Pushing the easy button

People get things done in organizations. Every good idea and every measurable output has people behind it. Also, people are fallible. Sometimes they make mistakes, and mistakes are costly in terms of time, money, and frustration.

But I have good news: we can do something about it.

When we design things (forms, processes, equipment, anything!), make things easy to do correctly, and difficult to do incorrectly.

Safety sensitive industries like nuclear power and aerospace involve behavioural scientists in designing their systems so that errors are minimized and multiple lines of defense are put in place. It's too simplistic to merely blame and individual for things that go wrong. Behind each instance of "human error" they look for for contributing factors that helped cause that human to make that error, and make adjustments for the future.

Even when our tasks don't put lives at risk, we can make use of these basic insights to limit the number of errors that people make.

Here are a few things I've noticed about how people operate, and how I design around those to help my team make fewer errors:

Observation 1: People have a limited attention span, especially for repetitive tasks.
What to do about it: Create obvious cues of how to tell things apart.
For example:

• colour coding can be useful, but pair it with another identifier such as a symbol or indentation so it's accessible to people with a variety of visual abilities
• if you need people to visually identify individual letters, use a font where it's easy to differentiate between O and 0 or l and 1. 
• the cabinet holding sensitive confidential documents is a different size and shape than the cabinet holding our outgoing mail

Observation 2: People are trying to do their job well. Some errors are due to mismatched ideas of what "a good job" is.
What do do about it: Be clear about what outcome we need, and why. The person who is "cutting corners" might be prioritizing finishing quickly instead of filling in details. If they understand the downstream impacts of a lack of detail, they are more likely to keep in the details you're asking for.

Observation 3: Old habits die hard.

What to do about it: Make use of existing habits. 

For example:

• If all of the old locks were locked to the left and unlocked to the right, try to get new locks that lock to the left and unlock to the right.
• If the garbage bin has been under the sink for 5 years and you suddenly move it next to the door, expect that you'll end up with garbage under the sink for a while.

Observation 4: Nobody reads a long winded manual every time (heck, sometimes they don't read it all the first time).

What to do about it: Create "cheat sheets" and "checklists" to remind us of the key points.

Observation 5: Recurring errors are an opportunity for designing an improvement.

What to do about it: Respond to repeated errors with curiosity.

Observation 6: Scared people don't do their best work.

What to do about it: Build a climate of trust and curiosity. Be gentle with yourself and each other,

This isn't, by any means, an exhaustive list, but a few things I've found helpful for myself and folks I work with. What design changes or approaches have helped you reduce errors in your workplace?