Cognitive Biases and Overdesign: an investigation on the unconscious mistakes of industrial designers and on their effects on product offering

This paper aims at analyzing the problem of overdesign from the perspective of the prospect theory. Overdesign occurs when designers develop products or services whose features, functionalities and degree of variety exceed clients’ requirements, thus leading to a number of problems: time to market become longer, development costs increase and, furthermore, clients are likely not to appreciate the product since, given its level of complexity, they frequently misuse it. Understanding why designers frequently incur in the problem of overdesign can help companies in preventing its unfavorable effects. Building on the prospect theory developed by Kahneman and Tversky, we move from the hypothesis that a major cause of overdesign relies on a bundle of cognitive biases, which lead designers to undertake value destroying actions. This paper presents the findings of a survey carried out on a sample of Italian industrial designers, which can help in shedding light on the psychological roots of overdesign and also in understanding how and to what extent cognitive biases driver overdesign.