How Confirmation is destroying your product

The most dangerous words of product development are: “Our users will like it.” I have heard this declaration in countless product meetings, usually after months of engineering and ends with the painful frustration of the user. The culprit? Confirmation bias – our brain’s madness trends to get information that we already accept.

As a product manager, we were hired to make decisions. We analyze markets, collect needs and prefer features. The problem is, once we create a speculation about consumers’ wishes, we start filtering all incoming information through this lens. The ambiguous feedback is interpreted as auxiliary. Negative opinions are labeled “edge cases”. And slowly, we make an alternative reality where our product decisions are always excellent.

Related: How Trader can overcome the Confirmation bias

User Research Theater

The “User Research Theater” refers to the motivations to talk to consumers, which is not really open to challenge your assumptions. You can identify these symptoms in your organization:

• Positive References that pick up cherry from user sessions while neglecting negative samples

• Asking the leading questions prepared to clarify specific answers

• Limiting your research to users who already like your products

• To interpret silence or confusion as a contract

• Rejecting the negative opinion, “they don’t yet find it”.

Look, I got it. You have already told your leaders and investors about the amazing feature roadmap. You hired engineers on the basis of some technical assumptions. The whole story of your company can be built around a particular vision of consumer wishes. It seems impossible to change the course.

But being on a waste course is worse.

Related: Do you know what your users want? Do you believe?

Break the cycle of prejudice

So, how will we really fix it? How do we create a process that challenges our passionate assumptions rather than strengthening them? Here are some practical perspectives I have seen work:

1. Separate data collection from the interpretation

A team with whom I worked did a practice where people interviewing the user were not allowed to translate the results. They could only do the document that was said. A separate team – without emotional investment in a specific result – will then analyze the copies. This reduced the trend of listening during interviews.

This separation creates a healthy stress. The interview team is focused on asking good questions rather than guiding users toward the default results. The analysis team makes samples without being affected by the mutual dynamics of the consumer’s or interview.

2. Find actively exempt evidence

Make a specific job of playing a devil’s lawyer during the research plan. This person should ask: “How can we prove our assumption wrong?” Instead, “How can we correct our idea?”

For example, instead of asking, “Will you use this feature?” Try “What will you stop using this feature?” The first question is almost always humble “yes”. Second gives you real obstacles that you will need to overcome.

3. Pay attention to behavior, not just feedback

Consumers are notorious for predicting their future behavior. They will enthusiastically tell you that they will definitely use your new feature, but when it is launched, they remain with their old habits.

I find it more valuable to observe what consumers actually do, rather than what they will do. This means analyzing the data from current features, creating prototype experiences where users can demonstrate preferences through functions, and conduct field studies where you see users in your natural environment.

4. Create a culture that reveals the converted course

If your team is punished for admitting that they were wrong, guess what. They are going to double the bad ideas instead of acknowledging the need for the axis.

Smart companies produce events that celebrate learning and adjustment. Some startups have performed “axis parties” – when the team corrected the user’s insightful course, the actual events. When he killed such features, he literally pops the shampoo, which research shows that he will not succeed. He sent a powerful message: Learning value is higher than a stupid perseverance.

5. Make your research participants diverse

If you just talk to your enthusiastic users, you are making the Eco Chamber. Make sure your research includes:

• Potential consumers who choose competitors products

• Former consumers who abandon your product

• Existing users who are rarely engaged with your product

• Users from different settlements and use issues

This diversity helps to expose the blind places in your understanding.

Related: 3 Academic Disadvantages that are ruining your business-how to open prejudice in judgment making

The contradiction of skill

The traumatic fact is: The more experienced you are in your domain, you become more sensitive than the bias of verification. You have seen the sample before. You have developed the intuition. Sometimes it is incredibly valuable. Secondly, it makes you dangerously more confident.

The solution is not to ignore your experience. This is to connect your hard -earned intuition with strict processes that test your assumptions. I know that the best product leaders are given strong punishment. They make bold conditions based on their skills, but when they conflict with their early assumptions, they quickly adjust to adjusting.

Finally, the market doesn’t care about your wonderful vision or your beautiful solution. This is only if you have solved a real problem that fits consumer life. And the only way to know is that you know about your users that you think permanently challenge.