DPM Guest Lunch Talk - April "The Manifestation and Mitigation of Cognitive Bias in User-Centered Design" - by Anastasia Schauer

🧠 Designing with Bias? How to Spot and Overcome Cognitive Shortcuts

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of hosting Anastasia Schauer, PhD from the DUCK Lab at The University of Texas at Austin for a fascinating lunch talk on: "The Manifestation and Mitigation of Cognitive Bias in User-Centered Design" 🎙

Anastasia shed light on how design heuristics - while invaluable for streamlining decision-making - can also introduce cognitive biases that shape engineering choices, particularly in humanitarian design. One key takeaway was the prevalence of availability bias, where designers unintentionally project their own experiences onto end-users from different backgrounds. By integrating insights from engineering design, social sciences, and education, we can develop interventions to enhance perspective-taking and create more inclusive, user-centered solutions.

A big thank you to Anastasia for her thought-provoking talk, as well as to everyone who attended and helped organise this session! 🙌

For those interested in learning more, you can find:
- Anastasia's faculty profile, which includes her contact information and lab website: https://lnkd.in/eyGM-Q8T
- her recent publication on this topic: https://lnkd.in/eMwe24Rb