UX Planet — Medium | Anton Nikolov Never giving up can lead to bad results sometimes

There is a tremendous power in knowing when to quit. This is true as a life principle and also as a design principle. It is also known as “The Sunk Costs Fallacy”.

Let’s look at an example that happened to me last week. It illustrates well the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

I’ve already been waiting for bus A8 for 10 min. I need to take it for approximately 3 km ride. The buss should have been on the bus stop 4 min ago.

– What should I do? It will come in a bit, I will wait a few more minutes.

After 10 more min the bus was still not at the bus stop.
– Probably it will come any moment. There is no point in me going by foot.

55 min later. I got home by walking all the way. It took me 1 h 15 min in total to get home, whereas if I just walked the distance it could have saved me at least 30–40 min.

This illustrates my wrong judgment, which was influenced from the past investment of time.

Here is a nice video that gives a few other examples. In particular the book example relates well to me. (I should learn from it 🙂 )

The sunk cost fallacy is the act of investing in an activity or product because of past investments of time, effort, or money even when the return on investment is not available anymore.

Humans are not that rational. This leads to letting past investments influence future ones all the time. This unfortunately applies to every field of our life including design.

Sunk cost fallacy in design

Imagine, you’ve spent days in polishing new UI mockups making them pixel perfect. Than on the user tests you get a comments like “This is shit! I can’t even wipe my… with it.”

User reaction to your UI

Do you ignore this as a single case and continue forward to hand in the designs for development? After all you’ve spent so much time on these designs, they can’t be that bad, right? Right?

Fortunately, more companies today are switching to agile methodologies that allow for iterative design process. This helps to avoid the sunk cost fallacy. Yet, it is still a dangerous beast that Designers should be aware of.

As Designers we need to make sure to design in short iterations and get feedback as frequently as possible. This way we can avoid getting too attached to our designs. Also we can avoid investing too much time, effort or money going in the wrong direction.

Find the root of the problem and kiss the feature kreep. These two principles will keep the sunk cost fallacy away from you.

• Design principles: Root of the problem
• Design principles: KISS the Feature creep

Know when to quit to win

People fear failure more than they desire success. This fear leads us directly into investing excessively at times and becoming victim of the sunk cost effect. Idioms like “Never give up”, “Quitter never win” contribute additionally to our vulnerability to the sunk cost effect.

If you are a smart human, sometimes you have to quit to win. Be smart!

Only the cost-benefits of current options should influence decisions. Bring your thinking and decision making to the here and now.

Be aware of phrases like “We can’t quit now after all the effort and money we’ve put into this.” or “I’ve invested so much already” and similar phrases.

If you notice these types of thoughts in your head or your colleagues are saying them, ring the alarm. Stop and re-evaluate the situation rationally. Look at them from a perspective where you don’t allow the fear of failure to make the choices.

Sum up

Leave the past where it belongs and focus on current cost-benefits only. Focus on short iterations and make sure that you get frequent feedback. This will reduce the risk of sunk cost fallacy to a minimum.

If you are going in the wrong direction it doesn’t matter how much effort you’ve put previously or how fast you’re going. Remember, there is tremendous power in knowing when to quit.

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Design principles: Know when to quit was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.