The Bias Project

Cognitive bias cartoons, based on the Wikipedia page and other sources.

As an UX designer and as a cartoonist, I’m always curious about how people behave. I love books like Kahnemans ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ and ‘Being wrong’ from Kathryn Schulz. But a lot of books tell more or less the same story: a little bit of Kahneman (peak-end rule), some e-commerce fundamentals and the Milgram Experiment. Back in 2016 I needed a challenge so I started ‘the bias project’.

Cognitive biases are “tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment”. In other words: we do not process information in the correct way. However, such errors may also have advantages for us, it’s not always a bad thing.

I thought it would be fun to write my own articles instead of reading about them. So I had the following approach:

  1. I red about a bias on Wikipedia
  2. I made a joke about it
  3. And I thought about the impact that bias could have on my work as an UX designer.

Was it scientific? No, it was personal and it was fun. It also was quite difficult. You can read all the articles on medium.com or on this site:

  1. Zeigarnik effect
  2. Von Restorff effect
  3. Verbatim effect
  4. Travis effect
  5. Spacing effect
  6. Humor effect
  7. The availability heuristic
  8. Testing effect
  9. Suggestibility
  10. Stereotypes
  11. Spotlight effect
  12. Social desirability effect
  13. Rosy retrospection
  14. Positivity effect
  15. Picture superiority effect
  16. Persistance effect
  17. Participation bias
  18. Next-in-line effect
  19. Mood congruent bias
  20. List length effect
  21. Lag effect
  22. Illusory correlation
  23. Illusion of truth
  24. Hindsight bias
  25. Google effect
  26. False memory
  27. Dunning-Kruger effect
  28. Alternative blindness
  29. Action bias
  30. Generation effect

And a very special thanks to Wikipedia because I depended heavily on their list of cognitive biases.