Trauma’s impact

Perception skewed

Shifting from the previous diagram, a few of the nodes have red fill and 'ripples' of red-outlined circles. The lines that connect to them are shifted to red.

Possible exceptions and heighten-to-transformations

Trauma can be as “irrefutable” as a broken bone breaking through skin…or as “dismissible” as that span of time with no money. Irrefutability and dismissibility are often culturally attributed.

The truth: trauma is trauma, regardless of its source. Experiencing it:

Solidifies cognitive biases
Strengthens core precepts and extends their ripple effect
Bends mental models to avoid the repetition
More easily finds novel use cases to apply even non-mental-model factors
At it’s extreme, it cuts portions of cognitive information architecture away from active memory

Trauma can be healed. It won’t go away by itself, but needs to be worked through. It does not heal in the snap, but in later movements.

Psychology, psychiatry, therapy, trauma-based design, horror stories, vengeance stories, history, religious studies...seriously, the idea is pervasive and cross-cultural.

...trauma...
cognitive bias, cognitive IA, core precepts, factors, memory, mental model, system expand/contract

...trauma informed design...
Ajeen R, Ajeen D, Wisdom JP, Greene JA, Lepage T, Sjoelin C, Melvin T, Hagan TE, Hunter KF, Peters A, Mercer R, Brancu M. The impact of trauma-informed design on psychological well-being in homeless shelters. Psychol Serv. 2023 Aug;20(3):680-689. doi: 10.1037/ser0000724. Epub 2022 Nov 3. PMID: 36326660.

Eggleston, M. (2017, October 18). Trauma-informed website resources —. Melissa Eggleston. https://www.melissaegg.com/blog/trauma-informed-website-resources

Every, K. (2023, July 26). Applying trauma-informed principles to user-centred design. Researchops-Community. https://medium.com/researchops-community/applying-trauma-informed-principles-to-user-centred-design-8b4e51c9ca49

Guhl, A. (2022, December 15). 5 principles of trauma-informed design. Neumannmonson.com. https://neumannmonson.com/blog/principles-trauma-informed-design

Nicole Design. (2024, January 8). Trauma informed design within the digital product (UI & UX) world. Medium. https://medium.com/@nicoledesign/trauma-informed-design-within-the-digital-product-ui-ux-world-5535d3ed2115

What is trauma-informed design? Trauma-Informed Housing. https://traumainformedhousing.poah.org/what-is-trauma-informed-design

Trauma’s impact #

Perception skewed #

Possible exceptions and heighten-to-transformations #

Trauma’s impact

Perception skewed

Possible exceptions and heighten-to-transformations