How can you avoid personal biases in product design feedback?

As a product manager, I’ve learned the importance of mitigating personal biases in product design feedback to ensure we're truly meeting our users' needs. I always strive to gather diverse feedback from a wide array of users, encompassing different backgrounds and perspectives. It's crucial to remain user-focused, grounding discussions in real user behaviors and needs, supported by quantitative data. I encourage anonymous feedback, as it tends to be more honest and unbiased.

Personal biases become unavoidable, but they're the most important thing to avoid. One will always tend to favour or incline towards something that confirms to his/her hypothesis. Feedback is the golden sword that can help win this battle. Collecting, understanding and analysing feedback from varied sources is a good step to overcome this.

Navigating feedback without bias is the product manager’s high-wire act. To avoid the confirmation bias trap, treat your assumptions like suspects in a lineup, scrutinizing each equally. Cast a wide net—seek voices from beyond your usual choir. Pose questions that don’t lead the witness. Anonymize responses to judge feedback on its merits, not its origin. Remember, your role isn’t to gather applause but to unearth truths that make your product not just good, but great. Stay nimble, stay curious, and let every piece of feedback be a compass, not an anchor.

The key in here is honesty: best idea must always win. And yes, you know what that means: it's highly unlikely that you are the only one with good ideas, no matter how much you are into the topic. Now, when testing, pay more attention to those who disagree with your suggested proposition and ask yourself why is this happening. Is it his/her background with the company? Is it about his/her outstanding vision? Is it about his/her experiences in a particular area? Did he/she understand the question properly? Is it the format of your questionnaire, the room, the date? You don't want to simply gather bad feedback; you also want to understand it. Call him/her again and ask even more questions. Find out what is behind.

To sidestep anchoring bias, treat your first design like a draft, not a decree. Diversify your design explorations and stagger feedback rounds to ensure no single idea unduly influences the outcome. Consider all feedback as incremental bids in an auction, with each new piece potentially revaluing your product. Be as fluid in adapting your plans as a jazz musician improvising a new tune. Cultivate a mindset of ‘perpetual beta,’ where ideas evolve and nothing is sacrosanct except the pursuit of the best user experience.

With so much of data around, it is natural to try settling for the first piece of information we receive and start building over it. But this is the worst thing one can do! It's like having terribly segmented A and B parts for A/B testing. And we all know the results in such kinds of A/ B tests.

This is by far the biggest danger, because PMs started the project due to this idea - and no one wants the project to fail. But sometimes, it has fo fail - so you can learn to plan better next time. What is important is that you don't get attached to your own ideas; what matters is to solve someone's needs, not your ambitions. Ask yourself constantly: am I wrong on this one? Challenge yourself and accept the challenges of management. As a PM, you must be a beacon for others: you don't need to sell them you're doing the right thing, they need to validate the proposition you're bringing after evaluating your data and comparing it against their own datasets.

The saying "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" is another example of this bias type. Some users are just noisier than others, but understanding the root cause of an issue in your product will allow you to craft a good solution, even if it isn't the exact one the squeaky wheel wanted.

Choose the remarkable quotes from those who play in a certain group of validated answers; don't pay attention to those who openly confront all the data you gathered. But, also, don't get too excited about those who praise you too much. Remember; what matters is the product, not your show. You want to learn, not to impress. Try to book some time for just watching and listening while your users interact with the prototype. What power relations appear between them? Why? Who looks smarter to you? Is it because he/she is repeating your own thoughts? How do others react to that? Are they good arguments? Who touches and who doesn't? Be inside and outside at the same time, like ethnographic researchers do.

When we would review product marketing for the homepage of Amazon.com, my design team would always start by describing what they were aiming to accomplish with the proposed design--this was informed by the brief they got. They didn't oversell (or undersell) the work. They incorporated insights to substantiate what they recommended. When they got reactions from various leaders, they were ready to counter if they had data to back it up, or take the feedback and move to the next iteration. Looking at product design as an iterative process, take feedback at its face value, but don't let it hold you back or prevent you from trying the same thing again next time.

To continuously improve, I seek feedback on our feedback processes, ensuring they remain robust and unbiased. Awareness and ongoing education about personal biases within my team help foster an environment of continuous learning and improvement. By adhering to these practices, I’m confident in our ability to create products that truly resonate with our diverse user base, free from the clouding influence of personal biases.

I’ve found structured feedback forms with specific, directed questions yield more constructive responses. Utilizing third-party moderators for user testing helps maintain objectivity, and being vigilant about recognizing and challenging our own assumptions is key. It’s also crucial to document design decisions and their rationale, creating a clear record that can be revisited and assessed.

Designing feedback structures after aligning with all the stakeholders, including the ones who might not be directly related, different types of audiences is a good approach to try to mitigate these biases and gain new perspective.