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I'm not so sure real-world users of our information products will fit tidily into that kind of a box -- convenient and helpful though it might be for us.
The list of potential biases and heuristics is long (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases). It would be interesting to scrutinize a bit more closely and see if some are more particularly relevant in our contexts than others.
Some fascinating ones on the list -- loss aversion, Déformation professionnelle, and the "Texas sharpshooter fallacy," to name but a few.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: McLauchlan, Kevin [mailto:Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com]
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 8:50 AM
To: Pinkham, Jim; Tony Chung; TECHWR-L Writing
Subject: RE: A different "personality type" angle
Pinkham, Jim [mailto:Jim -dot- Pinkham -at- voith -dot- com] wondered:
>
> Well, then, to give a much more serious answer than I ventured
> yesterday, Kevin, it sounds like your moving into environmental and
> general pyschology. It seems to me your verging on examining the
> various types of biases that are endemic to the human condition and
> asking how we take various tendencies toward bias into account and
> overcome them to communicate effectively. Is that a fair restatement
> of the question?
Pretty close.
In other words, "yes", but I hate to admit that you're better
at saying what I mean than I am. :-)
OK, but seriously, the "human condition" that I'm talking about would (potentially) be hard-wired learning modes, or part of a 'syndrome' of one's approach to apprehending and integrating ... stuff.
>From our perspective, think of indicators of the kinds/approaches of documentation that would best serve segments of our audiences.
The more different indicators that are tied to a given person's apprehension-integration strategy, the greater the chance that there'll be one or two that's easily, economically discoverable
Think of Help setup that asks a few screening questions (are you a sports fan? do you experience black despair if your team is out of the play-offs?... ) and then serves up a form of assistance best suited to the neuralogical peculiarities of this-or-that syndrome.
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