Behaviour at the limits - and what it means for design
People rarely behave the way models predict or the way designers assume.
Under stress, uncertainty, or time pressure, rational decision-making gives way to habit, instinct, and cognitive shortcuts. This is not a flaw in the people — it is a predictable feature of how the human brain works.
My work focuses on making this predictable: understanding when and why behaviour deviates from the
expected, and designing systems, interfaces, and processes that account for it
— before an incident makes the lesson unavoidable.
Behaviour Under Pressure.
Under stress, human behaviour changes fundamentally. Cognitive resources shrink, perception narrows, and decisions become faster – but not better. What works in calm test environments can fail completely when it matters most.
I work with the psychological and neuroscientific mechanisms behind this: How does time pressure distort risk perception? Why do people revert to familiar routines under stress, even when those routines are wrong? And what does this mean for the design of interfaces and safety concepts, in critical moments?
This is particularly relevant for safety-related industries, operational teams under time pressure, and anyone designing systems that must perform under real-world conditions.
Unpredictable Behavior.
The concept is solid. Data supports your predictions. And yet, in reality, people do something entirely different. Unpredictable behavior is not a user error – it’s a blind spot in the method.
Personas, scenarios, and standard user tests capture behavior under controlled conditions. What they rarely catch: context-driven shortcuts, workarounds, collective behavioral patterns, and the effects of fatigue, distraction, or social dynamics.
I work to make these gaps visible – through behavioural analysis, observation in real work contexts, and the question that often goes unasked: what did we fail to anticipate?
Resistance to Change.
Change projects rarely fail because of technology. They fail because people don’t follow through – not out of bad faith, but because resistance to change is a deeply rooted psychological pattern.
Status quo bias, loss aversion, lack of psychological safety, to name a few: behavioural economics offers precise explanations for why people hold on to the familiar, even when change is objectively beneficial. This knowledge fundamentally shifts how change processes should be designed – away from information and persuasion alone, toward conditions where new behaviors can actually take hold.
I help organizations stop fighting resistance and start understanding it – and create the conditions under which change becomes possible.
When No Mistakes Are Allowed: The Burden of Infallibility.
Some environments leave no room for error – not metaphorically, but because the consequences are irreversible. E.g. Power plants, aviation or health care facilities: people work here under psychological conditions that most safety concepts systematically underestimate.
Paradoxically, the zero-error expectation itself can become a source of risk. Mistakes get concealed to save face. Uncertainty goes unspoken because it signals weakness. Systems that are safe on paper break down at the human interface.
This perspective is closely aligned with Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) — a framework now adopted across high-reliability industries that reframes error not as individual failure, but as the predictable outcome of conditions.
HOP shifts attention from blame to design: from who made the mistake to what made the mistake likely. This reframing has significant consequences for incident response, work design, training, and building cultures where people can raise concerns before something goes wrong.
I work with the psychology of high-stakes environments: How does the expectation of absolute flawlessness affect perception, communication, and decision-making? And how can systems, processes, and organisational culture be designed to account for human limits – rather than ignore them?
