Analysis + Design

As I reflect back upon the past couple weeks in class, our course objective has been the process of analyzing a clients’ needs for an instructional design project. I have felt challenged by this step in the process. It hasn’t been a challenge with presenting a concept, finding an issue, or proposing potential solutions. My biggest challenge, has been something that has persistently confronted me as a designer, which is the challenge of having patience throughout the entirety of the design process. The ADDIE framework has forced me to slow down and be fully present throughout the steps of the analysis. I am reminded of my journey through graphic design, and how I would be presented with a ‘project concept’ and then my mind would start “sketching” solutions in my imagination. Part of that creative process was to create thumbnail sketches of ideas, so that I could physically work through sketching out potential solutions for the project, but my lack of patience would frequently draw me to the computer to start working up ideas without thumbnails to build upon first. By skipping this step in the process, it doesn’t allow you to slow down and see the problem through any other lens, except your minds eye. By working through this analysis process, I was placed in a position to ask questions, seek solutions, and trust myself as a designer and educator. The analysis gave me the framework to look through the eyes of the client, find areas lacking in their current content, to seek out redundancy and better methods of delivering information to their end user, in a more informed and methodological format. Although my mind still builds a preliminary framework in my head, there is value in working through the steps, speaking to the client, and evaluating their needs to ensure that all objectives are met successfully.

I am starting to feel the shaping process of learning instructional design. From a foundational standpoint, I learned the elements of design many years ago, and on a subconscious level, I’m always aware of the use of shape, form, color, texture, line, movement, and scale, in the world around me. I’ve always put those elements into the “box” of right brained thinking, but instructional design is teaching me how to weave those elements into an analytical, left brained space, and I find it exciting and challenging at the same time. While design covers the aesthetics of an instructional course, it also comes with the solutions to the question “how?” In the realm of instructional design, both analysis and design must dwell in the same space together. You must weave together logic, language, psychology, instruction, and methodology, into the same fabric that contains images, audio, creative content, and inquiry, in a way that illuminates the learner and results in retention. Years of criticism about using media as a method of learning, and we are still posing the question of it’s value still today. Perhaps media can’t force learning, but there is a reason that our predecessors drew on cave walls as a means of telling a story and informing others about their surroundings. What must have seemed trivial at the time, so many years ago, is still a tool for us today, to learn about cultures and civilizations. The integration of multi-media in education, enables us to look into places and spaces that no static classroom can take us.