We
started off the week with an article on food nutrition labels – which is
coincidentally one of the first projects I ever worked on as a professional HF
designer. But the FDA didn’t implement
my recommendations so we are still stuck with some very ineffective persuasive
design. Perhaps the app-based system I shared
on Monday will be an improvement. The
jury is still out.
Then
on Tuesday we went back to the Supreme Court – which is a surprisingly good
source of human factors cases. In the
two cases I discuss, the main legal issue is whether a particular medium of
speech is “government” speech or “individual” speech. Obviously, these two are governed very
differently in terms of First Amendment issues.
The human factors dimension is whether a typical observer will think the
speech is government supported or not.
It is part of our constitution that people in positions of low power don’t
get the impression that the government is against them. This is the basis (or at least one of them)
for separation of church and state. It is also the reason that many government
facilities in the South are taking down their Confederate Flags at the moment.
The
Wednesday article on group identity is a good piece of psychology wisdom. What are you saying with the logos you
wear? It is something to consider next
time you leave the house.
Finally,
we tried to evoke some deeper thinking for the weekend in our article on Robot Ethics. As we advance the sciences of AI
and perception, robots will soon be able to feel physical pain and emotional
pain. Is it OK to inflict this pain on a robot for no particular reason? We can do it with our toasters. We can do it with stuffed animals, even the
animated ones that seem pretty real. But
they don’t feel.
I
can’t wait to hear your thoughts on these.
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