Page 4 – Design and Code

5 Examples of Clever Use of Cognitive Biases in Product Design

How can we go beyond visuals when designing digital products?

So far in my blog, I’ve covered two ways to do that: One is to understand the user mental model. Another is to be more cognizant of the relationship between design and metrics. There’s a third way, which is to leverage cognitive biases.

According to verywellmind.com, cognitive biases are systematic errors in our thinking. They are the attempts of our brains to simplify information processing. They serve as heuristics, or rules of thumb, that can help us make decisions faster.

If you’re new to cognitive biases, here are five real-life examples I’ve collected that beautifully illustrate how they can be used in product design. Definitions of the biases below are pulled from Wikipedia.

Win the Number Game: Strategies for Data-Driven Design

You are excited about your new design. It certainly looks more beautiful than the production, but when it comes time to A/B test, it doesn’t fare well. Key metrics drop and your craft cannot be shipped.

If you’re a product designer, does this resonate with you? Has something like this happened to you before?

Miscillaneous

7 Amazing Books I Read in 2021 and What I’ve Learned from Them

I like reading books. A good book calms me down, opens my mind, and makes me feel enlightened when I finish its last chapter. Here are some of the amazing books that I read this year and I’d like to share them with you.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Visual Design

Denoise Our Designs

Here’s the design I created recently. It was a big card containing some smaller cards inside.

Cards inside a another card creates gaps and gutters, which are non-communicating elements that add noises to our design.

I knew it wasn’t the ideal design, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the problem was.

Let Ideas Collide with Reality: Learnings from Reading That Will Never Work

That Will Never Work may not be a book for designers at first glance. As I delved deeper into the journey that Marc Randolph went through to found Netflix, I realized that the book is actually full of amazing real-life examples of product thinking and idea testing. It’s a great read for not just aspiring entrepreneurs, but also product designers and managers.