Week 4: Lecture Notes

Instructional Design

• Instructional Design is the idea on how to “do something”, or to explain “how something works”.
• We use it in everyday life such as trying to navigate a phone system, audio instructions, ticket machine etc…
  • Ikea as an example distribute visual instruction leaflets with Ikea flatpack furniture, they offer completely language free as they sell into a global market but they are also simplistic to the point of being useless.
• Cognitive load theory (Sweller 1988) – the split attention effect
  • refers to the idea of working memory, which refers to how we manipulate information stored in our short-term memory.

Kinds of Interaction –

Cairo, Alberto: The functional art: an introduction to information graphics and visualisation

• Instruction – by clicking buttons
• Conversation – back & forth dialog
• Manipulation – drag & drop elements
• Exploration – open, playful, game-like

• Challenges –
  • limited screen area
  • limited resolution

• Opportunities –
  • Time
  • Layering

Challenges for User Preferences –

• Redundancy – in instructional design offering users options of text heavy set of instructions like a recipe + visual instructions.
  • allow the user to skim back & forth on these screens, to aid their navigation
  • sense of control

Reflection

I think the most important aspect of this pod would be the set of challenges for the user preferences which Leon discussed in his last point of the pod, because it’s the main focus on how will the user be able to interact with the work.

The important points Leon touched based on was the idea of redundancy where in instructional design is the idea of offering user’s option of text heavy set of instructions like a recipe + recipe instructions, as well as allowing the user to skim back & forth on the screen to aid their navigation, which i think in my opinion is the most important part of the discussion of instructional design.