given a splash of colour and stylized to match the Nabi's overall design.

Pictogram of a child handing a tablet to an adult. This would be used where there isn't enough space for the two figures above.

With the relevant design elements out of the way, we can turn to the microcopy. Good microcopy enhances design, but shouldn't exist to make up for a bad one. Our target users are 3-5 year-olds who likely can't read well, if at all, so any text is meant for an adult. Starting with the icon overlay, there are several things we can do to make it easier for a child to understand its meaning.

The Mommy Mode app icon overlay. Note the ID card and lock badge in the top right corner.

To a child who can't read, the existing icon overlay offers few hints as to its meaning. Children understand locks, but the one in the top right corner is too small to appear important. We should draw attention to it by making the lock larger. We'll also use our hands and tablet design element in place of the Mommy Mode badge in the upper-right corner, as well as in the top menu. In the dialog we'll replace the "mom" with our child and adult pictogram figures.

With these design changes, we can likely get away with less microcopy in the icon overlay. For the top menu and dialog copy, a rename of "Mommy Mode" is required. "Grownup Mode", "Big Person Mode", "Adult Mode" … any of these would fit, although that last one might raise a few eyebrows. When I consulted my 7-year-old, she suggested "Guardian Mode" as it could also apply to older siblings and adolescent babysitters. I thought that was a great idea, so we'll use it. We'll stick with the same instructions, though. Here, then, are alternatives to the existing microcopy and design:

These are mockups of the (L-R) new Guardian Mode app icon overlay, slide-down top menu, and dialog. Test them with your children! Note that I've also repositioned the links on the dialog, though their functions aren't obvious.

Naturally, we'd test whether children and adults can make sense of these mockups. Still, we can already see how a small change in microcopy and design can lead to a more inclusive and usable product.

You're probably curious how the Nabi team solved the Mommy Mode challenge, making its design more representative of its users. Easy: a toggle under Mommy Mode switches it to Daddy Mode. Would you say this is an appropriate solution?

The Nabi team solved the Mommy Mode problem with … Daddy Mode. Meet your "Daddy". (He does sort of look like me, though.)

It's interesting to note that, had the Nabi team started with a more inclusive design, they wouldn't have needed to develop and support the two Mommy and Daddy modes. Developers had to add this option to the Nabi settings, and make the labels and graphics change depending on the mode. Software development is expensive, and these costs didn't need to be made.

How can you avoid the same oversight the Nabi team had with their product? If you want to ensure that your products are inclusive and welcoming, these three objectives will help:

Consider your users, language, and tone during the ideation stage of your product, with personas and team members representative of your customers. Aim for diversity of experience, background, and perspective as well. Maintain this focus on underrepresented users throughout the product development cycle.
Keep in mind any biases you and your team may need to overcome while designing and developing your product. Diversity in your team and your personas will help overcome bias, but more should be done.
Workshop your design with people from other departments in your company, and test how well your users will understand and act on it.

These goals aren't easy, but they are worthwhile. Start slow and build momentum within your team. Approach building inclusive and welcoming products as a challenge and an opportunity to learn more about your users. You'll find new ways to provide value to your customers, and make your product easier to use — for everyone. The result will be something welcoming to all instead of repelling to some.

If you want to learn more about how appropriate design and microcopy can lead to a better experience, be sure to read To Design Better Products, Write Better UX Copy by Nina K. Feinberg of the New York Times. For a more in-depth read with a detailed guide to creating inclusive products, try the book Building for Everyone by Annie Jean-Baptiste, Google's Head of Product Inclusion.

Joanne McNeil's Lurking serves as a warning for makers of digital products

2020-06-19T00:00:00Z

"Induce anguish" and "increase anxiety" are usually not on a list of outcomes for any digital product. Even so, many social media products of the past and present have done just that. Joanne McNeil's Lurking follows the digitally connected user of the internet and pre-internet. It's a great book for anyone designing or building social apps and services. Those who forget the social internet's past errors are doomed to repeat them.

I knew I was in for a wild ride when I saw Warren Ellis' — of Transmetropolitan and Castlevania fame — quote-review on the inside front sleeve: "The first history of the social internet I've seen that has its authentic life and breadth." It's a valid claim.

If you're a product manager, designer, or developer, that history is worth your while. McNeil includes a number of examples of product and feature fails which caused anxiety and anguish among users — especially marginalized ones. Many companies strive to create a "disruptive" product, one with the potential for a huge impact. In doing so, they often unknowingly adopt or amplify toxic elements of our society — racism, sexism, etc. Lives can also be disrupted.

McNeil frames this disruption and the history of the internet user through the lenses of searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. The internet's capacity to make good on those functionalities ebbs and flows through time and across various identities. Lurking includes examples of how marginalized communities have been both uplifted and failed by the social internet and its products and services.

This book grabbed me, not just on an empathetic or techno-anthropological level but also because of how it mirrors my history as an internet denizen, first connecting with friends and like-minded people through BBSes, then facilitating those connections as a BBS "sysop", joining the ranks of the internet on Usenet, creating a homepage shortly after the advent of HTTP and graphical browsers, then coming full circle and connecting with friends and strangers on evolving social media platforms, starting with blogs. It's been quite a journey.

In Lurking, McNeil describes how online society has shifted over time. If you've been online since birth, the book offers a comprehensive look at online life before your time. If you've journeyed online since there's been an "online", this book pieces it all together and offers glimpses you otherwise might have missed.

Take McNeil's inclusion of Echo, like a for-fee Reddit for the New York arts community. You've probably never heard of it — even if you lived in NYC in the early '90s. Likewise, if you haven't been harassed on social media, as many women have — especially racialized ones — you might not know about tech companies' history of largely ignoring such threats. Lurking tells these stories and others from the 30+ year period of the social internet.

Many of these stories aren't the sorts of experiences you want for your users. As a product manager or designer, you don't want your product to amplify racism, sexism, or anxiety — right? Lurking is a backgrounder in how previous social products have failed certain segments of its users. We keep making the same hurtful mistakes in digital products.

One attitude which hasn't changed, unfortunately, is the pass white supremacy often gets online. As with Facebook, AOL — that walled garden in the internet — defended their inaction as supporting free speech, despite limiting it elsewhere. In McNeil's words:

In the nineties, AOL even hosted a page for the Texas branch of the Ku Klux Klan. The online provider prohibited racial slurs in search and user profiles and yet this was a First Amendment issue, AOL insisted.

Time and again, companies miss the same opportunities. Often a guise of "authenticity" results in its rejection. Take Friendster, an early social media site. People could connect individually, but not as a group around a shared interest. To compensate, users started creating fake accounts to engage with like-minded users on an authentic level. These accounts acted as stand-ins for celebrities, movies, or even concepts like war. Rather than embrace it, Friendster stamped it out:

But Friendster developers were unbudging about its purpose. Rather than capitalizing on emerging user behavior, they banked on their product as a sorta-kinda dating space that mapped how various people were connected to one another. Fakesters were an innocuous presence, but the company believed they contaminated the data the platform collected and provided as a hook.

Facebook, in its drive for authenticity with real names, also kicked off accounts employees deemed fake. Unsurprisingly, some people had their accounts suspended despite using their real names. In her book, McNeil recounts the story of Lance Browneyes, an Oglala Lakota artist kicked off Facebook for using a "fake" name. To get his account reinstated he had to submit proof of ID, only to have a Facebook admin inexplicably change his name to "Lance Brown".

That real name policy often alienated trans users, Indigenous people, Black users, and anyone with names that weren't expressly white. The sad irony being that anyone could — and did — create a fake account with an "accepted" name, only to harass LGBTQ+ and racialized people, infiltrate their groups, or flag them for deletion. Meanwhile, some members of targeted groups couldn't even use their real names without passing through special hoops, like requiring passport photos or other official documents. Facebook later changed its name policy — in 2015, 11 years after its founding.

It's the stories in Lurking which truly illustrate the emotional damage poorly-designed features can cause. Take a Facebook sidebar of supposedly most-frequently contacted friends added in 2010. There are stories of girls who started seeing profiles of boys — past boyfriends, hookups, crushes, and acquaintances — in that space, despite not being connected to and not viewing those profiles. These, the girls deduced through experiments, were their lurkers. As you can imagine, the presence of this feature induced both anxiety and curiosity.

Another example of unintended consequences is Facebook's "People You May Know" feature. One woman once noticed her estranged father of twenty-seven years in that box. Facebook had inadvertently forced this man back into her life along with any feelings it dredged up.

As you read Lurking, consider your offering through the lenses of searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility, as McNeil lays out. Where does your product fit in? Are you supporting your users' outcomes in each category? In which ways might people from marginalized groups disagree with your assessment? How might your products erode outcomes or lead to anguish or anxiety in those categories?

These errors or oversights can be limited with teams which better represent a product's users. Drawing people in from a wider community increases diversity of experience and, in turn, increases diversity of thought. To reduce group-think, teams should include members of differing genders, ethnicities, nationalities, physical abilities, racial identities, and socioeconomic classes. Recognizing possibly damaging unintended outcomes won't be easy, but it will be worthwhile knowing your product stands a far less chance of ruining someone's day — or worse.

Only you can stop confirmation bias

2020-05-11T00:00:00Z

A while back I volunteered to contribute to a book on the behaviours and history of political, legal, and socio-economic systems. It was to be a primer for people creating products with the potential to disrupt those systems. My contribution was a chapter on confirmation bias, detailing its effects, its workings, and how it can be overcome. Though the book was never published, my research had me reconsidering my behaviour. Always careful with my words, I started speaking even more purposefully, not wanting to pass bias on to others. The experience had such an impact that I couldn't let my chapter sit unread, and split it into three articles. The first speaks to the pernicious influence of confirmation bias, while the second describes how it grows and spreads. This is the last in the series, explaining what we can do to fight confirmation bias.

If you've been following this series on confirmation bias or already know its mechanisms, you may be feeling a little wary of your internal state of the world. I know I was during my research. It's alarming to know that we can gather false truths, nurture them through selective testing and interpretation, and become certain they are true, all while thinking we're being perfectly reasonable. All is not lost, however. There are ways we can fight our bias and lessen its impact — you may already be using some of them. Groups are also prone to biased decision-making, and there are techniques for lessening this error as well. As for debiasing others, that can be a touch more complicated.

Entrenched in our brains, confirmation bias seems difficult to combat. Though we may never be free of our biases, we can try to make sure our decisions and actions remain untainted. As you probably realize, this isn't easy. Working against stereotypes — a product of confirmation bias — for instance, takes more time and uses different parts of our brains than our natural thought processes. It's a battle worth fighting. Bias affects decisions both big and small — like hiring a new employee, crossing the street to avoid someone, or even the words we use to describe others. Actions based on bias can have long-term consequences, such as an educator forming opinions of their students based on where they live, as mentioned in part one of this series.

The good news is that at times we unknowingly reduce bias' impact on our decision-making. If we feel we might suffer a loss of status for a biased decision, our desire for approval can help lessen bias. On the other hand, there's little evidence that incentives — such as a reward for considering every course of action — improve the reliability of our decision-making. We can't simply ask and expect ourselves and others to "try harder." Doing so assumes we already know effective strategies and somehow aren't using them properly. In many cases, incentives can produce worse outcomes. A financial advisor with fees tied to an increase in portfolio value, for example, might be biased towards riskier trades.

We also unknowingly lessen our bias in decisions where our accountability is at stake, provided we have the appropriate decision-making strategies. Even for those limited to experience in a related field, accountability can be better than punishments and incentives at countering bias. We have a strong social need for consistency. When making decisions for which we'll be held accountable, we're willing to put in the effort and more effectively use information. Generally, we want to avoid embarrassment and maintain pride. This means we're more likely to preemptively self-criticise and foresee flaws. That thirst for accountability can go too far, however. We sometimes feel a need to "give people what they want", particularly if we're undecided — like fudging a report to match expectations.

		Yes	No
		Is that a predator's face I think I see?
That's actually a predator's face	Yes	True positive	False negative may result in death
That's actually a predator's face	No	False positive results in fleeing unnecessarily	True negative

Fig. 1 We're great at recognising faces, to the point where we see them where there are none — a false positive. In this way, our brain errs on the side of caution. If we weren't good at facial recognition, we might miss faces when they're present — a false negative. If that face belonged to a predator, that mistake could come with a high cost: death.

Along with accountability, context is also key when unknowingly making decisions with less bias. With some decisions, such as those related to survival, false negative errors have a higher cost (see Fig. 1). Others may have expensive false positive errors. It helps to have experience in the area under study, especially if we encounter a problem we've solved before. When we encounter these high-cost conditions, we usually err on the side of caution. Yet confirmation bias often reappears if we try to map that experience to a different domain. One example might be a successful day-trader confidently wading into socio-economic theory with a selective knowledge in that field.

Fig. 2 Interpreting data through summary statistics alone can be misleading. This animation shows a dozen different datasets with identical summary statistics. Source: Autodesk Research

It's reassuring that we unknowingly reduce our bias when making certain decisions. What can be done to improve that intuition? In part two of this series we learned that confirmation bias can often develop if we fail to properly apply formal reasoning. We might have some basic logic, economics, or statistics knowledge — such as sampling — but may not know when or even how to use it. For example, people often misinterpret or misuse summary statistics like mean, median, or standard deviation (see Fig. 2), and could benefit from refresher training. A lesson on how causation and correlation are frequently conflated could also help. There is evidence that short training sessions in a domain with which we're comfortable — sports statistics, for instance — can help reduce bias in other areas. That assist, however, often diminishes after only two weeks and suffers when learning complex rules, like Bayes theorem.

In part one of this series we learned of a 2013 "study of studies" on gender and risk which showed that even scholars and experts can be victims of bias. There seems to be no guarantee that intuition can be improved with more education. Outside motivation — punishment, accountability, etc. — isn't always helpful, and can sometimes have the opposite effect, like taking accountability too far and delivering what's expected. We can't debias ourselves by ourselves, as we're likely biased against even the existence of our biases. How can we hope to lessen their impact? Formal approaches exist but are more geared towards reducing bias in group decisions. As it turns out, simply knowing that confirmation bias exists goes a long way. A basic understanding of how unreliable human reasoning can be, with no instructions other than "beware", can help counter biases. The best strategy to exceed this bare minimum, however, may be to consider the opposite.

If you've ever argued a position in school — in English or a debate class, perhaps — you may have prepared by researching opposing arguments. Considering the opposite is also a decent strategy for fighting bias in our beliefs. This might be as simple as asking ourselves how we could be wrong on a position, why, and for what reasons. In doing so, we widen our search and direct our attention to contrary evidence. This approach can help reduce overconfidence, a symptom of confirmation bias. It's also been shown to lessen bias when seeking and interpreting new information. We also reason better with two theories than when evaluating a single hypothesis. What's important is that we seriously examine a specific opposing belief.

Naturally, seriously examining an alternate belief is the key. We might not give an opposing belief its due, especially if we feel ours is already viable. Although paying attention to contrary evidence can help counter bias, requiring too many opposing views can backfire. Failing to come up with a required number of alternate theories might make us consider weaker ones, making us more confident in our own viewpoint. Considering more than one theory at once can also divide our attention. We're then less likely to give other theories their due. Instead, think about alternates separately and independently.

We might be able to hold our confirmation bias at bay so long as we're aware of it, and give serious thought to viewpoints opposed to our own. What about people we work with, or our friends and family?

Unfortunately, when it comes to other individuals, we may just have to grin and bear it. In the absence of bias, a rational person could correct their belief with more information. With bias, more information is not better. Trying to convince someone affected by confirmation bias to change their belief may have the opposite effect and increase their leanings. This is known as the backfire effect or belief perseverance. Giving the same ambiguous information to people with differing beliefs may move their beliefs further apart. Depending on their viewpoint, two people may see the same evidence and interpret it differently, judging it as being more consistent with their bias.

Fig. 3 Every signal we receive influences our belief. This chart is a probable timeline of the skew of someone's specific belief.

Considering belief formation as a series of signals, as in part two of this series, can also show how difficult it may be to debias someone else. The effect of each signal depends on those which came before it, including any prior beliefs (see Fig. 3). To debias someone, we may need to know their initial belief on a topic as well as the order of signals which followed. Unraveling how they nurtured this false knowledge takes care, understanding, and respect. It also depends on open and reliable narrators with good memories and an interest in reaching the truth. With severe bias, our efforts to reason away another's false belief could be futile. This is perfectly illustrated by The Doobie Brothers in "What a Fool Believes":

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
Than nothing at all

The Doobie Brothers, "What a Fool Believes"

Our friends and family with severe bias may be lost to it, but our workplace can still be saved. Thankfully, many decisions which matter are made by groups, which are more readily debiased than individuals. Many tried and tested strategies for lessening bias in groups exist, usually involving a framework or tool to help make sound decisions. Groups can make use of decision aids, information displays, statistical models, and other formal decision analysis techniques. Complex problems can be split into smaller, simpler ones — such as listing the pros and cons of a position — and assigned to smaller groups. These technical strategies are simply out of reach for most individuals. Whereas individuals can introduce bias at every step of the decision-making process, groups can track their progress and use the results as feedback.

When using strategies or tools to make unbiased decisions at work, adoption can be difficult. Processes like these are usually imposed company-wide from the top down, and as such are often rejected or begrudgingly implemented, leading to failure. A bottom-up approach can have better results than a general process imposed from the top-down. When those making the decisions choose a strategy appropriate to their group, their sense of ownership helps them stick with it and approach it more honestly. If it works for them, the group can evangelise the strategy and inspire adoption. Beware, however. As with ourselves, groups can also underestimate their bias and be overconfident in their decision-making. They, like us, may fail to recognize a need for help.

Groups are also prone to group-think. Their members may be influenced by others with either more seniority, or who are more aggressively persuasive. Because of this, groups may anchor on the judgments of a few people. Having group members think about their preferences and estimates before a meeting can help lessen this risk. Strategies and tools such as multi-attribute analysis, or decision support systems prompt groups to think more deeply than otherwise, and can also check for errors in the decision-making process. It's also a good idea to maintain complementary expertise within the group, and be aware of blind spots due to shared errors. A supportive environment in which everyone feels free to correct belief or adjust decisions is also key.

Group-think due to blind spots can be lessened through diversity of experience within the group. While training can help preserve that diversity of perspectives, groups can do better by increasing the sample size of experience. Drawing people in from a wider community increases diversity of experience and, in turn, increases diversity of thought. To reduce the risk of locally-held beliefs, groups should include members of differing genders, ethnicities, nationalities, racial identities, and socioeconomic classes.

Fighting confirmation bias in ourselves and in groups requires careful and consistent attention to how we make decisions. The solutions are there:

At a bare minimum, know that bias exists and is widespread.
Consider opposing arguments or alternate theories to those which drive your actions.
Use tools and decision-making frameworks when you collaborate at work.
Involve people with different backgrounds and experiences to rein in group-think.

My research in confirmation bias had a profound impact on me. I was aware of it, but I had no idea how often our brains fail to be rational. It made me wonder which biases I had adopted, from where, and how much they had affected my actions. What bothered me the most was the possibility of spreading false belief to others. I vowed that bias would stop with me. Anything I was unsure of remained unsaid or came with a disclaimer. I tried to limit my use of words like "every" or "none" when I really meant "most" or "few". More importantly, I better understood how others could become so firmly attached to false belief or prejudice in spite of themselves, and how the slightest action borne of that bias could negatively affect others in a big way. I started to imagine a world free from the effects of bias, and it was glorious. What will you do to help make that world a reality?

References

[KLAYMAN1995] Klayman, J. (1995). Varieties of confirmation bias. In J. Busemeyer, R. Hastie, & D. L. Medin (Eds.), Decision making from a cognitive perspective. New York: Academic Press (Psychology of Learning and Motivation, vol. 32), pp. 365-418.
[LARRICK2004] Larrick, R. P. (2004). Debiasing, in Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making (eds D. J. Koehler and N. Harvey), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Malden, MA, USA.
[NELSON2015] Nelson, J. A. (2015). Are women really more risk-averse than men? A re-analysis of the literature using expanded methods. Journal of Economic Surveys, 29: 566-585.
[NICKERSON1998] Nickerson, J. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: a ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 175-220.
[RABIN1999] Rabin, Matthew and Schrag, Joel L. (1999). First Impressions Matter: A Model of Confirmatory Bias, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, issue 1, p. 37-82.

How we're steered towards false belief

2019-10-28T00:00:00Z

A while back I volunteered to contribute to a book on the behaviours and history of political, legal, and socio-economic systems. It was to be a primer for people creating products with the potential to disrupt those systems. My contribution was a chapter on confirmation bias, detailing its effects, its workings, and how it can be overcome. Though the book was never published, my research had me reconsidering my behaviour. Always careful with my words, I started speaking even more purposefully, not wanting to pass bias on to others. The experience had such an impact that I couldn't let my chapter sit unread, and split it into three articles. The first speaks to the pernicious influence of confirmation bias. This is the second of the three, describing how it grows and spreads. Finally, the last article explains what we can do to fight confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is one of a number of cognitive biases which affect how we reason. It tricks us into accepting untruths and nurtures them until we're certain they're true. As a result, we're led to hold false beliefs with greater confidence than evidence can justify. Confirmation bias doesn't happen by itself. It needs agreeable conditions to grow, flourish, and persist. Our tendency to selectively gather, interpret, and recall information provides fertile ground for confirmation bias to take hold (See Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Our tendencies support the formation of confirmation bias.

If we don't actively choose our information or how we interpret it, how does bias start? These tendencies operate while leaving our learning and reasoning process intact. We don't see our bias. We feel we're being rational, and we often are, but with skewed information. Every stage of belief development is affected, from initial hypothesis generation, to searching for, testing, interpreting, and recalling evidence.

Our selective gathering of evidence often starts when we form an initial belief from weak evidence. Have you ever firmly believed something to be true only to find out – years later – that it had no basis in reality? Maybe you forgot how you had come to believe in something which, under scrutiny, you later realised was completely false. How could you have been so wrong? Chances are you took something you heard or read at face value and carried it for years. This initial hypothesis generation is where confirmation bias starts to take hold.

Governed by something known as anchoring, that initial belief is powerful and can take root in our brains. Information acquired early carries more weight and is more readily recalled. First impressions matter. Belief starts to collect around those first pieces of information. With belief backed by initial weak evidence, we may have problems correctly interpreting better — possibly contradictory — information received later on.

With that kernel of belief in mind, we'll gather evidence to support it. This isn't to say we actively seek out that evidence, although we sometimes do. Rather, our brains tend to more readily take in information which supports our belief. Have you ever bought or considered a car, an item of clothing, or other object, and then suddenly started noticing the same make, model, or style much more often? This tendency is called the frequency illusion, and it plays a part when you're subconsciously gathering evidence to support a belief. We see what we seek.

Fig. 2 As in Wason's experiment, we tend to pick evidence which confirms our bias. Source: Chainsawsuit by @KrisStraub

Frequency illusion is only one of many tendencies which focus our attention on confirming evidence. Many of them are holdovers from when our evolutionary ancestors had to flee from danger. It didn't matter much if that danger wasn't a danger at all. Humans evolved with great pattern recognition skills — skills which also make us see patterns where there are none (i.e. false positives). Thanks to something called illusory correlation, we tend to see connections between unrelated events. People often stereotype certain groups — cultural, political, or otherwise — as being bad people, a drain on society, or simply "idiots". They probably started with an unfavourable belief about that group and likely later noticed members of that same group exhibit bad behaviour. They saw what they wanted to see, and failed to register the times they saw members of that group not demonstrating similar behaviour.

Gathering evidence isn't always enough. We usually test our beliefs to see if they hold. These tests are often flawed, however. For one, we're more likely to ask questions whose answer is "yes" should our hypothesis be true. In one study on test selection, participants were given a profile of someone described as either an extrovert or an introvert. Subjects were then asked to interview that person and determine if they fit the labeled personality type. Participants usually picked questions which, if answered with "yes", would strongly confirm their profile, and strongly disconfirm it if answered with "no". For instance, someone given a profile flagged as belonging to an extrovert might have asked "Do you enjoy large parties?" but not "Do you enjoy time alone?". This reinforcement of our initial belief through positive tests leads us to be more confident in our belief, even if the information we collect has no value.

This tendency to seek and test largely positive evidence can uncover patterns which may not exist, limiting discovery. These tests can confirm belief but will not uncover false negatives. Using Wason's 2-4-6 task from part 1 of this series as an example, subjects tested their theory by picking three numbers which fit it, not three numbers which fit a different but also valid theory, nor numbers which didn't fit their theory at all. For example, someone who believed that a 2-4-6 sequence represented even numbers increasing by two might have tested it with 8-10-12, but not 3-5-7, nor even 6-4-2. When we rely on largely positive evidence, we fool ourselves into a false belief (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 We tend to see patterns where there are none, and use tests which confirm our theories. Here, two people in neonatal care see the same evidence, with one difference. The one on the left has accepted a belief that full moons cause more births. That person's tests involve checking the moon when there are more babies in the nursery. Because of this, they miss seeing a full moon when there are fewer babies. They also underweigh the instance with many newborns and no full moon. The person on the right hasn't been influenced by an initial belief on lunar cycles and births, and remains unbiased.

Test results need to be interpreted to be useful. Confirmation bias kicks in here as well. Evidence and tests which confirm our belief are prone to be seen as reliable and relevant, and are often accepted at face value. By contrast, evidence which disagrees with our belief is often seen as unreliable, unimportant, and open to scrutiny — often hypercritically, especially if the source is believed to be subject to error. When evidence is ambiguous, vague, or open to interpretation, we unfortunately tend to give our beliefs the benefit of the doubt. As an example, a teacher might interpret a student's non-standard answer to a question as either stupid or creative, depending on how the teacher feels about the student beforehand. (Recall the study in part 1 of this series of a girl playing in urban and suburban neighbourhoods.)

When we overweigh or underweigh evidence in this way, we usually require less of it to uphold a belief than we require evidence to reject one. Other factors are at issue, such as our degree of confidence in our belief, the value of making a correct conclusion, or the cost of making a bad decision. Our motivation for truth, however, can still be outweighed by our need for self-esteem, approval from others, need for control, and the internal consistency that confirming evidence provides. In many cases, it may be more important for us to maintain our belief than to be accurate. Being wrong is painful and often seen as undesirable, exhibited by the expectation that we "have the courage of one's convictions."

Interpreting tests and evidence can be quite challenging. We feel we're impartial and open, that we adjust our belief accordingly, but the opposite is often true. For one, most of us have trouble with statistics and probability. Even the most analytical minds fail to properly consider the odds a particular belief is true given confirming evidence, with its own occurrence probability (see Bayes Theorem). Similarly, we rarely consider the odds of disconfirming evidence or alternative beliefs being correct. Most people also fall prey to a number of logical fallacies and generalizations, which hinder the way we interpret tests and evidence.

The feedback loop between evidence gathering, testing, and interpretation is ongoing. How we test and interpret our evidence governs how we see new evidence. We can quickly grow more confident in our belief, interpreting even ambiguous evidence as supporting it, all with an internally coherent pattern of reasoning. This confidence can make it painful to give up our beliefs. We become more likely to question information which goes against them than information which agrees with them. Searching for and interpreting evidence, then, can be an internal fight between what is right and what feels good. Confirmation bias is not a simple error, but an internally coherent pattern of reasoning.

Confirmation bias grows and persists by way of a number of tendencies. To combat our bias, we need to understand how our beliefs can be so easily skewed by it. Another way to do so is to think about our belief formation as influenced by a series of signals. We're constantly receiving signals of the true state of the world, through our senses and our interactions with it. Learning of something online, watching a video clip, speaking with someone outside our circle — signals like these influence our belief. A rational observer who perfectly rates each signal and applies it to her beliefs would, after an infinite number of signals, always attain near-certain belief.

Fig. 4 Every signal we receive influences our belief. This chart is a probable timeline of the skew of someone's specific belief.

Few of us are perfectly rational, however. We may start our decision-making process believing that two sides to an issue are equally valid. This may change as soon as we receive our first signal. As with the primacy effect, that first signal may completely determine our final belief. Once we begin leaning towards a belief, we may misinterpret further signals which conflict with it. We may ignore or underweigh a conflicting signal, or overweigh one which agrees with our belief. Under bias, our belief formation may quickly become a feedback loop. Every signal we receive may be used to defend or justify our position. Pretty soon, we're like a boat that's drifted off-course.

The existence of our bias inhibits our ability to overturn false belief. If severe enough, further disconfirming signals may worsen our bias. Even after an infinite number of signals, our bias may compel us to believe with near-certainty in an incorrect belief. Chances are, though, that we'll become convinced of our own belief and stop paying attention to further signals. After processing a number of signals, our belief may go from feeling natural, to feeling incontestable.

Given that tendencies supporting bias largely happen subconsciously and are entrenched in our brains, can we do something about it? Can we debias ourselves? Or are we powerless to continue making bad decisions based on selective processes? Awareness is the first step, but what about debiasing other individuals or groups we're a part of? Read on for part three of this series.

References

[JONES2000] Jones, M., and Sugden, R. (2000). Positive confirmation bias in the acquisition of information. (Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics; No. 115). University of Dundee.
[NELSON2015] Nelson, J. A. (2015). Are women really more risk-averse than men? A re-analysis of the literature using expanded methods. Journal of Economic Surveys, 29: 566-585.
[NICKERSON1998] Nickerson, J. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: a ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 175-220.
[KLAYMAN1995] Klayman, J. (1995). Varieties of confirmation bias. In J. Busemeyer, R. Hastie, & D. L. Medin (Eds.), Decision making from a cognitive perspective. New York: Academic Press (Psychology of Learning and Motivation, vol. 32), pp. 365-418.
[RABIN1999] Rabin, Matthew and Schrag, Joel L. (1999). First Impressions Matter: A Model of Confirmatory Bias, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, issue 1, p. 37-82.

Three reasons why we make bad decisions, and why it matters

2019-10-13T00:00:00Z

A while back I volunteered to contribute to a book on the behaviours and history of political, legal, and socio-economic systems. It was to be a primer for people creating products with the potential to disrupt those systems. My contribution was a chapter on confirmation bias, detailing its effects, its workings, and how it can be overcome. Though the book was never published, my research had me reconsidering my behaviour. Always careful with my words, I started speaking even more purposefully, not wanting to pass bias on to others. The experience had such an impact that I couldn't let my chapter sit unread, and split it into three articles. This is the first of the three, describing the pernicious influence of confirmation bias. The other two explain how it grows and spreads, and what we can do to fight it.

"THIS JUST IN: We're getting reports — around the world — of a disease rapidly spreading out of control. The infected are in the millions, and have started behaving irrationally. Some have been seen making poor judgments of their and others' ability. Girls as young as six with the disease are viewing women as less smart than men. Scientists are working on a cure, but a viable solution could be weeks away. In the meantime, everyone is urged to use caution."

Thankfully, this is not a real news story. The disease isn't real, but the symptoms are, and almost everyone on Earth is affected. If it were a disease, there might be a cure, or at least a way to slow the contagion. There isn't. It's us, or more specifically our brains.

You may know this affliction as confirmation bias, one of many cognitive or unconscious biases which affect how we reason. Unlike a leaning or a slant, like left- or right-wing bias, cognitive biases are the result of involuntary mental "short-cuts", leftovers from when we had to quickly tell friend from foe, or avoid potentially dangerous situations. These short-cuts may have kept our ancestors alive, but they impede logic and accuracy necessary in our modern world.

Before confirmation bias had a name, people were thought to be largely rational. An error in judgment was simply a matter of poor reasoning. In his recount of the Peloponnesian War almost 2500 years ago, historian Thucydides called it a "habit":

"… and their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound prediction; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire."

Thucydides, 460BC‑395BC

Over 400 years ago, Sir Francis Bacon was more inclined to consider this "habit" as a trick of the mind:

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion […] draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that […] its former conclusions may remain inviolate."

Sir Francis Bacon, 1561‑1626

It wasn't until 1960, when psychologist Peter Wason performed his first selection experiment, that confirmation bias finally had a name.

Fig. 1 Wason's selection experiment. Most people tested triplets which confirmed their rule, often based on the initial triplet (left). Only a few people rationally chose test triplets which didn't confirm their rule (right). The actual rule was always "any ascending sequence."

Wason's experiment was simple: present a person with three numbers (e.g. 2-4-6), and ask them to guess the rule for those numbers. That person was then directed to test their theory with their own triplets, and was told when each matched the actual rule. Participants mostly came up with rules specific to the initial triplet (e.g. "numbers increasing by two" in the case of 2-4-6), and only tested them with triplets which fit their theory (e.g. 9-11-13). They rarely chose triplets which didn't agree with their theory (e.g. 9-10-11). Most, then, never guessed the actual rule, which was always "any ascending sequence." Fig. 1 shows an example of the irrational approach most people took, as well as a rational one. One of the tendencies which supports confirmation bias involves improper selection of evidence.

Of the many cognitive biases, confirmation bias likely does us the most harm. It tricks us into accepting untruths and nurtures them until we're certain they're true. It leads us to hold false beliefs with a confidence greater than evidence can justify. Those affected will often misinterpret new information as supporting a previously-held but false belief. It may not seem dangerous, but confirmation bias can change the way we view reality.

The Wason experiment demonstrated one tendency contributing to confirmation bias: selective evidence gathering. We may only see what our beliefs lead us to expect. We also have a tendency to selectively interpret evidence for or against a belief. We may add weight to information or events which support our theories, and discount information which does not. When it comes to remembering evidence, we tend to filter out or forget opposing views and their supporting facts, and selectively recall evidence which supports our views. These tendencies support confirmation bias (see Fig. 2) and lead to over-confidence in our beliefs. Over-confidence, in turn, can lead to bad choices, sometimes resulting in risky and extreme behaviour.

Fig. 2 Our tendencies support the formation of confirmation bias.

Horoscopes are a mild example of how confirmation bias can affect behaviour. Perhaps you know someone who, in some small way, has acted on the advice of a horoscope or a psychic. Such mediums remain popular largely because we want to believe them. To reinforce our belief, we tend to focus on or remember what we expect or want from them. We also more readily recall the times they were right, and forget or discount when they were wrong. Many "readings" also label the viewer as having positive traits, such as kindness and generosity. People often fail to consider how universal these traits are, and instead selectively use those readings as supporting credibility. This behaviour opens us to place faith in astrology, fortune-tellers, and con artists, who — knowingly or not — appeal to those traits so that we recognize ourselves in their "predictions".

This same tendency to see or remember what we expect or desire can also feed more serious conditions such as hypochondria and paranoia. Depressed people may also focus on information which strengthens their depression, and ignore more positive information which may help them. Over time, this selective memory can affect and reinforce their "core beliefs" — absolute truths we hold about ourselves — and lead to a negative self-image.

Fig. 3 People's beliefs about crime rates are often at odds with reality. Source: Pew Research Center: Public perception of crime rate at odds with reality.

Tendencies contributing to confirmation bias can lead us to confidently make bad decisions which affect ourselves and others. Many people wrongly believe that crime is rising, and vote for candidates who are tougher on crime, despite the reality (see Fig. 3). Maybe you know someone — a friend or relative, perhaps — who seems to have nothing good to say about a particular group. Have they gone out of their way to avoid a member of that group? Or treated someone in that group differently than they would others? Such stereotypes and prejudices are largely fed by confirmation bias, and can influence how we treat or view "others" — people different from us.

Thanks to confirmation bias we may readily observe and recall unusual behaviours in people from distinct ethnicities. This selective evidence gathering and recall, left unchecked, can contribute to racist stereotypes. Belief due to tainted memory increases our confidence in stereotypes, leading us to more likely act on them. Several studies have shown how bias can change our reactions to people about whom we hold stereotypes — even if we are only told those people belong to a specific group.

In one such study, participants were shown a video of a girl playing. Half were told the girl's parents were college-educated with white-collar jobs. They were shown the girl playing in a well-to-do suburban neighbourhood. The other half was told the girl's parents were high-school graduates with blue-collar jobs, and were shown her playing in a disadvantaged urban neighbourhood. People in each of those groups were then shown the same video of the girl answering a series of questions, and were asked to evaluate her reading level. The group which was told the girl was from a well-to-do suburban family rated the girl's reading ability significantly higher than the group which was told she was from a poorer neighbourhood. Both groups saw the same Q&A video, were given no other information, yet reached different conclusions because of how they felt about where the girl lived. Consider what happens when caregivers and teachers approach their students with a similar bias.

This tendency to make biased decisions based on confidence in a stereotype isn't born of years of prejudicial thinking. In a similar study, 5-7 year-olds were told of a person who was "really, really smart." The children were then shown a picture of four adults — two women and two men — and were asked to pick the "really, really smart" one. At aged 5, boys and girls chose their own gender roughly equally. Girls aged 6 or 7, however, were significantly less likely than boys the same age to view their own gender positively. In another study with different children, boys and girls aged 6 or 7 were introduced to a game "only for kids who are really, really smart" or one "only for kids who try really, really hard." The girls were less interested than the boys in the game for "really, really smart" children, but not the game for "kids who try really, really hard."

Like Thucydides, we may feel our reasoning is stronger than others', that we never fall into the "habit" of misjudging people, especially a child in a video, so easily. Yet people who have studied reasoning and statistics can still have a problem with confirmation bias and stereotypes. As an example, numerous peer-reviewed studies claim to show that women are more risk-averse than men. A 2013 "study of studies", however, claims that those studies and their authors were likely affected by stereotypes induced by bias. The studies' authors reached inaccurate conclusions by falling prey to tendencies behind confirmation bias. Many inaccurately cited conclusions of earlier literature, or emphasized results agreeing with stereotypes, while downplaying or omitting results which did not. These confirming results were, in turn, more likely to be published. Researchers overlooked situations where women naturally take on a great deal of risk, such as with child birth or risk of domestic violence. Instead, areas of risk such as finance were studied and findings extrapolated to a broader context.

Since Wason's experiment, many studies have shown that not only do we hold cognitive biases, they can be difficult to correct. We're usually unaware of our own confirmation bias. Worse, although our reasoning about information may be biased, we still rationally apply that data to our own state of the world. We don't see our bias. We feel we're being reasonable, and we often are, but with skewed information. This bias-influenced reasoning may make sense to us, but it results in bad decisions. Ignorant to our bias, we may become over-confident in our beliefs and risk tainting future reasoning, thereby reinforcing our bias.

Confirmation bias exists and negatively influences human behaviour — so now what? We can correct our own bias, although it can be difficult. Awareness helps a great deal, as it turns out. There are also habits we can pick up to better keep our bias in check. That's in part three of this series. Our next step is to gain a better understanding of how confirmation bias grows and spreads, which brings us to part two.

References

[BIAN2017] Bian, L., Leslie, S., and Cimpian, A. (2017). Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests. Science, 27 Jan 2017, Vol. 355, Issue 6323, pp. 389-391.
[JONES2000] Jones, M., and Sugden, R. (2000). Positive confirmation bias in the acquisition of information. (Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics; No. 115). University of Dundee.
[LARRICK2004] Larrick, R. P. (2004). Debiasing, in Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making (eds D. J. Koehler and N. Harvey), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Malden, MA, USA.
[NELSON2015] Nelson, J. A. (2015). Are women really more risk-averse than men? A re-analysis of the literature using expanded methods. Journal of Economic Surveys, 29: 566-585.
[NICKERSON1998] Nickerson, J. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: a ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 175-220.
[RABIN1999] Rabin, Matthew and Schrag, Joel L. (1999). First Impressions Matter: A Model of Confirmatory Bias, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, issue 1, p. 37-82.

Everything is practice

2019-09-30T00:00:00Z

"Does Practice Really Make Perfect?". That was the title of one of my middle school science projects. I forced my family to play Perfection over, and over, and over again to see if they got better with time. Spoiler alert: they did.

If you don't know the game, the goal of Perfection is to place twenty-five shapes into matching holes on a recessed tray before it pops up after one minute and ejects its contents — all while a ridiculously loud timer ticks away every 10th of a second. It's stressful. The pop at the end still surprises me.

Perfection — it'll give you nightmares.

Fast-forward twenty-five years later. I chose not to renew a contract to spend the summer with my infant son and my wife, then on maternity leave. What better time to buy a new camera, what with a baby who can't refuse photos and all. I had a DSLR gathering dust, its heft stopped it from being a "casual" camera. It was time to buy something I could carry without feeling like I was lugging a delicate brick. I settled on a mirrorless camera — an Olympus E-M10, which I highly recommend — for its portability and build. To get myself acquainted with the camera, I decided to take a picture with it every day.

Take a picture every day I did — for three years and counting. My camera has become part of my wardrobe. Out for groceries? Take the camera. Dropping the daughter off at daycare? Take the camera. Off to coffee with the wife? Take. The. Camera. Some days I take one quick shot, other days I might take a dozen thoughtful ones. On rainy days stuck inside I sometimes get anxious satisfying my daily photo fix. Yet I'm always able to take a picture.

There's only one rule when taking that picture, a rule I'll repeat to myself when I feel uninspired: just try. Anytime I take that daily picture, I just need to try to do the subject justice. It doesn't have to be a particularly good shot or even inspire pride. Framing, composition, lighting, timing — they don't have to meet with approval, but they should be considered.

Looking back at three years of photos, it's clear I've improved with everyday practice. Many once-favourite shots look cluttered to me now. I still love some of my old photos, but I'd treat many others differently now – or avoid taking them at all. My "eye" has improved over the years. I now confidently experiment with new techniques and new themes.

After seeing how this daily practice bettered my photography, I looked for something else to try. I settled on writing, aiming for a 250-word article each day. That same rule applied: just try. Any topic would do. It didn't have to be thought-provoking, just cohesive, with only a short time spent on edits. I kept that up for two weeks before stumbling, and found that my writing improved even after such a short time.

I didn't intend to practice them every day, but I became addicted to crosswords some three years ago. It started as a way to pass the time on my commute — easy ones in the commuter tabloids as well as more challenging ones from the bigger papers. It wasn't long before I was regularly finishing a crossword in a fraction of the time I used to, and with far more ease.

These improvements through daily or almost daily practice convinced me to try advancing other skills. I fell through with my writing partly because it demanded a large commitment. Writing 250 words often took more than an hour. Comparatively, photography and crosswords take up less than 30 minutes — combined. I started to recognise that even 5-10 minutes of practice a day was enough to improve small skills over the long term. To that end, I took up activities which could be worked into my schedule. For instance, I switched from printing to cursive after buying a fountain pen and found cursive to be more fluid for writing on my iPad.

Practicing something new, even for a few minutes, can involve a great deal of patience. Some days I don't feel up to taking shots with my camera. When I was regularly practicing my writing, I often felt that starting was the most difficult part. That's where my mantra of "just try" came from. It's freed me from my expectations and allowed me to move on. It's just practice after all — it doesn't have to be perfect. If I feel stuck taking one thoughtful photo, I'll pick something — anything — to shoot. I'll try to pick a decent perspective, try to frame it nicely, and try to get something interesting out of it. If it doesn't work out, at least I've tried and that's my practice for the day. I usually find, however, that that first shot frees me from a desire for perfection and propels me on to more creative photos.

"The common conception is that motivation leads to action, but the reverse is true – action precedes motivation. You have to prime the pump and get the juice flowing, which motivates you to work on your goals."

Robert J. Mckain, author of "Realize Your Potential"

That drive to continue taking pictures after encouraging myself to "just try" is a great example of action preceding motivation. I've put off many tasks, even ones I enjoy, because I don't have the motivation. My 6-year-old daughter does something similar with her homework. I advise her to "just start" and help her find a small and easy first step. Ten minutes later she's finished her homework.

This brings me back to my middle school science project with Perfection. If you've practiced something for a long time you know that practice never makes perfect. There's always room for improvement. Instead, it should be "practice makes progress". It's progress we're after, no matter how small, not perfection. Practicing something every day means freeing yourself from perfection. Expect stumbling blocks, resistance, or flawed output and work past it. You won't see progress day-by-day, but over time it will become more obvious. Practice makes progress.

People really underestimate the value of practice. Source: Herding Cats by Sarah Andersen

That progress — that daily exercise in something you want to do — can make you happier. If you've ever practiced cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), you may recognise everyday practice as a form of the mastery and pleasure technique. Under CBT, this technique works on the idea that people who have lost joy need regular reinforcement to feel good about themselves. Routine activities where people feel a sense of mastery using their skills and talents — no matter how significant — can boost self-esteem and confidence. Likewise, pleasurable activities — those we find enjoyable and relaxing — can help us with stress. Together, these two types of activities can improve self-esteem and add excitement and enjoyment to your schedule. Regular practice of something you like fits both mastery and pleasure. Practice makes you powerful.

That regular practice can be anything, even something you might not consider practice-able. Activity you can fit in your routine is best. Maybe you want to get better at photography like I did — you're probably already holding something which takes pictures! Commute using public transit? Practice your conversation skills by talking to strangers without self-judgment. Practice can also fill those moments you're idle: keep a sketchbook on-hand for drawing, exercise your mindfulness, repeat card tricks, etc. There's no end to things you can practice, even for only a few minutes at a time. Think of all the days you have available — days in which you could slowly improve a skill you find interesting. You'll notice yourself getting steadily better. You'll also feel better. You just need to try.

For Great Products, Start With Why

2018-11-12T00:00:00Z

I love finding the intent behind a rule, a concept, or even a mysterious part on a physical product. With that all-important question — Why? — answered, I’m free to dream up simpler ways that intent could have been satisfied. Getting to that kernel of truth can be very satisfying. Conversely, an unanswered Why can be quite frustrating, almost painful.

When I started reading Simon Sinek’s Start With Why, I was drawn to its simplicity. Inspiration, values, and purpose stem more readily from a Why than from How or What. To win the hearts and minds of your employees and customers alike, you need to start with Why. Sounds easy, yet the graveyard of companies and products is full of those whose focus was What, not Why.

This reasoning behind Start With Why forms the basis for a number of product management books I’ve been reading:

Marty Cagan’s Inspired details the practice of product management, beginning with personas and product discovery — literally starting the product process with a Why;
Dan Olsen’s Lean Product Playbook shows how to isolate and focus on a problem (a Why) and iterate on a solution (a What);
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore shows that making that leap to a mainstream customer base is harder if the Why behind your offering isn’t very clear.

These three books have a common teaching: Success can be difficult if you’re tied to a particular What. What if it isn’t the right What? What if it’s disrupted by another company’s offering? Even worse, what if your What doesn’t inspire your employees or your customers? Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma lists many companies which were too focussed on their What, and couldn’t innovate their way to other products by adopting a clear Why.

Once you know your Why, you’re free to make any product which satisfies it. You can adopt different techniques or constraints and come up with several solutions to test. You might even discover an entirely new product line, like other successful companies which kept their raison d’être in focus. Start by communicating a clear Why and bake it into your processes — not just because the possibilities are endless, but also because it will readily inspire trust from your employees and customers.