ABOUT
Psychology is one of my favorite subjects to research. Litter negatively impacts the environment which is one of the causes of climate change. That’s a huge and overwhelming topic to consider. That information overload can cause a person to avoid the problem completely. I looked into how information overload happens and ways to combat it. Designing the way that my information is presented, or information architecture, is vital to prevent feelings of information overload (Bawden & Robinson, 2020). In medical scenarios, patients can actually avoid treatment for their conditions in fear of finding out the condition is worsening. The way of mitigating this anxiety response is to accept the problem and gather knowledge. As you see, you do not want to provide too much information but you also do not want too little (Sharpe, 2022).
When tasked to create a design conjecture, I thought about the ways that education teaches about sustainability and climate change. I only received minimal explanations in my science class in middle school, but we also had a semester-long project covering global warming. It was a lot of our favorite project, which got me thinking about why we do not have a sustainability course. A semester-long class dedicated to educating about protecting our environment, safe ways to interact with nature, and proactive measures for individuals to take outside of class could be extremely beneficial to our children. This way, the information can be mitigated throughout the semester, and would be organized in a way that can balance the negative information received with the positives of what you can do to change things.
Here I created a book cover of an example course activity book. Changing the entire education system may be out of scope for any single person to do, but I think taking this overarching theme of balancing information out into a congestible format is possible in other ways than a semester-long course… Other ways yet to be explored!
REFERENCES
Bawden, D. & Robinson, L. (2020). Information Overload: An Overview. In: Oxford Encyclopedia of Political Decision Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1360
Sharpe, L., Michalowski, M., Richmond, B., Menzies, R. E., & Shaw, J. (2022). Fear of progression in chronic illnesses other than cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of a transdiagnostic construct. Health Psychology Review, 17(2), 301–320. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2022.2039744
