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Cognitive Dissonance

There’s a well-known phenomenon in cognitive psychology called cognitive dissonance. It’s something that most people are familiar with even if they don’t recognize the label; you get CD when you are confronted with situations that conflict with things you know (or hold strongly to be true). The effects of CD are interesting, ranging from outright denial to perceived physical discomfort. In the long run, however, none of those reactions really help relieve the dissonance - the only solution is to integrate the new information into your beliefs, modifying or abandoning the old ones in the process.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, I’ve just finished reading Alan Cooper’s The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, and I’m still in the CD stage of appreciating what I’ve read. One of Cooper’s main points in the book is that the people who most often do interaction design are often the least suited to do it - the programmers. Unfortunately, the programmers themselves don’t see this problem; they think that everything’s grand, and the product as a whole suffers for their mistakes.

As a programmer myself, and as the sole developer in my group, I’m responsible for pretty much every aspect of my product - from requirements gathering all the way out to maintenance and user support. Of necessity, the scope of my work includes system, UI, and interaction design. Like most programmers, I like to think that I’m good at the things I do (you can begin to see the source of my consternation).

But if Cooper is to be believed, I’m operating under a mistaken view of the world. I am not, in fact, the best person to be doing the design of my software. Even worse, there are some compelling reasons to accept his position… thus, my current state of cognitive dissonance. The questions then arise: how do I integrate Cooper’s theories into my working life? Is it even possible for one individual to serve both design and development?

I can’t imagine that the answers to these (and related) questions will be easy, but I do think that they’ll be beneficial - to me as a developer and to the users of products that I build. All in all, I’d recommend this book to any developer who needs his or her worldview shaken up a bit.