Lecture Pods Summary
The lecture pod this week covered the following topics:
Instructional Design:
- Instructional Design is the design of instructions with the purpose of giving the user an easy to use step by step guide to their product.
- It should take into account the possible societal and cultural differences of each user and ensure that the instructions are effective for a wide array of people.
- For example, IKEA’s instructions are almost purely visual, and are too simplistic – they are so hard to understand that they almost become useless.
- Cognitive Load Theory: We as consumers use our Working Memory – the way we manipulate information stored in our short term memory. It is limited, however, based on the individuals ability to retain information.
- Using this theory, if instructions are split into information and visual examples, and these things are remote and on different sides of the page, then it overloads Working Memory and limits the functionality for those instructions.
- Having a sense of salience within information – e.g. having a well labelled image – can allow users to retain information more effectively.
Interactive Instructional Design:
- Instruction: the user telling the system to do something, i.e. clicking a button (for example, the use of piano).
- Conversation: Having a back and forth with the system, i.e. inputting personal information and receiving a personalised outcome.
- Manipulation: drag and drop elements, changing the structure and appearance of the interface, for example personalising a desktop background.
- Exploration: game-like, playful – games with choices or open world systems, map systems with the ability to explore at will.
- Challenges of working with interactive screens include: Size and resolution, the users, the user’s preferences, redundancy, etc.
- However, there are also some opportunities within interactivity that counteract these challenges: the added dimension of time, and the ability to layer elements being a couple of them.
Reflection
The lecture pod this week was really well put together with a lot of examples of both bad and good instructional design. One aspect of the lecture pod I learnt a lot from is the examples shown – the distinguishing of bad a good instructional design and the features of both. This helped me see how simple things like type placement and illustration placement can be the difference between good and bad design.
I also learnt how instructional design can be linked to interactive design, which will help when applying some instructional design to my own interface, particularly exploration or conversational elements.
An example of interactive instructional design is an in-game tutorial for games such as Cut the Rope. In game tutorials such as this are, if well-designed, excellent examples of interactive design as they require the player to actively participate in the instructions. In the case of Cut the Rope, this is done through a tutorial level, wherein the player has to complete each step of the instructions to progress in the game. This system ensures the player not only has an understanding of how the game works but also the ability to repeat the steps in each of the following levels. Examples of the game are seen below:
Image Source: Zeptolab UK Ltd. (2010). Cut The Rope [Screenshots]. Retrieved March 24, 2020 from https://cuttherope.net/#ctr
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