How Affirmation Bias Is Destroying Your Product

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

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

Associated: How Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Affirmation 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 optimistic quotes from consumer periods whereas ignoring detrimental patterns

• Asking main questions designed to elicit particular solutions

• Limiting your analysis to customers who already love your product

• Decoding silence or confusion as settlement

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

Look, I get it. You have already informed your leaders and buyers concerning the wonderful function roadmap. You have 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 unattainable.

However staying on the doomed course is worse.

Associated: Do You Know What Your Prospects Need? Are You Positive?

Breaking the bias cycle

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

1. Separate information assortment from interpretation

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

This separation creates a wholesome stress. The interview workforce focuses on asking good questions quite than main customers towards predetermined conclusions. The evaluation workforce 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 satan’s advocate throughout analysis planning. This individual must be asking: “How may we disprove our speculation?” quite than “How can we validate our thought?”

For instance, as a substitute of asking “Would you utilize this function?” strive “What would stop you from utilizing this function?” The primary query virtually at all times will get a well mannered “sure.” The second offers 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’re going to enthusiastically inform you they’d undoubtedly use your new function, however when it launches, they persist with their previous habits.

I’ve discovered it way more beneficial to look at what customers truly do quite than what they are saying they will do. This implies analyzing utilization information from present options, creating prototype experiences the place customers can reveal preferences by means of actions, and conducting area research the place you watch customers of their pure atmosphere.

4. Create a tradition that rewards altering course

In case your workforce will get punished for admitting they had been improper, guess what? They’ll double down on dangerous concepts quite than acknowledge the necessity to pivot.

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

5. Diversify your analysis individuals

When you solely speak to your most enthusiastic customers, you are creating an echo chamber. Be sure your analysis contains:

• Potential customers who selected competitor merchandise

• Former customers who deserted your product

• Present customers who hardly ever have interaction together with your product

• Customers from completely different demographics and use instances

This variety helps expose blind spots in your understanding.

Associated: 3 Cognitive Pitfalls That Are Ruining Your Enterprise — The right way to Unravel the Biases in Determination-Making

The paradox of experience

This is the painful reality: The extra skilled you might be in your area, the extra vulnerable you grow to be to affirmation bias. You have seen patterns earlier than. You have developed instinct. Generally 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 take a look at your assumptions. The perfect product leaders I do know have sturdy convictions loosely held. They make daring bets based mostly on their experience, however they’re fast to regulate when proof contradicts their preliminary hypotheses.

Ultimately, the market would not care about your good imaginative and prescient or your elegant answer. It solely cares in the event you’ve solved an actual downside in a means that matches into customers’ lives. And the one method to know that for certain is to always problem what you suppose you already know about your customers.