Bridging the Gap: Our Predictable Irrational Behaviours.
Understanding human behaviour is essential to designing spaces that truly resonate with users. However, the challenge lies in navigating the gap between how people say they will behave and how they actually do, a discrepancy often shaped by our evolutionary hardwiring and cognitive biases. These predictable but irrational behaviours frequently derail rational design assumptions, resulting in spaces that fail to meet user needs.
By observing patterns of repeated behaviour and integrating insights from behavioural science, designers can craft imperfect spaces that enable perfect human engagement, optimising health, functionality, and commercial success.
Our Predictable Irrational Behaviours
The primary challenge with designing incredible spaces that people will be drawn to, love, and enjoy is ensuring the exact blend of volumes, textures, natural light, artificial light, and furniture that will attract people to the space and enable them to function naturally and comfortably.
The primary obstacle, however, to achieving these exact measurable patterns of design is often the cognitive bias that exists with both client and designer, called the “curse of knowledge.” This refers to the difficulty of thinking about a problem from the perspective of actual behaviour versus expected behaviour, as real behaviour is often completely irrational.
We assume that people make rational decisions, but behavioural science shows us that this is far from the truth. How people think they will behave, or even say they will behave, and how they actually behave within certain environments or conditions are often severely misaligned. Our evolutionary hardwiring, that is, the way we process information, is full of biases and miscalculations, leading to errors in our thought processes and irrational decisions that result in irrational behaviours. The net result of this misalignment is the creation of design solutions that may seem completely correct on paper but are entirely incorrect for the specific human behaviours within specific environments.
As mentioned in a prior newsletter, the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, a behavioural psychologist, explains in depth why people behave so irrationally. Ariely also highlights that this measure of behaviour is not random but, in fact, repetitive and predictable.
To design a successful human experience, we must often design imperfect spaces for perfect human engagement.
Patterns of Behaviour
As specialist hospitality designers (COOOP), we are less interested in why people do what they do and more focused simply on what they do repeatedly. Through years of observation, specifically within the field of hospitality design, we have established that the actions and attitudes of people within specific environments often correlate to exact patterns that can be measured and documented for a repetitive pattern or set of design solutions.
Apart from the evolutionary hardwiring mentioned earlier, these patterns are also partly informed by culture, ergonomics, economy, and the herd effect, what others are doing within the same environment.
Designing for human behaviour can thus at least partly bridge the gap between actions, i.e., "what we think people will do and what they actually do" (or prefer to do), and the time needed to arrive at the correct answers for the most optimal design solution. This gap is at the core of every design problem.
Apart from the obvious health benefits of designing for human behavioural patterns, this approach is also fundamentally important for the success of any commercial enterprise.
Information Reference Index:
Why We Do What We Do: Designing for Human Behaviour
Hoffman, L.
https://www.example.com/why-we-do-what-we-do
How understanding behavioural patterns can lead to more effective design strategies tailored to human actions and preferences.
What is Behavioural Design?
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
The Psychology of Design
Design for Human Behaviour in Social Spaces
The Impact of Cognitive Bias on Design Solutions
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