How Confirmation Bias Is Destroying Your Product

Probably the most harmful phrases in product development are: “Our customers will love this.” I’ve heard this declaration in numerous product conferences, normally adopted by months of engineering work and ending with the quiet disappointment of underwhelming consumer adoption. The perpetrator? Affirmation bias — our mind’s maddening tendency to hunt out info that helps what we already consider.

As product managers, we’re employed to make choices. We analyze markets, collect necessities and prioritize options. The issue is, as soon as we have developed a speculation about what users want, we begin filtering all incoming info by means of that lens. Ambiguous suggestions will get interpreted as supportive. Unfavourable suggestions will get labeled as “edge circumstances.” And steadily, we assemble an alternate actuality the place our product choices are at all times good.

Associated: How Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Confirmation Bias

The consumer analysis theater

“Person analysis theater” refers to going by means of the motions of speaking to customers with out truly being open to having your assumptions challenged. You may acknowledge these signs in your group:

• Cherry-picking constructive quotes from consumer periods whereas ignoring detrimental patterns

• Asking main questions designed to elicit particular solutions

• Limiting your research to customers who already love your product

• Deciphering silence or confusion as settlement

• Dismissing detrimental suggestions as “they simply do not get it but”

Look, I get it. You’ve got already advised your leaders and buyers in regards to the wonderful characteristic roadmap. You’ve got employed engineers based mostly on sure technical assumptions. Your total firm narrative could be constructed round a specific imaginative and prescient of what customers need. Altering course feels unimaginable.

However staying on the doomed course is worse.

Associated: Do You Know What Your Customers Want? Are You Sure?

Breaking the bias cycle

So, how will we truly repair this? How will we create processes that challenge our cherished assumptions as a substitute of reinforcing them? Listed below are some sensible approaches I’ve seen work:

1. Separate knowledge assortment from interpretation

One group I labored with adopted a follow the place the folks conducting consumer interviews weren’t allowed to interpret the outcomes. They might solely doc precisely what was stated. A separate group — one with out emotional funding in particular outcomes — would then analyze the transcripts. This lowered the tendency to listen to what they wished to listen to throughout interviews.

This separation creates a wholesome stress. The interview group focuses on asking good questions fairly than main customers towards predetermined conclusions. The evaluation group spots patterns with out being influenced by customers’ tone or the interpersonal dynamics of the interview.

2. Actively search disconfirming proof

Make it somebody’s particular job to play devil’s advocate throughout analysis planning. This particular person needs to be asking: “How may we disprove our speculation?” fairly than “How can we validate our thought?”

For instance, as a substitute of asking “Would you employ this characteristic?” strive “What would forestall you from utilizing this characteristic?” The primary query virtually at all times will get a well mannered “sure.” The second provides you precise obstacles you will want to beat.

3. Take note of conduct, not simply opinions

Customers are notoriously dangerous at predicting their very own future conduct. They will enthusiastically let you know they’d undoubtedly use your new characteristic, however when it launches, they follow their previous habits.

I’ve discovered it far more beneficial to look at what customers truly do fairly than what they are saying they’re going to do. This implies analyzing usage data from current options, creating prototype experiences the place customers can exhibit preferences by means of actions, and conducting area research the place you watch customers of their pure surroundings.

4. Create a tradition that rewards altering course

In case your group will get punished for admitting they had been fallacious, guess what? They will double down on dangerous concepts fairly than acknowledge the necessity to pivot.

Sensible corporations construct ceremonies that commemorate studying and adjustment. Some startups have accomplished “Pivot Events” — precise celebrations when the group made a significant course correction based mostly on consumer insights. They actually popped champagne after they killed options that analysis confirmed would not succeed. This despatched a robust message: Studying is valued over cussed persistence.

5. Diversify your analysis individuals

In case you solely speak to your most enthusiastic customers, you are creating an echo chamber. Ensure that your analysis contains:

• Potential customers who selected competitor merchandise

• Former customers who deserted your product

• Present customers who hardly ever interact along with your product

• Customers from totally different demographics and use circumstances

This range helps expose blind spots in your understanding.

Associated: 3 Cognitive Pitfalls That Are Ruining Your Business — How to Unravel the Biases in Decision-Making

The paradox of experience

This is the painful fact: The extra skilled you might be in your area, the extra inclined you grow to be to affirmation bias. You’ve got seen patterns earlier than. You’ve got developed instinct. Typically that is extremely beneficial. Different instances, it makes you dangerously overconfident.

The answer is not to disregard your expertise. It is to pair your hard-earned instinct with rigorous processes that check your assumptions. The most effective product leaders I do know have robust convictions loosely held. They make daring bets based mostly on their experience, however they’re fast to regulate when proof contradicts their preliminary hypotheses.

In the long run, the market would not care about your good imaginative and prescient or your elegant answer. It solely cares in the event you’ve solved a real problem in a manner that matches into customers’ lives. And the one technique to know that for positive is to consistently problem what you suppose you recognize about your customers.