Ash Donaldson

Ash Donaldson is a Sydney-based strategic designer and behaviour design specialist with a background in human factors. He holds a Master of Human Factors, a Bachelor of Multimedia and a Diploma of Design, and is also a trained commercial pilot. His interests include user experience, user research, behavioural economics and persuasive technology, and his talk on cognitive dissonance at TEDxCanberra explores why people come to believe things that evidence does not support.

Ash Donaldson’s talk here is “Cognitive dissonance”, recorded at TEDxCanberra in 2010. It sits within the cognitive psychology and persuasive design topics.

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort people feel when they hold conflicting beliefs, or when their actions don’t match what they believe. Because people tend to resolve that tension by adjusting their attitudes or behavior, the concept is relevant to anyone designing products that aim to influence decisions. The UI-Patterns.com library describes cognitive dissonance as a persuasive pattern.