While people would want to believe that their judgments are reasonable and logical, the truth is that they are constantly influenced by cognitive biases, even when they don’t know it. Product designers, politicians, and megacorporations are focusing on these prejudices as a way to make their products more appealing. In the drive to get people’s attention, they take advantage of people’s psychological weaknesses (consciously and subconsciously).
Although cognitive biases are mostly employed in the creation of political and digital goods, there is a need for tools that promote awareness in society and even benefit the average person. Megacorporations, politicians, and anybody else may be “disarmed” with such tools by popularizing conscious work with manipulation and nudging technology.
UX Core Guide, a free tool by Wolf Alexanyan to be used in common product management issues was born out of this need. Wolf’s major interest is in researching cognitive science disciplines in order to better understand human behavior and thought processes. In the year 2020, Wolf completed a 2.5 – year research on cognitive biases and published his findings in two pieces: The Science of User Experience, a guide on leveraging our brain’s mistakes and biases to generate solutions, and UX CORE, which includes 105 examples of cognitive biases used in software development and team management.
The major objective of the UX Core Guide project was to show individuals how many mistakes they make in their daily thought processes and how little they know about themselves. He also intended to demonstrate the underestimated value of this knowledge, which we tend to overlook in our daily lives.
A year later, on December 23rd, 2020, Wolf and his team have developed UX Core Guide (UXCG) – a free tool that allows users to look at the most critical questions in product and project management in the context of cognitive science and behavioral economics.
Let’s get even a better understanding of the UX Core Guide. Have you ever heard of design patterns? I’ll explain…
In software engineering, a design pattern is a broad, repeatable solution to a frequent problem in software design. One of the most intriguing aspects of patterns is their ability to answer fundamental issues without delving too deeply into supporting details.
UX Core Guide accomplishes the same thing, but from the standpoint of cognitive biases – scientifically proven patterns of human thinking. It presents alternative viewing angles of the most prevalent questions in Product Management.
We may consider this tool to be “Stackoverflow ” for managers. UXCG has 63 universal questions instead of people’s opinions, each having at least five viewing perspectives from the standpoint of distinct cognitive biases. In total, Wolf wrote 896 answers away from personal opinion and closer to science and data.
How to Use UX Core Guide
In terms of ease of use, UX Core Guide is a super-easy tool to use. One of the really cool parts of using UXCG is that it allows you to quickly see paths that you have never noticed before and act more confidently because of the cognitive science backing your actions up. The tool also provides you with a response that may be used to simulate a real-life event with relative ease.
Identify the issue you’re interested in (manually or by search engine) and then read the response to see how a certain bias handles your question in detail. Knowing exactly why you have this question, it’s possible to create a simulation of how you would address it in the real world.
In addition to seeing new pathways and acting more confidently since you’re supported by science, this tool helps you to discover new paths that were previously unknown.
The advantage of this tool is that the user obtains a dozen scientific vectors through which he may evaluate the topic.
The downside of UXCG is that the user will have to think. Yes, the answers are specific, but they are provided within the framework of some abstraction, which means that the user will have to recreate the scenario in his mind, taking into consideration the context of his query.
What Motivated The UX Core Project
At this point, Wolf is well-known for his interest in researching diverse cognitive science fields in order to better understand human behavior and thinking, but what sparked this incredible project?
Wolf was inspired by Stackoverflow in the first place. He intended to implement a few ideological concepts from this platform in UXCG.
Stackoverflow allows programmers to open dozens of identical queries, evaluate hundreds of responses and come up with their own unique solution to the problem after seeing all the different points of view. Some complicated problems may never have a ready-made solution that can be copied and pasted into their project. This means that the programmer will have to modify the code to his/her own system in order to use it properly. For example, they may opt to develop their own solution, adopting another programmer’s approach.
Particularly, programming uses abstractions too, although it is regarded as a more specialized subject than management, where activities are typically connected with user emotions.
Wolf’s versatility on what he does was the second factor that encouraged him to go on this long journey. Homo sapiens will benefit from all of the solutions he provides, which examine specific situations from a variety of perspectives utilizing various cognitive biases. And this is when firms like Neuralink bring BMI (Brain-Machine Interfaces) technologies to a level where it will be feasible to quickly identify connections in the patterns of our thoughts and changing emotional backdrops. This won’t be anytime soon.
How Can We Contribution To This project
Wolf urges us all to explore, understand, and share information about UX Core and UXCG. UX Core has been acknowledged and certified by world-class scientists, and they all believe that this is one of the most essential information chunks that every human being should read and understand. Sharing these tools will make the world a better place to live in, and may even lead to the creation of something better.
