1. 5 Ways to Outsmart Your Brain And Make Better Product Decisions Lauren Gilchrist (@lgilchrist) Lean Agile Scotland 2014

2. About Me Product Manager at Pivotal Labs 6 Years of Startups

3. Product Decisions are Hard Extreme Uncertainty Incomplete Information Time Sensitive

4. Were Good at Intuitive Decisions System 1 Gut Instinct or Intuition

5. Were Pretty Good at Logic System 2 Analytical or Logical

6. But System 1 is Easily Distracted Which Weighs More? 100 Kilos of Bricks 100 Kilos of Feathers

7. Anatomy of a Bad Decision System 1 blinks System 2 snoozes

8. How System 1 Causes Bad Product Decisions 1. Assumes Causation 2. Has Selective Hearing 3. Assumes Others Care 4. Assumes Others Know 5. Underestimates Time & Price

9. 1. Assumes Causation

10. 1. Assumes Causation

11. 1. Outsmart Causation Bias Assume correlation, not causation Focus on replicable outcomes Fear what you cant explain

12. 2. Has Selective Hearing

13. 2. Has Selective Hearing Are users actually engaged for a full hour?

14. 2. Outsmart Confirmation Bias If it sounds too good to be true, it is Validate with your users Validate with your peers

15. 3. Assumes Others Care Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it. - Daniel Kahneman

16. 3. Assumes Others Care

17. 3. Assumes Others Care

18. 3. Outsmart Focusing Effect Use personas to remind you that you are not your user Talk to your users

19. 4. Assumes Others Know

20. 4. Assumes Others Know 50 Listeners, 50 Tappers Tappers listen to a song and tap the beat Listeners guess song Half of tappers think listeners will guess the song correctly 3% of listeners actually guess correctly

21. 4. Assumes Others Know

22. 4. Assume Others Know

23. 4. Outsmart Curse of Knowledge Get out of the building!

24. 5. Underestimates Time & Price Americans remodeling their kitchens expected the job to cost $18,658 They ended up paying $38,769

25. 5. Underestimates Time & Price Estimate when you will finish your thesis 13% of the students finished by their 50% probable date 19% finished by their 75% probable date 45% (less than half!) finished by their 99% probable date

26. 5. How to Outsmart Estimate complexity, not time Estimate for others, not yourself Estimate past actions

27. System 1 Affects Product Decisions 1. Causation Bias 2. Confirmation Bias 3. Focusing Effect 4. Curse of Knowledge 5. Planning Fallacy

28. How to Outsmart System 1 Don't let yourself act on intuition Think, dont blink Practice Lean Experiments

29. QUESTIONS?

30. Thank you! Lauren Gilchrist @lgilchrist lgilchrist@pivotal.io