Welcome to 2016. Happy New Year from the team at EID to all
of our loyal readers (and even those of you just lurking around). We are thrilled to be back for another year
of content and engaging with all of you on Ergonomics in Design.
This is the first recap of the year. We started out with
some intriguing topics so I am happy to share them with you.
On Monday we had an article on negotiations. The basic idea
is why compromise is not necessarily your best approach. The idea of agreeing
to disagree is not either. The better strategy takes a little longer, but is
well worth your effort.
Then on Tuesday we talked about the neuropsychological basis
of cognitive dissonance. We got a lot of comments all over the social networks
about it. Some people were skeptical about whether neuro is specific enough to
explain behavior. We are going to have an article specifically on that
skepticism pretty soon so keep your eyes out.
Wednesday talked about peer pressure and learning. Usually it is a negative influence, but Annie
Murphy Paul shows how to use it to improve learning. As usual, great insights from her.
Then finally, on Thursday we talked about ethics of Facebook’s
Free Basics service for the developing world. If it were just a free offer,
that would be fine. But it is a closed
system. This violates net neutrality. It also allows Facebook to decide what
content users see. They could skew all
kinds of political, business, and social issues by providing only one side of
the story. India has put them on hold for now. Probably a smart move.
