The first person whom I contacted for guidance after first creating AdaptivePatterns told me something I didn’t want to hear. “Cobbie, clients of software consulting companies will not pay to do research into whether or not they are solving the right problems, because they are already convinced their solutions are worth implementing.” I insisted that she was wrong. If only one demonstrated to people the shaky ground that they layered their subjective evidence on, and how easy and cheap it was to scientifically provide scaffolding and generate ideas from external evidence rather than nepotistic guessing, people would at least TRY testing their ideas and conclusions. How ironic is it that the evidence for my attestation, my own personal experience, discussions with design thinkers, was not confirmed by my own research.

My intention had been to do the research to test my hypothesis. However, I was so certain I was right, that I kicked the can down the road. “There is always time to confirm that my hypothesis is correct,” was the implied and unspoken declaration for that procrastination. Lessons in bias are lessons in perception. The rocks aren’t easily seen through the reflections and flow of our own personal experience.

Recently a friend suggested that I read The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis. The book reminded me to reflect where I might be open to miscalculation and a resulting delusion. There was plenty of subjective evidence that I had laid on shaky ground. Go figure, I’m human, too, open to confirmation bias, chief among the biases. I was reminded of the advice I’d give any client:

1. Customer perceptions exist whether you calculated correctly or not.
2. Eventually customer behaviors follow and predicting those behaviors earlier gives you options.
3. It is never too late to conduct actionable research.

When you are faced with a realization of bias, of which there are many to fall prey to, the best action is to judge the efficacy of your evidence by challenging held beliefs. An examination of that evidence led AdaptivePatterns to a project we call the DogFood project, an investigation into how research is applied, or not applied when developing digital products, and why. Finally we are testing our own hypothesis, because it is never too late to conduct actionable research.