Cognitive Bias

A cognitive bias is a consistent deviation from rational judgment — the predictable shortcut your mind takes that quietly steers you wrong. The key word is systematic: biases aren’t random mistakes, they’re the same error showing up across people and situations, which is what makes them designable-around.

For anyone building products this is both threat and tool. Your users have them, your stakeholders have them, and you have them. Naming the specific bias in play turns a vague “people are irrational” into something you can actually account for.