Heuristic

A heuristic is a shortcut the mind uses to decide quickly without full analysis — good enough, most of the time, for a fraction of the effort. They’re a feature, not a flaw: you couldn’t function if every choice ran through deliberate reasoning. Biases are just the predictable places where the shortcut misfires.

I think about heuristics from both sides. Users navigate products almost entirely on them, so good design works with the shortcuts rather than against them — and knowing my own are running keeps me a little more honest in a high-stakes call.