LXD | Tracking Learning in Jan
It is the first week of the new semester, and I took the classes of Design Experiences for Learning(LXD) at Design College.
W1D1 | What excites you about diving into designing experiences for learning and why?
In 2019 Fall the course Learning Media Design provided me with hand-on exercise in improving project-based learning (PBL) experience. Thus, I got in-depth experience in studying the formal learning environment. This time I would like to dive into the more generally defined learning experience design.
Learning happens around us every day. The books we read, the conversions we made, the challenges we set for our own and the plans we designed to execute —— each of these provides us with information exchange, experience gains, and influence our habit formations. By learning such tiny things, we become what we are and grow up to what we want to be. But how can we utilize this opportunity to get more effective learning, is still a question that I’m seeking an answer for.
In Persuasive Design I took last year, I found nudges were good strategies to help learners change their mindsets, design may either help or hinder our learning, poor design can even lead to opposite outcomes. Cognitive science theories and psychological researches told me a lot about people’s mental activities and explanations of their reactions to stimulations. That is an area that I’m interested in. Therefore, I really expect using the whole semester to design a fantastic learning experience and make a reliable product in LXD class.
W1D2 | Interested Topic Exploration
In the second class, the instructor assigned us to different groups to discuss about our interested topics. Six topic groups ran at the same time. After a period, we were told to switch to a second group for another topic. So we ended up finishing three topic discussions and contributed our ideas on the whiteboard.
Learning on mental and physical health are the topic that I’m mostly interested in. For health maintenance issues, there’s a knowledge gap between patients and medical specialists. However, unauthentic information online may lead people in the wrong way. That’s why I want to dive into the health area and design something that can help people learn to identify authentic information or provide them with proper health-related guidance.
Sustainability is another area that I am curious about. There’s so much we can do to awake citizens’ consciousness on resource conservation. The challenge is on changing people’s minds. It might require the designer to apply psychological knowledge to make the product influence people’s attitudes and help them develop new habits step by step.
W2D1 | Expand on the questions/hypotheses raised in class — Who, what, when, where, why how? — as it relates to your topic(s) of interest.
In the second class for 2nd week, I joined the Health / Wellness group to continually investigate in questions we can explore. The questions unfold surrounding a central issue: the knowledge gap between doctors and patients.
- What can people do to manage their health with or without illness?
- Who can take charge of the role and act as an effective educator under the medical care context?
- Where can people get authentic and reliable self-care information in daily life?
- When do they need to seek help from hospitals or treat themselves?
- How to influence people’s attitudes and eliminate their misconceptions about health issues?
- ……
The relevant examples are: How can we help patients interpret their own DNA data independently and take action to improve their health? Another is that we know kids fear hospitals and hate taking medicines, so what can we do to let children realize the importance of medical treatment?
As I research further, I’ll find a clearer problem to work on.
W2D2 | Activity takeaways sharing: Decoding learning experience
We did an interesting and meaningful activity on Thursday. Each of us was required to hare one learning experience with the whole class.
Some broad my eye on the wide opportunities for educating people. The Seafood Watch Program helps business owners and customers to know the fish source and the relevant costs such as transportation and ecological impacts. It helps people understand a healthy choice for fish can have a beneficial impact on our eco-environment, and also economical at the same time.
Some other projects also enlarge my scope on the presentation of education. I was impressed by the Measuring Exhibition held by 21_21Design. It displayed daily objects to contrast their size, interactive installations to connect the figures with real-life objects, facilitating people to build a sense of certain measurement that we frequently used. Also, it tried to explore new ways of measuring. For example, to measure the intangible texts as tangible objects with weight, trying to associate novel interpretations with it.
In my study on Photography Mapped, I learned how to teach people SDLR using 2D animations by simplifying the focuses. I also learned the novel way of learning typography via interactive games from my classmate Amanda’s example:
Upon the above experiences, I was inspired to discover novel presentations for old knowledge, and utilize cutting-edge technology to create new learning experiences. Those strike my thoughts about: could we design a new way of presenting health-related information? Could we design an immersive learning experience that enables learners to learn by doing/playing?
Looking forward to the next week.
Other things that I want to talk about
In the discussion on Health/Wellness, Nick asked about how to increase user’s motivation to use your product. I recalled from my memory and summarized three ways for that:
- Match your teaching goal with user’s learning goal
- Help the learner see the value of using your product
- Add rewards during use
There should be more approaches (and I hope you can comment on this if you’ve got an idea :D). Dark patterns may also help, but it depends on how you use it to increase the user stickiness instead of causing disgusts. We’re responsible to consider the healthiness and sustainability for use in the long run.
W3D1 | Who are your (learners/instructors/stakeholders? What are their hopes/aspirations; fears/concerns; needs?
I drew a stakeholder map for the broad scope of the medical system. Our targeted learner is the Healthcare Receiver. The stakeholders that I can definitely get access to would be Healthcare Receiver and Learning Resource Provider. Financial Service Provider and Healthcare Provider may be possible to access but there’s a lot of uncertainty.
In the second class of this week, we had a work session for the stakeholder map, in which we got the chance to pick one central problem and narrow down the stakeholder scope. The problem is:
How could people identify reliable sources, interpret them meaningfully and convert them into actions to self-manage their health conditions?
We focused on patients (may or may not need treatment), family and friends, and doctors (to simplify the context).
Learners under the medical environment expect to build trust with their treatment providers, get authentic information and in-time suggestions. They fear to make wrong decisions about their health, become the burden of their family, and spend too much money on treatment.
Doctors, patients, and family share one hope on building trust. Patients and their families both don’t want to hurt the emotions of each other and feel hard to start a difficult conversation. Due to the lack of medical care knowledge, they feel unsure about their body conditions and making correct decisions.
W3D2 | What have you discovered about your learners/stakeholders? What have you gained from class activities and exercises this week?
This week we decided to connect with an expert who works in a local clinic to learn about how patients self-manage themselves out of the hospital, and what is the learning problem.
In the revised stakeholder map, we used green lines to connect the common hopes and fears and used red lines to show the conflicting interests.
Our resource is our own experiences, assumptions, and feedback from our friends and family. I asked my mom, who is a doctor, briefly about her opinions.
From the treatment aspect, doctors want to do their best to give patients good treatment and the patient also wants to get back the control of their life after the treatment.
From the social aspect, the common fear share by our three stakeholders is to start a difficult conversation about serious situations.
From the communication aspect, there’re divergent scenarios. Some patients hope to get their therapist learned well about their conditions and get supported as much as possible, while this turns to an efficiency problem as a doctor has many patients but limited time. Some patients are well-prepared with researched information and learned real experience from their family, which are more creditable to them, while in the doctor’s eyes these treatments may be not suitable and safe. There’s a conflict sometimes occurring either to trust the doctor or materials they trust.
A question to my mind is — what can we do with the red lines? I begin to realize that if we can change the way to perceive conflicting hopes and fears, they will become common interests for both sides. Under the connections, there may exist misconceptions, misbelief, or a lack of knowledge that causes the current problem. This is actually where learning could happen.
W4D1 | Referencing your learning gaps diagram, what are the challenges you plan to tackle? What types of challenges are they? What ideas do you have for approaching them?
This week we made the map based on the previous stakeholder map. We summarized the problems into several aspects:
- trust between patients and doctors
- understanding of treatment/body condition
- influence & awareness
- community support
- social emotions and feelings: burdening, shameless, helpless, identity crisis…
- help from family and friends
- cost
On the left-hand side, there showed the current stage. On the right-hand side, we figured out the ideal stage. In the middle, we wrote down a bunch of ideas to bridge the gap. For example, to help people be aware of their health and self-management, we can let them see the benefits, be empathetic about their future self and visualize the experience so that they can realize the impact of self-management.
We started our team medium post! Welcome to follow our latest updates via this link →
W10D1 | Blockbusting
How are you leveraging blockbusting in your thinking?
Due to the pandemic of COVID-2019, this week we transit our class online. We were asked to draw several objects and show them with classmates.
There are a lot of differences in the sketches of a tree. For example, some people drew the root, but most of us didn’t. Some drew brunches while some didn’t. Besides, the shapes and types of trees were different.
It stroke my thoughts on different knowledge organization and interpretation. When we are talking about C, one person may connect C to B, while another one connects C to A. Although using the same words, they are talking about different contents.
This also means in a design project, we may use our prior-knowledge and stereotype to interpret the information. We just focus on what we care about but ignore the other influential factors.
- Problem-solvers often have a STRONG TENDENCY TO DETECT WHAT THEY EXPECT.
- Problem-solvers often have DIFFICULTY ISOLATING A PROBLEM effectively.
- Problem-solvers often have a TENDENCY TO LIMIT THE PROBLEM AREA.
- Problem-solvers often encounter an INABILITY TO SEE TASKS FROM VARIOUS VIEWPOINTS.
- Problem-solvers often CAN’T RECALL ESSENTIAL CONTENT DUE TO SATURATION.
- Problem-solvers often encounter a FAILURE TO UTILIZE ALL SENSORY INPUTS when tackling a challenge.
Conceptual Blockbusting written by James L. Adams
What are your goals/aspirations for your project (and the course) going forward? What do you hope to learn and achieve?
Currently, our team has made a big picture of the potential solution, but we hope to prototype just one component inside it to high fidelity.
My aspiration for the course is to learn how to tackle a problem and design challenges from a designer’s perspective (not research-driven). In addition, how to ensure the on-going project going well in an unideal condition.
