Every significant software design choice—whether you’re designing a bounded context, deciding on the system boundary, settling on an architectural style, selecting a complex system integration approach, and even evaluating a block of AI-generated code—has a moment where one path just feels right. But what if that powerful 'gut feeling' is actually a cognitive bias in disguise?

The human mind is a powerful tool, yet it is systematically prone to errors. These errors aren't just abstract ideas; they are design flaws in our own decision-making that can lead directly to fragile architectures, ballooning technical debt, and costly rework, regardless of whether the code was human or machine-generated. Biases like the anchoring effect (getting stuck on the first idea) or the sunk cost fallacy (clinging to a failing project) are constantly shaping your software.

Join us to move from a reactive, bias-driven approach to a deliberate, resilient, and ultimately more effective design process. This talk explores how cutting-edge research from behavioural economics can be applied directly to software architecture and development, with or without AI assistance.
We will move beyond simply being aware of biases. We will introduce a practical, five-step checklist designed to systematically 'debias' your design choices, helping you build both better software and a better decision-making habit for all your technical work.

You will learn how to:

- Be Decision-Ready: Recognise when you and your team are in the right mental and emotional state to make critical decisions, avoiding biases that arise from fatigue or emotional haste.

- Broaden the Frame: Combat functional fixedness and additive bias by intentionally exploring a wider range of solutions—including options that remove complexity—to avoid getting fixated on a single, suboptimal idea.

- Seek Independent Advice: Move past overconfidence and the false-consensus effect by actively soliciting diverse, external perspectives and taking an "outside view" on how similar challenges have succeeded or failed.

- Test Your Assumptions: Inoculate your team against loss aversion and the sunk cost fallacy by running a pre-mortem and appointing a devil’s advocate, preparing for potential failure before it even happens.

- Establish Simple Rules: Avoid the law of triviality and the availability bias by creating objective, repeatable criteria that guide your choices and ensure you focus on what truly matters.