Architectural Bias

I have been musing for a week, or so, about a problem that I am dubbing "architectural bias." The basic issue is this: Information systems are frequently used to provided information to people to support (or 'scaffold') their decision-making. But since the outcome of any rational decision depends on the information available, it is plausible that differences in the choice of information to present, or the means of presentation, would influence the decision that is made.

How information is represented to a person by a computer is often the result of earlier choices made by the architect(s) of the system. Therefore, my question is "to what degree do choices made by the architect of a system impact the quality of decisions made by users of that system?"

If you make the leap to considering the differences in how people interpret various media, this rapidly becomes a UDL issue.

How so? Let's take a hypothetical business decision, and match it to a corresponding portfolio of information. Let's say that it is a decision about purchasing a product... a book, for example. You need a book about UDL. Okay, what information systems do you have available to support your decision making, what information do they provide you, and what media do they use to convey that information? Let's say you are going to use Amazon.com as a decision support system. Amazon will provide you with details about the book, a list of vendors which offer the book, prices for the book and for shipping, pictures of the book. But if all of the vendors offer the book for the same price, how do you decide? What role does the order in which they are presented to you play? Is this order a function of the system architecture? Certainly. What if there are vendors which differentiate their listings with flowery words, or with appealing graphics. What if one of the vendors has a video clip of an attractive person telling you how much cooler you would be if you bought the book from them?

Arguably, this particular example may sound a bit more like a Madison Avenue marketing analysis than a UDL situation, but I think the core issue is an important one. In all sorts of systems we influence user behavior through the choice of information that we provide them, and the media which we use to convey it. However, I've never heard or read anyone discussing the role that this architectural bias actually plays in user choice.