Why You Only See What You Want to See

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This post is part of a series about making better product decisions.

You arrive at the office one morning, excited to tell your team about a new idea you had the night before. They look at you nonchalantly. One of them says, “that might work.” You were expecting more.

You don’t hesitate. You jump right in and explain why this is the best thing ever. The. Best. Thing. Ever.

Your team looks doubtful. You respond, “Okay, I get it. You don’t love it. Let me run it by a customer or two and get back to you.”

Undeterred by your team’s lukewarm response, you setup a couple of customer calls. One says, “Sure, that might work.” The other says, “That could work, but I would also need x, y, and z.” You make note of these requests, update your requirements, and take them to your team.

They come around. After all, you talked to a few customers. And as we all know, the customer is always right.

Time passes. Your team builds new-fangled feature with customer-requested x, y, and z. And guess what?

It falls flat. Nobody uses it.

The first customer you talked to didn’t renew.

What about that second customer? They should be thrilled. You even added x, y, and z. Nope, they come back asking for a, b, and c.

What happened?

You probably fell prey to the confirmation bias. 

Too often, we only hear what we want to hear. We fall in love with our ideas, and even when we think to get feedback, we don’t do it in a way that allows us to really evaluate the idea.

The confirmation bias is something that your brain does automatically. You aren’t even aware it’s happening. Your brain is twice as likely to notice confirming information than it is to notice disconfirming information. So even if the two customers you talked to told you exactly why your idea was flawed, you aren’t likely to hear it. The more attached you are to an idea, the more this is true.

Don’t believe me? Consider this situation:

You and a coworker disagree on which direction a particular design should go. You create quick mockups of both and you user test them. You both watch the exact same user tests, but you walk away thinking your design is better and your coworker walks away thinking her design is better. How can this be?

Again, it’s not just about what we look for. It’s what we notice. You noticed all the things in the user test that confirmed your design and you noticed all the things in the user test that disconfirmed your coworker’s design. And she did the exact same thing, but reversed.

It’s not enough to get out of the building. 

If you are a Steve Blank disciple, you  know you need to get out of the building. You need to talk to customers. You need to test your assumptions. But this isn’t enough.

You also need to be aware of and work to overcome the confirmation bias.

How can we mitigate the confirmation bias? 

In Decisive (have I convinced you to buy this book yet?), the Heath brothers, outline three approaches for combatting the confirmation bias.

1. Make it easier for people to disagree with you. 

When you respond to resistance with, “This is the Best. Idea. Ever. Ever!”, you aren’t making it easy for people to disagree with you. In fact, you are doing quite the opposite.

When you need to evaluate whether or not an idea will work, temper the excitement. Ask for feedback from a neutral position. Make it just as easy for people to disagree with you as it is for them to agree with you.

2. Ask questions that surface contrary information. 

But don’t just stop there. Ask for contrary information. Ask why this idea won’t work. In the above example, ask about their ambivalence. If they aren’t jumping up and down with excitement along side you, maybe they see something you don’t. Or don’t see something you do. Get at it. Don’t ignore this gap, work hard to understand it.

3. Consider the opposite. 

And finally, consider doing the exact opposite. What if you did nothing? What if you went in the complete opposite direction? What would happen? Don’t move on until you’ve convinced yourself (and ideally someone else) that you’ve really considered this option.

Don’t just take these steps with your team. Use them when you are talking with customers. Maybe you’ll find that what that first customer didn’t say was, yes, that solution would solve their problem, but it’s too late as they just signed a big contract with your competitor.

Maybe what that second customer didn’t say was, that’s close to what I want, but then I’d need this, this, and this, and that might work, but I don’t really have a handle on my problem, so I’m really not sure. If you are just looking for what you want to hear, you won’t uncover all of this, you probably stopped listening at “that might work.”

Your brain is wired to look for confirming information. But to build great products, we need to objectively evaluate our ideas, seeing both the confirming and the disconfirming information. Work hard to ensure your product team knows disagreement is good, actively look for contrary information, and develop a habit of considering the opposite.

What do you do to overcome confirmation bias? Pleas share in the comments. 

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions.