Unless I misunderstand your comment, isn’t it rather the opposite of odd that user stories are so popular, given that this is what the bias would predict? That being said, maybe I’ve argued a bit too strongly in one direction with this post—I wouldn’t even say that user stories are detrimental or useless. Depending on your product, it may well be that some significant ratio of users to have strong intent. My main claim is that in most situations, the number of people who are closer to the middle of the spectrum is >0. But it’s not necessary for that group to dominate the distribution.
So in my view, it can still make sense to focus on a subgroup of your users who know what they’re doing, as long as you remain aware that this will not apply to all users. E.g. when A/B testing, you should expect by default that making any feature even mildly less convenient to use will have negative effects. So you should not be surprised to see that result—but it may still be the right choice to make such a change nonetheless, depending on what benefits you hope to get from it.
I may have not been clear. I am agreeing with the entire post. I agree with your comment too that “user stories” arose most likely for the same reason as this bias.
I also agree with you that figuring out intention is an important part of development. A majority of users will use my software with the same intent.
I just meant to say that I immediately thought of “user stories” while reading this post. My initial thought was that user stories focus too much on intent. For example, if you are hyper focused on the user trying to reset their password you may neglect the user who accidentally clicked the reset password button and just want to navigate back to the log-in page. Would there be benefit to removing the user story as a goal and just make the goal, create a reset password page? I agree with you though, user stories serve their purpose and might be more of a net-good. This post just helped me recognize a potential pitfall of them.
Unless I misunderstand your comment, isn’t it rather the opposite of odd that user stories are so popular, given that this is what the bias would predict? That being said, maybe I’ve argued a bit too strongly in one direction with this post—I wouldn’t even say that user stories are detrimental or useless. Depending on your product, it may well be that some significant ratio of users to have strong intent. My main claim is that in most situations, the number of people who are closer to the middle of the spectrum is >0. But it’s not necessary for that group to dominate the distribution.
So in my view, it can still make sense to focus on a subgroup of your users who know what they’re doing, as long as you remain aware that this will not apply to all users. E.g. when A/B testing, you should expect by default that making any feature even mildly less convenient to use will have negative effects. So you should not be surprised to see that result—but it may still be the right choice to make such a change nonetheless, depending on what benefits you hope to get from it.
I may have not been clear. I am agreeing with the entire post. I agree with your comment too that “user stories” arose most likely for the same reason as this bias.
I also agree with you that figuring out intention is an important part of development. A majority of users will use my software with the same intent.
I just meant to say that I immediately thought of “user stories” while reading this post. My initial thought was that user stories focus too much on intent. For example, if you are hyper focused on the user trying to reset their password you may neglect the user who accidentally clicked the reset password button and just want to navigate back to the log-in page. Would there be benefit to removing the user story as a goal and just make the goal, create a reset password page? I agree with you though, user stories serve their purpose and might be more of a net-good. This post just helped me recognize a potential pitfall of them.