Cognitive Dissonance: Why Your User’s Brains Hurt

http://www.fuelyourcreativity.com/cognitive-dissonance-why-your-users-brains-hurt/

by jsmibert • 15 years ago

13 1 15 years ago

Karellen• 15 years ago

One thing that helps me in this sort of situation is that I've decided a lot of the time I don't need to make the "best" decision, I just need to make a "good" decision. The increase in "value" of picking the best option over another good option is less than the effort of figuring out which option is best.

One of the things that got me to that conclusion were managers at work who kept changing their mind about what needed doing.

We'd get half-way through one project, and then they'd decide that a second project was more important/valuable so we'd drop the first and start work on the second. Ditto with a third. The result being that although these successive projects were theoretically increasingly valuable to the company, the fact that none of them got completed meant almost no value was actually created! Not to mention morale was pretty terrible.

Pick one thing and do it. Even if you later find out it's not the best thing you could be doing, providing it's still a good thing to be doing, finish the job anyway. If the thing you're doing is useless (or worse), sure, fuhgeddaboutit. Until then, stick with a good decision, even if it's not the best.

Cognitive Dissonance: Why Your User’s Brains Hurt

Related Stories