What is the role of designers in good decision making?
The science behind decision making is speeding up with advances in neuroscience and genetics, but there is still a lot to learn to fully understand what free will is and how much control, if any, do we have as individuals in the choices we make.
We do know already that choice making is a complex process that doesn’t happen in a fully conscious level. We have hardwired mechanisms but parts of our brains are also plastic, and we also know that there is not one localised place in the brain for this process, but different inputs trigger different areas of the brain, and many connections are involved. Emotions, for instance, can influence our actions without us being aware of it. The amygdalae, those little almond-shaped structures in our brains involved with emotional memories, have been identified by neuroscientists as having an important role in decision making.
Designers know a lot about influencing decisions, we are taught to communicate information in a way that we can predict reactions. Our role as interaction designers is usually to drive people to make certain choices that are beneficial to business purposes, but we actually have a bigger responsibility when it comes to the people we design for, to help them make good conscious choices.
Designing Daybreak, a health program for people to change their relationship with alcohol, has helped me highlight the need for understanding more about how we make choices, how the debate around free will impacts popular beliefs and how this affects us morally. When it comes to behaviour change, it helps to understand how unconscious and conscious levels define our actions.
Good conscious choices rely on the combination of a rich baggage of information and an adequate environment. Most of this might not be in the hands of the designer, but clear human-centered goals and a design process that values research, testing, and transparency will help to make our part right. On top of that, it’s important that we design for free will: empowering people to make responsible, slower but more conscious choices, backed up with evidence based data. Maybe it’s time to switch from a “Don’t make me think” strategy into helping our users “think slow”, understanding the variables and consequences of their choices.
