One of the greatest challenges as a UX practitioner is objectivity – user feedback is a minefield of cognitive biases: observer-expectancy, social desirability, Hawthorne Effect, etc. This talk, however, is less about your users and more about you. We’ll focus specifically on confirmation bias: how your internal likes & dislikes can affect UX decision-making.

User feedback & testing is just one part of shaping UX design; one must also consider

a wealth of analytics data,

initiatives from marketing & creative departments,

broader global trends in design & industry,

and more.

This talk will cover how to balance & prioritize these variables, with anecdotes & case studies on the unintended/unexpected effects of focusing too much on one or the other.