Health Experience Design 2021

How do we apply design thinking to health & risk communication, especially when audiences are conflicted and disagree on ideological world views? Too often, organizations assume that people who don’t share our attitudes toward topics like mask wearing and vaccination are generally uninformed, or worse, misinformed… if we can explain the facts clearly and make a compellingly rational argument, everyone should accept what we already know to be true, right? Unfortunately, that’s not how risk perception works. Research consistently shows that simply giving people more information does not persuade them — it may even polarize them further, depending on whether that information threatens or affirms their values and social identity. This talk offers a primer on identity-protective cognition - how four archetypal world views influence perception - and a strategy for communicating with (and persuading, when necessary), those folks across the worldview-aisle when their, and our, collective wellbeing depends on it.