Do you make decisions consciously or unconsciously?
Published in · 6 min read · Feb 25, 2020
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Do you view yourself as Mr. Spock when it comes to decision-making? Do you believe that you make decisions based on facts? That you consider relevant facts and make the best decision based on that? Yeah, you do. Right? And I guess you suspect where I am going with this… In this article, I will present some facts that will change the way you think about decision-making, and that are extremely useful when working as a designer.
Susan Weinschenk is a behavioral psychologist and her book 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People was one of the first books I read about the psychology of design. Since then she has been my hero. In one of her online classes, Brain and Behavioral Science, she states that around the year 2000, researchers within the field learned that most of the decisions we make are unconscious. In fact, up to 90% of our decision-making is unconscious. Susan sais that:
“We often like to think that we’re like Mr. Spock in Star Trek, and very rational and logical. But we’re not. And, if you want to really reach people, if you want to communicate with them, if you want to…
