HumaneIA

The tale can now be told.

Wikipedia defines the Dunning-Kruger effect as:

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.

The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999.^[1]

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

1. incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
2. incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
3. incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
4. if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

I did not just quietly observe this - I actively saw it happen around me.

• Third party company business analysts being left to run wild and free doing interface and interaction design.
• Project managers turning a blind eye because it is in the third party company contract and “we’ll pick up on that user stuff in UAT (user acceptance testing)”.
• Removal of usability and accessibility testing from all pre-UAT stages because it might expose too many errors.
• Third party company folks not providing a complete set of prototypes until UAT because they may have to change them if users complain.

And no, I’m not kidding. I wish that I was. I’m not naming names because (a) I’m no longer on that project and (b) to do so would be unprofessional.