Have you considered how cognitive bias may affect your technical documentation life cycle and reviews, especially when using a DITA CCMS to author structured content?
Cognitive bias refers to systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. It’s the individual tendencies, beliefs and behaviors that end up influencing the reality of situations and behaviors.
Particularly in the review phase, and even more so when you are considering collaborative reviews and breaking silos, the component aspect of structured content authoring adds a new dimension to the choice and method of sending topics from your DITA CCMS for review.
Groupthink
One of the most detrimental of the biases in terms of technical documentation reviews, this refers to one or more members of a group embracing an idea based on the number of people who hold that belief.
In a technical documentation review setting, this might become evident as the number of reviewers grow, and they see previous comments that have been made in the document. As everyone else is pointing out one aspect of the document that needs revision, other parts of the document that might also need a change start getting left behind.
The review comments are thus increasingly grouped on a particular topic or point in the document.
Bandwagon Effect
Occurs when people tend to adopt certain behaviors, beliefs, or trends because they perceive that a majority of others are doing the same, or “jump on the bandwagon”.
On technical documentation, many “wagons” might exist since different group of people will be reviewing the document, such as; engineers, designers, marketing and legal, regulatory affairs and the list goes on.
Ingroup Bias
This tends to lead to several bandwagons within the review cycle, which, in some cases, will lead to conflicting feedback. As the comments come in, smaller groups are formed and the tendency to agree with what members of the same group notice and comment on starts to split the eventual result of the feedback that is received by the writer.
As these biases develop during the review process, another one can then kick in to further dilute the efficacy of the review.
Confirmation bias
The acceptance of unfamiliar approaches to the information received is not in the nature of humans. We tend to like people and ideas that agree with our existing beliefs. As such, new and better ideas on the way that information is presented can face resistance from others.
For example, the shift from PDF delivery to HTML help systems. This change will face resistance from those accustomed to traditional formats. While PDF users argue for familiarity, embracing HTML may offer more efficient information retrieval.
However, acknowledging these biases within professional groups, like the technical writing community, is crucial.
Selective perception
While this bias is more often present at the planning stage of product developments where it addresses issues of design choice, those issues might come back during the review based on previous relationships and interactions with other team members.
Example of factors that can lead to selective perception are:
- Returning a favor
- Previous conflicts between requester and reviewer,
- Same content presented to the same reviewer but by two different
Information Cascade
Occurs when individuals in a group rely on the actions or judgments of others, especially those considered experts, rather than their own independent assessment.
This will create a cascading effect where the initial opinions heavily influence subsequent judgments.
If you have a project and is getting into structured content, get in contact with us to talk about trying a CCMS:
Anchoring bias
The first piece of information or feedback received, will tend to set a baseline for the information that follows.
As we adopt componentized content creation, the writer must now be aware that sending individual topics for review may now generate different feedback depending on the selection/group of topics that was sent for review.
Focalism
This effect underscores the importance of always setting a context for review and to allow the reviewer access to the entire content set for each round of reviews as opposed to different chunks sent out over a period of time.
For example, consider a scenario involving procedures for high-voltage equipment. A reviewing engineer, based on a partial set of topics and the review request’s subject, might recommend applying “LOTO – Lock-Out-Tag-Out” to the entire procedure. However, if they had the broader context, they might realize that a specific part of the procedure only requires applying a warning label without shutting down the generator.
Framing bias
This is another way in which the way you construct the review process and instructions can affect the results of the review.
Here is an example given by David Dylan Thomas in a podcast:
“Imagine you’re at a party exploring different rooms with buffet tables. In one room, meat-based foods are labeled as 95% fat-free, and in the next, they’re listed as containing 5% fat. Despite being mathematically identical, most people would lean toward the “95% fat-free” option due to how it’s framed. This bias, known as the framing effect, is influenced by how a question or situation is presented.”
Similarly, when framing your review tasks, questions, or requests, consider the potential impact on Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). The way you frame content for review can shape how SMEs prioritize and provide feedback, emphasizing the need for thoughtful framing to enhance the effectiveness of the review process.
Egocentric bias
Is the tendency to rely too heavily on one’s own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality. Of the number of biases classed under the egocentric label the following should be considered in relation to technical documentation reviews.
False consensus effect
This bias, applied to feedback given when reviewing a document can give the impression that the subject has been discussed as a group and a consensus has been reached.
There is a tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them. Use this as an example:
“Without a formal vote on the statement, there is no way that this statement can ever be true, as I’m sure you all agree.”
Planning fallacy
The tendency for people to underestimate the time it will take them to complete a given task.
In technical documentation reviews, this can be applied to the amount of time and the number of cycles different actors believe is required to complete the document and get it approved.
This is one that applies to practically all aspects of work and life.
Decision making
Everyone has personal opinions, and that’s normal. However, in the context of content reviews, it’s crucial to set aside personal biases to ensure an objective assessment.
Check the points below:
Choice-Supportive Bias
This bias can affect reviews when Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) were previously against specific content during the planning phase. If an SME had reservations about a feature or even a simple design choice, they might approach the review with less enthusiasm. This bias can lead to overly critical feedback, impacting the overall review process.
Unconscious Nature of Biases
It’s important to note that biases are often unconscious reactions to stimuli, meaning SMEs might not be aware of their biases during the content review.
Illusion Bias
One particularly detrimental bias is the Illusion Bias, which can significantly impact the entire content strategy established by the technical writing department. Illusion Bias has various subgroups, each with its own set of influences on the review process.
Observational selection bias
The timing of Subject Matter Expert (SME) involvement in a review significantly influences outcomes. When an SME commences a review based on prior experiences or during content evaluation, an observational selection bias can emerge.
This bias is driven by the inclination towards the “more is better” principle, triggered by sentiments like “I’ve seen this before” and “This is interesting.”
Pro-innovation bias
A tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation, while failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses. While not linked to the review process alone, it can have an impact in more than one way.
Recency bias
Is based more on the way our memories work, giving more importance to recent events and information and often overlooking historical data.
If an SME encounteres new information that slightly contradicts what was decided at the start of the planning process several months in the past, the feedback they send will most likely be biased towards this new information set.
Conclusion
The most important aspect about biases is knowing that they exist. The next step is finding the tools to combat them, both at an individual level, but also at an organizational level.
Structured content authoring in a CCMS is difficult enough as individual, self-contained topics are created and then put together using a ditamap to form a document.
This means that the choice of content for review can be controlled to a higher granularity than if the content was produced as one unique structure.
As such several decisions must be made when it comes to starting the review.
- Do you perform the review of the DITA XML Structured Content in the DITA CCMS?
- Do you review individual topics, compile chapters or the entire document?
- Do you provide context, and if so, how and in what format?
- Do you perform synchronous or asynchronous reviews?
To each of these questions, one or more of the cognitive biases will have an impact to a lesser or greater degree.
Mitigation strategies should be put in place to reduce the risk of receiving poor feedback, such as:
- Identify alternative options or outcomes and/or explore the consequences of a specific course of action.
- Constantly question yourself and encourage all actors in the review process to do so.
- Iterate processes and learn from previous iterations for the next session.
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