Creating a culture of self-reflection and mutual accountability

Abstract

Unchecked bias is one of the most significant threats to the user experience (UX) field today. In Bill Albert's (2015) article, Fox Guarding the Usability Lab, he claimed that bias stemming from a conflict of interest, in which designers test their own designs, gets in the way of best practices and could irreparably stagnate the growth of this field over time. The issue of bias in modern user research and user-centered design could impact whether the field blossoms---as we know it should---or loses credibility among stakeholders. While we wholeheartedly agree that bias is challenging, solving this problem by ensuring that designers do not test their own designs is a nice goal but often unrealistic. Situations arise where teams are small, budgets are tight, and UX professionals have to be generalists who test their own designs. In those cases, teams must be thoughtful and take care to mitigate bias that when testing one's own design can introduce. Ideally, the solution to bias is creating a culture of self-reflection and mutual accountability.

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