The last blog post I wrote was about starting design with a problem rather than a solution, and it came from a conversation with Stephen Anderson about a presentation he was putting together for the IA Summit.
Here’s his presentation, and (of course) it’s great stuff:
So, several conversations recently are coming together:
- Judy Unrein’s post on Mike Monteiro’s How Designers Destroyed the World talk, and her discussion about how designers can’t be just be order takers (go watch the talk – it’s amazing)
- A conversation with Stephen Anderson about his upcoming IA Summit talk called Stop Doing What You Are Told! about reframing the design problem (soooo looking forward to those slides)
- Dan Lockton’s article in the guardian about sustainable design, which talks about how, if people aren’t doing things the way we would like, we should figure out how to solve their problems, rather than treating them as the problem.
Getting to the problem
So, this is hard. I think designers are often given solutions to implement, rather than problems to solve. I sometime think that’s half my job with clients — getting a clear statement on the problem they are trying to solve, or the opportunity they are trying to realize. It’s something where the outside perspective can really help — when you live with problems all the time, they frequently become tacit.
When I was teaching undergraduates, this was a hard idea to communicate, but it’s a key skill that everyone needs to have. I used to have a really simple card sorting game that I’d have my students play to see if they were being given a problem to solve, or a solution to implement. If it was a solution, then they had to work on a way to get the actual problem clearly stated.
I think, in light of Dan’s article, I’d tweak it a bit more, and talk about strategies for unpacking even the problem statements (e.g. the card “Sales people aren’t able to answer customer technical questions” would probably be better as “Customers have technical questions that they need answered during the sales process”).
I have several different questions that help me dig for the problem:
Curious to know what other people do — what do you use to understand what the real problem/opportunity/challenge is?
Had a lovely time at the Learning Solutions Conference last week. Did a full day pre-con on Gameful Learning Design with Rick Raymer, which was a lot of fun.
I also did a session on Narrative Techniques for Learning. When I was working on Design For How People Learn, I listened a lot to a podcast on storytelling techniques.
A lot of learning and development folks *are* fiction writers, in the form of learning scenarios, examples and case studies, but (in my experience) it’s frequently pretty dull stuff (and I say this as someone who has written some dull scenarios myself).
So this session is about pulling some of the specific strategies that fiction writers use to into learning scenarios. There are a lot of other interesting ways to explore storytelling in terms of meta-structures, psychology and cultural constructs. This isn’t that presentation (though I’ll probably do that one too, one of these days).
This presentation is focused on specific strategies for making learning stories more interesting.
References:
Hey folks, this is a really excellent discussion of the issues and research around using extrinsic rewards as a way to motivate behavior. Chris Hecker is looking at the question through the lens of game design, but it really, really applies to learning design as well. 
There’s a write-up at the website, and a recording of the talk if you scroll down. It’s long-ish, but well worth the listen.
Found this via Amy Jo Kim on twitter: https://twitter.com/amyjokim
Peachpit (my publishers) are doing kind of a cool little series of posts on the Best Design Advice You Ever Got.
Click here to see my entry: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1930037
What’s the best design advice you ever got?
(Artwork is courtesy of Judy Unrein, the Awesome color is courtesy of Crayola, and quote is from Alex Hillman via Aaron Silvers)
So the first column of what will hopefully be a longish running series for the elearning guild is up — it’s an effort to make learning-related academic research more available to a professional practitioner audience:
Here’s the story behind it:
Several months ago, Clark Quinn and I were at a workshop and we were discussing the problem of evidence-based practice. We agreed that staying connected with academic research was a critical activity for instructional designers, but we both recognized that it was really hard to do. Busy practitioners just don’t have time to sit down and read all the way through the latest copy of BJET (the British Journal of Educational Technology).
The Internet is a mixed blessing in this regard—a huge number of journal articles are freely available online, but the academic publishers are firewalling them more frequently these days. And even if you can get access to articles—who has time to read them?
This Learning Solutions article is the first in a series intended to address this problem. This series will present short summaries of academic research that may be of interest to eLearning designers. The Learning Solutions article authors (there are several of us) will offer a short, blog-length summary of each study and include a brief discussion of the implications for design. Some of the journal articles we summarize will be newly released research, and some will be older studies that we think still have implications for eLearning design.
We are very interested in your feedback—we want to know whether this is helpful to you as a practitioner? Let us know what you think—please leave your reactions in the comments following the article!
I’m listening to the most recent toolbar episode with Judy Unrein, Brian Dusablon and their guest, Connie Malamed. They talk about a number of things, but there’s a lot of discussion of creativity – how to be creative, the importance of creativity for problem solving, and the unfortunate lack of creativity that can happen in learning design.
I think that there’s a weird attitude to creativity in our field – that it’s a nice-to-have (and just be clear — this isn’t something Judy, Brian and Connie said, but rather an attitude I’ve bumped into many times elsewhere). I think that there are a couple of reasons this isn’t true:
So, creativity is a legitimate design strategy – not something that is a pretty garnish on the plate.
Here are a few other interesting things on creativity:
I blogged! Just not here!!
I’m the guest blogger this week for the Tin Can folks. It’s a post about why should care about Tin Can if you are an instructional designer:
http://tincanapi.com/2012/09/04/what-does-tin-can-mean-to-instructional-designers/
I also get to bitch a little bit about SCORM and how is that not fun?
So, I’ve had a crazy spring so far — between a brutal travel schedule and some unexpected health stuff (all resolved now), there’s barely been time to draw breath.
There have been lots of good things, including some interesting projects in the works. A particular good thing recently was a really nice review of the book by Clive Shepherd:
“There’s book a I’ve been meaning to write which I hoped would address the problem. I tentatively called it ‘What every L&D professional needs to know about learning’ (not so catchy I know). But I’ve been beaten to the gun by Julie Dirksen.” – Clive Shepherd
Still giddily fanning myself a bit over that…
For local folks (Minneapolis/St. Paul area), there are a few things going on also:
On Thursday (April 12th, 2012), I’m doing the Design for Behavior Change talk for the local UPA (Usability Professionals Association) chapter. The event starts at 6:15 PM, and the talk starts at 6:45 PM. You can get details here http://www.upamn.org/events?eventId=456463&EventViewMode=EventDetails
Also, the fantastic Connie Malamed (author of Visual Language for Designers and http://theelearningcoach.com/) is in town this week, so check out her talk on Friday:
Your Brain on Graphics: Research-Inspired Design, Friday April 13th
Information here: http://www.pactweb.org/ (you can also get details about her 1/2 day workshop at that link)
Program Details: Learning through visuals opens up new pathways in the brain. You can optimize opportunities for visual learning and provide better learning experiences when you understand how people perceive and process visual information. During this presentation, you will learn how graphics can leverage the strengths and compensate for the weaknesses of our cognitive architecture. You’ll learn how to make design decisions based on research. We’ll look at lots of examples in the process. Topics include: * How our brains are hardwired for graphics * How to speed up your visual message * How to make graphics cognitively efficient * How to speak to the emotions through visuals * How to visualize abstractions This presentation is for anyone who selects, conceives of, designs or creates visuals or anyone interested in visual communication.
Location: The Metropolitan, 5418 Wayzata Boulevard, Golden Valley, MN 55418 When: 8:30-11am
(She also wrote a very nice review of the book, btw)
Do you want to capture and maintain your learners’ attention? You need to talk to the elephant.
The elephant metaphor is from Jonathan Haidt's book, The Happiness Hypothesis (http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/)
Peachpit (my publishers) just posted an article I wrote based on Chapter 5: Design for Attention. You can read the entire article here.