CAREER: Characterizing Error Management Cognitive Bias in Design - A Path to Better Design

Cognitive bias can have significantly negative impacts on the success of decision-making and actions in human behavior, having been documented in many different forms and areas of application. The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award is to gain a deeper understanding of the role that error management cognitive bias plays in design process, and to identify and test means to mitigate that bias.

Error management biases decision-making toward errors that are less costly. In design practice, error management may relate to concerns like self-preservation of one's livelihood or conservation of resources. Cognitive-based engineering design studies are performed with the perspective that if we can understand the way that designers think and work, we will be able to determine the practices, methods, tools, environments, and stimulation that lead to the best design output.

Error management bias is a permeating presence in all human decision-making, and a clearer picture of its effects on design could fundamentally improve the way design problems are solved. A deeper, more complete understanding of the role of error management bias in design will also enhance design education techniques and learning outcomes. The educational objective of this CAREER award is to contribute to increasing the diversity of STEM fields, with particular focus on strengthening the pipeline through programming for K-12 girls and young women and racial minorities.

In partnership with the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, GA, a three-part project will be executed: 1) engage a diverse national audience of children in Title I schools through a puppet-based, STEM-focused Distance Learning curriculum; 2) provide a local interactive, puppet-based, STEM education experience geared toward girls and minority children in the Atlanta area; and 3) provide a service learning experience for Georgia Tech engineering undergraduate students to engage in mentorship of girls and minority children through a cooperative STEM puppet exhibit design course. Through the these educational activities, underrepresented K-12 students, locally and nationally, will gain more interest in, and self-efficacy for, pursuing STEM studies and careers.

Ultimately, by increasing diversity in STEM fields, more successful teams and innovation outcomes will be possible.

This research is focused on furthering the development of new fundamental knowledge in the areas of design theory and methodology to gain a deeper understanding of the role that error management bias plays in the way design practice is performed and learned. Error management biases can include loss aversion bias, status quo bias, context-dependent preferences and many more.

The specific goals are: 1) to gain a deeper understanding of the role that error management bias plays in design process; 2) to identify means to mitigate error management bias in the design process; and 3) to test and validate the means to mitigate error management bias in the design process. In design practice, error management bias could be beneficial, or dangerous, when it comes to decision-making.

When approaching the study of error management biases in design, it will be important not only to recognize when, where and how these biases manifest, but also the potential impact of the biases on the design outcomes--which may not necessarily be negative. This research approach is centered on in-situ, ethnographic, and laboratory based studies of design practice in novices and expert designers to uncover and study the most prevalent forms of error management biases in design, as well as techniques for their mitigation, in detail.

By studying error management biases in design more broadly and deeply, researchers and practitioners will be able to understand and improve design practice for more objective, rational actions and decision-making and, ultimately, better design innovation outcomes. This research will help to open up a broad, relatively unexplored area of inquiry in design theory and methods research.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.