SwitchPoint 2018: Day 2

April 27, 2018Fear and bias get in the way of humanitarian work every day. We ' ll  move forward anyway.Remember the last time you walked up to a door and pulled on it, only to find you were supposed to push?I hate that. We all hate that. Especially when it ’s a door we’ve been through before, and we should have remembered how it worked, and great, probably everybody saw us.Unfortunately, our memories are just not very reliable. This is what user experience and game design expertCelia Hodent told us today on the second and final day ofSwitchPoint 2018. Good design can overcome some of our deficiencies —if there’s a handle on the door, we’re more likely to pull, a plate and we’re more likely to push.But it ’s tough to truly overcome our cognitive biases, Hodent said. These are the irrational mistakes we make because of the beliefs and preferences buried deep in our brains—even when there’s information right in front of us, proving we’re wrong.Our cognitive biases lead to ugly stereotypes.Like when we think our perceptions of reality are better and truer than someone else ’s, or how we can spot flaws in someone else in a flash but can’t see them in ourselves. Cognitive biases lead to ugly stereotypes, and to that inherent sympathy we often have for people who remind us of us.They also make us blind to the bigger picture when we ’re too focused on our own objectives. They make us miss things—like when Hodent showed usthis video. (It was a little emba...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news