Tiziana is a UX Psychologist, with more than 20 years of experience in the design industry. She combines psychological insights with good UX/UI practices and a solid ethical framework to create inclusive designs that will persuade without manipulation or dirty tricks. She strongly believes that ethical design can change the world for the better. She is a member of the Ethical Design Network and maintains its blog.

Tiziana is a senior educator, teaching interactive design, UX, front-end and graphic design and more at different secondary institutions. She has a background that includes a degree in graphic design, a master’s in Media Psychology, certificates in Behavioral Design and Ethical Data Science, along with years of design and web development. She is the leader of the San Diego chapter of the Interaction Design Foundation and mentors many young designers.

We face thousands of choices everyday: most of them are inconsequential, but others can have very serious and even detrimental outcomes. We have limited mental capacities and get easily overwhelmed, so we often use mental shortcuts or heuristics to help us. Most of the time, this is an effective and efficient method, but sometimes it may take us astray. Also, despite what a lot of people think, we are not rational decision makers: emotions are the strongest influence on decision making. This may lead to poor decisions that won’t benefit us or society.

This is where behavioral design comes in. Behavioral design recognizes that people are not always rational, and often they are not aware of their desires and motivations, so it tries to create design that will facilitate optimal decision making. Behavioral design does not mislead or trick: full autonomy and freedom of choice is always respected. We’ll explore tools such as choice architecture, nudges, anchoring and framing, as well as the ethical implication of behavioral design, and how to avoid ethical pitfalls.