Saturday, December 06, 2014

This week in EID - Episode 31



We started December with our second celebrity guest post. Karen Burke is the founder of Kare Products, an ergonomics products and services company.  She has a lot of insightful ideas on the intersection of I/O psychology and ergonomics. 

The three organic posts (well, still curated, but by me :-)) were all on practical topics.  Concussions are a huge problem in sports, especially for younger players whose brains are still developing.  Emergency eye washes and showers are critical if you work around dust, particles, chemicals that can splash, hazardous materials, or anything else you need to get off of you quickly.  The post on violin teaching may not seem as practical, but the general ideas about the origins of design standards should be relevant to many of you.

I also want to mention that there was an  incredibly vibrant discussion on the IEA Linked In group on a post on breaking rules. This original is on another this blog rather than EID, but very relevant to EID.  We have a debate going about if we want to teach students that rules are set by humans, are fallible, should be questioned always, stretched often, broken occasionally.  Or do we want to teach students that rules are important social structures, so should be complied with by default, questioned only when needed, and broken only as a last resort.