Lumping, splitting; us and them: How not to be evil with categories
As embodied humans we spend an incredible amount of brain power categorising everything we come into contact with - it's our way of dealing with huge amounts of detail.
As designers, we take this into our work - using categories to make shortcuts and help get our users to the thing they need.
This talk is about how categories really work and the consequences of using them:
- How we think categories work is quite different to how they actually work in our brains
- The consequences of grouping (lumping) and separating (splitting) people for design and policy can be unforeseen, dangerous and evil
(This is a substitute talk for Kat Hardisty, who unfortunately can't make it)