Frequently Asked Questions
These common questions and their short answers are taken from Katie Swindler’s book Life and Death Design: What Life-Saving Technology Can Teach Everyday UX Designers. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.
- What do you mean by “life and death design”? Is this book about death?
Not really. This is a book about high-stakes designs with life-and- death consequences and all the ways your designs can help people in moments of extreme stress or crisis. It’s a book about designs that save lives. In particular, Chapter 8, “Hero by Design,” explores ways to help bring out the best in your users, helping them step up and save the day. - Will I be able to use what’s in this book if I design “boring” stuff?
As long as you design something meant to solve a problem for a user, the information in this book will apply to your work. Problems cause stress. Whether someone is under a small or a large amount of stress, the same neurochemicals are released and the same fight- flight-or freeze instincts drive behaviors. Because of this, lessons learned by designers creating products for extreme environments, like emergency rooms or war zones, can be applied to all sorts of products that help stressed-out users across just about any industry imaginable. In Chapter 1, “A Designer’s Guide to the Human Stress Response,” you’ll get an overview of the five phases of the stress response and the design considerations unique to each phase. You’ll also get a plain language overview of the neuroscience that drives these phases. - Does this book cover techniques to address harmful biases?
Absolutely. When humans are stressed, they instinctively fall back on intuition-based decision-making, which has a lot of benefits, but can also open the door for harmful biases to creep in. So Chapter 3, “Intuitive Assessment,” explores the science of intuition in detail, including how it’s formed, when it is most beneficial (and when it’s most harmful), and how it can be harnessed through good design. It also looks closely at the role that bias plays in intuitive decision-making. Then Chapter 5, “Reasoned Reaction,” explores specific design techniques to help users control bias, even under extremely stressful situations when their instincts might otherwise lead them astray. - I design for a population with people who are chronically stressed. Does this book help me address the unique needs of my users?
The techniques for creating calming designs covered in Chapter 6, “Recovery,” will be of particular interest for those people designing for users who are chronically stressed. If you are designing for populations with high levels of PTSD, you may also want to review Chapter 2, “The Startle Reflex,” to learn ways to avoid triggering a startle reflex, as people with PTSD tend to have a particular sensitivity to startling stimuli. Chapter 7, which covers “Alarms and Alerts,” might also be useful to those designers creating products used in high-stress environments because the chapter discusses techniques to communicate important information appropriately to your users without overwhelming or further stressing them.
