UC San Diego

The goal of user-centered design is to match product features with the needs and capabilities of individuals. While much has been written about the role of empathy in allowing product designers to understand their customers' needs and capabilities, empathy gives an incomplete perspective on the product design process. Empathy alone does not address systemic decision biases of consumers, partly because designers are subject to many of the same biases. The current work addresses this gap in product designer and consumer perspectives using behavioral decision theory. Behavioral decision theory (BDT) is the descriptive study of human choice behavior. There an opportunity to enhance designer understanding of consumer decision processes by integrating BDT into the product development process. The contribution of the current work is two-fold. First, I present relevant biases in the product development cycle from the perspective of designers. The second part is a research review of important consumer decision research on the construction of preferences and cognitive effort. I propose that BDT can be integrated into product development to enhance the consumer experience by using reference dependence, choice architecture, and cognitive effort as design tools. The limited scope of the current work does not allow for a comprehensive review of all applicable decision biases, it is intended to raise awareness about some of the most relevant decision biases to product designers