I went to the eye doctor recently, after my eye was bothering me.  I had slept in my contact lenses for several nights (which I’m prone to do), and my eye started bothering me.  In the past, when this happens, I take my contact lenses out, throw them out, and take a few days off of contacts.  This time however, my eye was bothering me much more than usual, so I went in to see the eye doctor.  I’m glad I did — I had a corneal ulcer, where bacteria had been stuck inside my contact lens. The eye doctor got me a prescription for some antibiotic eye drops and explained how lucky I was, since the ulcer wasn’t on the pupil itself (which can cause people to lose partial sight the rest of their lives!!!)!

The doctor asked me “Do you know you’re not supposed to wear your contacts overnight?” and I explained that I certainly did, but I had no idea what the real risks were — I assumed eye doctors said that, but that my approach to taking a break when my eyes bothered me was fine.

This is a great reminder of how important it is to communicate risks in a tangible, clear way.  It’s easy to say “That’s risky” or “This is not a best practice” or “It’s better not to do that”; but if we don’t take the time to truly articulate the possible impacts, explaining both the likelihood of something happening and the impact (severity) if it does happen, very bad things can happen.

Edward Tufte’s book Visual Explanations provides a powerful case study of this concept:  Engineers recommended the Space Shuttle Challenger not be launched based on specific weather conditions, but the launch was approved due to a lack of clearly communicating risk.