Ruth Brown: When expertise becomes our achilles heel
We all want to be experts in what we do. We train, we practice, and we keep learning. We even do 10,000 hours of something believing it will make us an expert.
But what if our ‘expertise’ actually comes with some downfalls? What if experts can be less creative and innovative than their less experienced counterparts? What if they lack flexibility and are more prone to error?
Ruth Brown, freelance Design Lead, recently spoke at UX New Zealand, the leading UX and IA conference in New Zealand hosted by Optimal Workshop, on how experts can cover their blind spots.
In her talk, Ruth discusses the paradox of expertise, how it shows up in design (and especially design research), and most importantly - what we can do about it.
Background on Ruth Brown
Ruth is a freelance researcher and design leader. She currently works in the design team at ANZ. In the past, she has been GM of Design Research at Xero and Head of User Experience at Trade Me.
Ruth loves people. She has spent much of her career understanding how people think, feel, and behave. She cares a lot about making things that make people’s lives better. Her first love was engineering until she realized that people were more interesting than maths. On a good day, she gets to do both.
Contact Details:
Email address: ruthbrownnz@gmail.com
LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruth-brown-309a872/
When expertise becomes our achilles heel 🦶🏼🗡
Ruth is an avid traveler and travel planner. She is incredibly organized but recounts a time when she made a mistake on her father’s travel documents. The error (an incorrect middle name on a plane ticket) cost her up to $1,000 and, perhaps worse, dealt a severe knock to her confidence as a self-stylized travel agent!
What caused the mistake? Ruth, after recovering from the error, realized that she had auto-filled her father’s middle name field with her own, voiding the ticket. She had been the victim of two common ways that people with expertise fail:
- Trusting their tools too much
- Being over-confident – not needing to check their work
This combination is known as the Paradox of Expertise.
The Paradox of Expertise 👁️⃤
While experts are great at many things and we rely on them every day, they do have weaknesses. Ruth argues that the more we know about our weaknesses, the more we can avoid them.
Ruth touches on what’s happening inside the brain of experts, and what’s happening outside the brain (social).
- Inside influence (processing): As the brain develops and we gain experiences, it starts to organize information better. It creates schemas, which makes accessing and retrieving that information much easier and more automatic. Essentially, the more we repeat something, the more efficient the brain becomes in processing information. While this sounds like a good thing, it starts to become a burden when completely new information/ideas enter the brain. The brain struggles to order new information differently which means we default to what we know best, which isn’t necessarily the best at all.
- Outside influence (social): The Authority Bias is where experts are more likely to be believed than non-experts. Combined with this, experts usually have high confidence in what they’re talking about and can call upon neatly organized data to strengthen their argument. As a result, experts are continually reinforced with a sense of being right.
How does the Paradox of Expertise work against us? 🤨
In her talk, Ruth focuses on the three things that have the most impact on design and research experts.
1) Experts are bad at predicting the future
Hundreds of studies support the claim that experts are bad at predicting the future. One study by Philip Tetlock tested 284 experts (across multiple fields) and 27,450 predictions. It was found that after 20 years, the experts did “little better than dart-throwing chimpanzees”.
As designers and researchers, one of the most difficult things we get asked is to predict the future. We get asked questions like; will people use this digital product? How will people use it? How much will they pay?
Since experts are so bad at predicting the future, how can we reduce the damage?
- Fix #1: Generalize: The Tetlock study found that people with a broader knowledge of a subject were much better predictors. Traits of good predictors included “knowing many small things”, “being skeptical of grand schemes”, and “sticking together diverse sources of information”.
- Fix #2: Form interdisciplinary teams: This is fairly common practice now, so we can take it further. Researchers should consider asking wider teams for recommendations when responding to research results. Rather than independently making recommendations based on your own narrow lens, bring in the wider team.
2) Experts make worse teachers
In general, experts are fairly average teachers. Despite knowing the principles, theory, and practice of our fields, experts aren’t usually very good teachers. This is because experts tend to think in abstraction and concepts that have been built up over thousands of hours of experience. This leads experts to skip the explanation of foundational steps i.e. explaining why the concepts themselves are important.
- Fix #3: Be bad at something: There’s nothing like stepping into the shoes of a rookie to have empathy for their experience. By doing so, it helps us to take stock of the job or task that we’re doing.
- Fix #4: It takes a team: Sometimes we need to realize that there are other people better suited to some tasks e.g. teaching! As an expert, the responsibility doesn’t have to fall to you to pass on knowledge – there are others who know enough to do it in place of you, and that’s okay. In fact, it may be better to have the entire village teach a junior, rather than one elder.
3) Experts are less innovative and open-minded
Ruth highlights the fact that experts find it hard to process new information, especially new information that challenges closely held beliefs or experiences. It is difficult to throw away existing arguments (or schemas) in place of new, seemingly untested arguments.
- Fix #5: Stay curious: It’s easier said than done, but stay open to new arguments, information, and schemas. Remember to let your ego step down – don’t dig your heels in.
Why it matters 🤷
Understanding the Paradox of Expertise can help designers and researchers become more effective in their roles and avoid common pitfalls that hinder their work.
Ruth's insights into the inner workings of experts' brains shed light on the cognitive processes that can work against us. The development of schemas and the efficiency of information processing, while beneficial, can also lead to cognitive biases and resistance to new information. This insight reminds UX professionals to remain open-minded and adaptable when tackling design and research challenges.
The three key points Ruth emphasizes - the inability of experts to predict the future accurately, their challenges as teachers, and their resistance to innovation - have direct implications for the UX field. UX designers often face the daunting task of predicting user behavior and needs, and recognizing the limitations of expertise in this regard is crucial. Furthermore, the importance of embracing interdisciplinary teams and seeking diverse perspectives is underscored as a means to mitigate the shortcomings of expertise. Collaboration and humility in acknowledging that others may be better suited to certain tasks can lead to more well-rounded and innovative solutions.
Finally, Ruth's call to stay curious and open-minded is particularly relevant to UX professionals. In a rapidly evolving field, the ability to adapt to new information and perspectives is critical. By recognizing that expertise is not a fixed state but an ongoing practice, designers and researchers can continuously improve their work and deliver better user experiences.
What is UX New Zealand?
UX New Zealand is a leading UX and IA conference hosted by Optimal Workshop, that brings together industry professionals for three days of thought leadership, meaningful networking and immersive workshops.
At UX New Zealand 2023, we featured some of the best and brightest in the fields of user experience, research and design. A raft of local and international speakers touched on the most important aspects of UX in today’s climate for service designers, marketers, UX writers and user researchers.
These speakers are some of the pioneers leading the way and pushing the standard for user experience today. Their experience and perspectives are invaluable for those working at the coalface of UX, and together, there’s a tonne of valuable insight on offer.
