 |  |  |  |  |
Introduction:
I attended Robin Bartoletti's Design Thinking for Learning Design in Canvas Courses session and have a few thoughts to share.
Details:
I hope you don't mind these late blogs. It takes me a while to review my notes, and this platform is a good way for me to collect my thoughts. :smileygrin: I attended this session not knowing what Design Thinking was, other than it being a very awesome way to describe something. The main example that was shared about what Design Thinking is and how it impacts us was the Tesla automobile designs, which factored in not only the engineering and mechanical layouts, but more importantly the people that would use them. It's almost as if car designers typically start with the engine, frame, wheels, and then retrofit a person. The Tesla model, as described, essentially starts with a person and builds a car around him/her.
This actually resonated quite a bit with me as I studies something called Human Factors Psychology (see: http://www.apa.org/action/science/human-factors/index.aspx/). The origin of this field actually emerged post WWII, as aviation became increasingly more technical and complicated. Eventually we branched out aviation to include aerospace and commercial endeavors, and we saw increases in accidents related to human error.
A tipping point leading to Human Factors being an important crossover between psychology and engineering was when airplane cockpits began to be digitalized instead of using analog dials. The digital readouts were introduced and we were seeing drastic increases in people misreading the gauges and crashing. Psychologists conducted interviews and research, and it turned out that the culprit was essentially the disconnect between people and the machines. When dials were analog, the pilots would run their checks and adjust the dials. When a setting was correct they would turn the dial so that the indicator was pointed straight up. When everything checked out, all the dials on the cockpit would point up. If something was amiss, they would notice it right away because one of the dials would no longer be pointed up and they could attend to that issue.
But if everything is digital then you have a myriad of different readouts. These numbers might not mean anything to you: 35, 188, 4.3, 124... Even if that 4.3 should really be 7.3, it would be hard to make out in the sea of numbers and displays. However, which one of these lines catches your attention? | | | / | They're all pointing up except one. So lets look at what's going on with that one - and maybe in the process we'll not crash the plane.
So after the aeronautic overhaul designed to increase the efficiency of airplanes, the industry had to do another overhaul simply because they left the humans behind in the process. A machine or system might work perfectly from an engineering or design process, but when a human interacts with it, it might not function. A gas stove might function perfectly from an engineering standpoint, but if the dials are in the very back and a person with long dangly sleeves has to use the stove then they might catch a sleeve on fire. The engineer will say that the machine works fine, but the consumer will point to the charred arms and disagree.
Of course even though Robin used Tesla as an example, the real application for us it to thinking about learning design and pedagogy from the human standpoint. Keep the learner in mind from the beginning and remember that a prospectus or curriculum alignment document might look fine and beautiful on paper, but that we have real humans who interact with our curriculum.
Conclusion:
I like what Robin mentioned: "Design Thinking has many designs and processes. Pick one that works for you."
