Monday, March 1, 2010

ID/LXD, meet UXD: Part 1

Instructional design is a practice that has ties to many fields, including one critical and often overlooked parallel to designing learning experiences: User Experience Design (UXD). UXD is a field that focuses on the human touch points to a system, most often a computer-based system.

I spent several years of my career as an Information Architect (IA) / (UXD). Although I was (for the most part) not designing user experiences specifically for learning solutions, the principles and practices of the field are incredibly intertwined with ID/Learning Experience Design.


As we consider new and ever-changing tools and media in which to encourage learning (eg, social media tools, virtual worlds, games, mobile learning), we can no longer rely solely on research in adult learning theory and behavioral psychology, We must also be keenly aware of the implications of human factors, user-centered design principles, interface design, and information architecture. With that understanding, we will not only be better prepared to design elegant interactions for learners, but we can also apply lessons learned from the field of UXD to view our overall learning design.


I’d like to share a few of the practices that I employed as a UXD to introduce a very relevant and useful parallel field from which to learn. Over the next flew blog posts, I’ll highlight a tool, practice, or concept that is integral to the design of user experiences. Think of these tools and techniques not only as they relate to interface and interaction design, but also how the concepts and thought processes can be interpreted and translated to benefit the process and outcomes of learning design. First at bat: the concept of transparency.

Transparency
Achieving transparency in interaction design is one of the central goals in the practice of UXD. When an interface is transparent, the mechanics of accessing information or completing tasks in the system does not require thinking about the interface. Users will get exactly what they expect when navigating a site or application, and information is perceived to be readily available.
If you have ever considered and cautioned yourself against “cognitive overhead” or “seductive augmentation” when designing a learning experience, you can see the relation here. The idea is to keep things simple: Design in a way that is purposeful and unobtrusive rather than adding unnecessary flash simply for the cool factor.


The benefit of this in interaction design is obvious: users do not need to spend excess energy deciphering where to look, what to click and how to get what they need. What can we learn from this in the learning space? In addition to transparent interface design in our deliverables, think about how the design of your learning activities provides relevance and practical application to the learner. Are your learners readily able to get what they need out of the experience?


Sometimes desired behaviors are explicitly stated, modeled, and practiced as part of a learning experience. Even then, we need to ensure that we are supporting learners in transferring the experience and adopting acquired behaviors in their daily life.


Metaphors, analogies, and cases are also examples of valuable and frequently used learning tools. These strategies may require a bit more in the way of translation to real life in order to make the value and application transparent to learners and solidify improvement in performance. This is increasingly important with the rise in popularity of games-based learning. We want to make sure that our learners walk away from the learning experience with not just “wow, that was a fun game” but “wow, that was a fun game… and I get it. I understand what I should be doing differently and how to do it.”


The next time you design a deliverable, ask yourself: Is this a transparent learning experience?

No comments:

Post a Comment