Dr. Steven Franconeri explains the powerful insights and opportunities offered by a game he and his team at Northwestern University created for having better disagreements, better debates, better conversations, and better dialogues about just about anything, but especially about the sort of topics that often lead to fights and terrible holiday dinners.
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We believe disagreement isn’t the problem — it’s part of the solution. When handled thoughtfully, disagreement sharpens ideas, improves policies, and brings people closer to the truth. But too often, hard conversations spiral into outrage, misinformation, and distrust. That’s not because people don’t care. It’s because we haven’t been taught how to disagree well. Point Taken helps fix that.
Point Taken is a game that turns debate into a structured, written dialogue. Players engage with care, stick to facts, and build their arguments with logic, not volume. Drawing from research in cognitive science, argument mapping, and conflict resolution, Point Taken trains people to slow down, think clearly, and listen generously. We’re here to make disagreement productive, respectful, and actually worth having.
If treating the conversation like a competition is the problem, there is one simple trick that lets us all win: get into Collaboration Mode.
The research is clear: to make progress, we must stop trying to defeat the other person and instead embark on a joint quest to figure out why two sane, good people could see the world so differently. Is the disagreement about a fact, or differing priorities or values?
Steven Franconeri
Dr. Steven Franconeri (LinkedIn) is a cognitive scientist and Professor of Psychology at Northwestern, with roles in Kellogg, HCI+Design, and Computer Science. He leads a top research lab on data visualization and science communication, and is CEO & Founder of Becise, a consultancy that applies cognitive science to clear, persuasive communication.
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