When I was a manager at Wal~Mart, we used a system of training associates called Computer-Based Learning (CBLs). CBLs were basically a series of videos about every level of operation the company needed to function. Cashiers were give a series of about 50-60 CBLs that covered the operation of the registers, proper ways to engage with the customers, procedures for accepting food stamps, etc. Stockers watched videos on safety, customer service, etc. Manager had to go through about three times as many videos much of which I signed a waiver not to talk about outside the company. But the point isn't the content, as much as the way it was presented. The videos used many different combinations of multi-media to present the material. There were images and text combined with a disembodied voice speaking quietly through the headphones, and at times, there were video sequences where real people would talk or present small dramatic examples of the situations the associates were learning about. When I first started, the CBLs were the first part of an associates training, and one had to spend upwards of a week sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, until they were complete, which resulted in an information overload, and the associates were basically starting from scratch when they hit the sales floor. Eventually, the time spent on CBLs was limited to 2 hours a day, and the rest of the time was spent working on the sales floor under the guidance of an experienced associate. So, while they CBLs couldn't replace real-world experience, they did and continue to work as a supplement.
I think the project that I'm working on with ConnectND is similar to Wal~Mart's CBLs in that I'm trying to use multimedia to teach skills necessary for real-world situations (even though theoretically these situations only happen in a virtual environment, they still have real-world implications). However, the big difference is that there is no experienced user helping these people to learn these skills. It is all computer-based learning, and much like the associates at Wal~Mart, I worry about information overload, which is another reason (besides accessibility) I've tried to break the actions up into smaller tasks for the student or faculty member. In terms of a theoritical framework, I've been looking at John Sweller's Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), which basically looks at the way sensory memory transfers to working memory and then into long term memory. The purpose of the tutorials I'm creating is ultimately to create long term memory that can be accessed at later times, but in order to do that effectively (at least in terms of CLT) multiple senses must be engaged simultaneously, the information must be kept to a minimum, and the target audience needs to interact with the material in some fashion.
In future blogs, I'll begin to flesh out these elements and what I'm doing at work to compensate for them.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
101 Standards for Online Communication
JoAnn T. Hackos and Dawn M. Stevens' Standards for Online Communication is really just a list of standards in online communication. There are justifications for these standards, which is what gives the book it's impressive girth, but it's still just a list all the same. While I didn't necessarily disagree with the standards themselves, the rebel in me wanted to throw them all out on principle. For a simple summary of the book check out 101 Standards of Communication by Dawn M. Stevens.
Much like other books on technical communication they suggest a lot of research at the beginning of the project. Get to know your users, set up user profiles, create hierarchies of information, etc. I can see why it's necessary for someone who has become to buried in a project to think rationally to conduct these steps. For instance, a code monkey working at Microsoft would probably have a hard time translating system processes for the technically illiterate; however, I would think an experienced, talented technical writer brought onto a project would be able to anticipate people's reactions without spending too much time researching, mostly because he/she would have done this enough times to know how people think. And to prove this point, let's look at the list Hackos and Stevens' compiled. They start with the research component and then proceed to include the following in the design section of their list:
1. Select readable on-screen fonts
2. Avoid too many font changes
3. Keep line lengths short
4. Distinguish important elements from normal text
5. Avoid excessive emphasis techniques
6. Be consistent screens in the format and design of display
7. Use negative space
8. Avoid horizontal scrolling
9. Make the interface easy to remember
10. Use color sparingly
11. Consider limitations of the hardware and your users
So, the question is how do they know these particular design elements would be distracting to a user unless user reactions could be anticipated without necessarily conducting the research ahead of time? Or is it because they conducted the research that they know this? Personally, I think that the research element is largely exaggerated, and the testing after the online text/site/whatever has been created is far more likely to produce favorable results than spending so much time at the beginning of the project planning and plotting, just because I think that user reactions can be anticipated fairly easily with just a little imaginative empathy for other people on the part of the writer/designer.
Much like other books on technical communication they suggest a lot of research at the beginning of the project. Get to know your users, set up user profiles, create hierarchies of information, etc. I can see why it's necessary for someone who has become to buried in a project to think rationally to conduct these steps. For instance, a code monkey working at Microsoft would probably have a hard time translating system processes for the technically illiterate; however, I would think an experienced, talented technical writer brought onto a project would be able to anticipate people's reactions without spending too much time researching, mostly because he/she would have done this enough times to know how people think. And to prove this point, let's look at the list Hackos and Stevens' compiled. They start with the research component and then proceed to include the following in the design section of their list:
1. Select readable on-screen fonts
2. Avoid too many font changes
3. Keep line lengths short
4. Distinguish important elements from normal text
5. Avoid excessive emphasis techniques
6. Be consistent screens in the format and design of display
7. Use negative space
8. Avoid horizontal scrolling
9. Make the interface easy to remember
10. Use color sparingly
11. Consider limitations of the hardware and your users
So, the question is how do they know these particular design elements would be distracting to a user unless user reactions could be anticipated without necessarily conducting the research ahead of time? Or is it because they conducted the research that they know this? Personally, I think that the research element is largely exaggerated, and the testing after the online text/site/whatever has been created is far more likely to produce favorable results than spending so much time at the beginning of the project planning and plotting, just because I think that user reactions can be anticipated fairly easily with just a little imaginative empathy for other people on the part of the writer/designer.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Print is Dead; Well It's Terminal Anyway
Hackos and Stevens' Standards for Online Communication makes the claim that users (there's a term that I'm finding is over-used and ill-defined) don't want to read a lot of text online; that they'd rather read long text in paper form, so there should be a print option in electronic documentation (50). In addition, that printed material should be visually pleasing; to keep their attention. On the other hand, employers don't want to pay outrageous printing costs either to make printed documentation or from employees printing that visually pleasing, disposal media on the office printer. And that is why print is terminal, much like experienced employees over 40, it's just not cost-effective to continue using the medium. Not to mention new gen employees are more comfortable with multi-media anyway. But how are we going to replace paper and print? Sony's got the answer:
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Green Tech: Kinetic Sculpture
While I'm sure there's all kinds of philosophical implications inherent in this video, I'm going to skip it and just say, "cool!"
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Principles of Web Design Part 2
One quick rant before we get too in-depth:
I don't like being overly critical of a book, especially one two people spent a lot of time and effort writing, but seriously with a title like Principles of Web Design, you'd think the Farkai or the publishers would have sprung for color print in the graphic design chapter. On page 246, there's a black-and-white color wheel; seriously people that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
Okay, now that that's out of my system . . .
After I'd moved beyond the planning sections of the book, I didn't really find anything insightful or particularly useful. I suppose the Graphic Design section would have been useful to someone who hadn't majored in Art at the beginning of his academic career and had many many design classes, but everything else seemed obvious, which isn't to say it wasn't correct of necessary, just obvious. By this point I think the internet has become so commonplace that most people looking to design a website will already understand buttons and hierarchies even if they can't necessarily vocalize the theory behind these conventions.
Of course, there is the distinct possibility that I'm imprinting my experience on others, in which case, the Farkai do a great job of relating the necessary steps in creating a website, especially if you throw the whole book away and just read appendix A, conveniently titled: Twenty Five Guidelines for Getting Started.
I don't like being overly critical of a book, especially one two people spent a lot of time and effort writing, but seriously with a title like Principles of Web Design, you'd think the Farkai or the publishers would have sprung for color print in the graphic design chapter. On page 246, there's a black-and-white color wheel; seriously people that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
Okay, now that that's out of my system . . .
After I'd moved beyond the planning sections of the book, I didn't really find anything insightful or particularly useful. I suppose the Graphic Design section would have been useful to someone who hadn't majored in Art at the beginning of his academic career and had many many design classes, but everything else seemed obvious, which isn't to say it wasn't correct of necessary, just obvious. By this point I think the internet has become so commonplace that most people looking to design a website will already understand buttons and hierarchies even if they can't necessarily vocalize the theory behind these conventions.
Of course, there is the distinct possibility that I'm imprinting my experience on others, in which case, the Farkai do a great job of relating the necessary steps in creating a website, especially if you throw the whole book away and just read appendix A, conveniently titled: Twenty Five Guidelines for Getting Started.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Prinicpals of Web Design Part 1
So, reading through The Principals of Web Design by David and Jean Farkas, I've begun to realize how little I actually work like this. The way they describe web design seems so purposeful and structured, whereas the way I actually work is a lot more chaotic, what Steven Krug would call muddling through. For instance, I built a web form that submits information via email yesterday. I'd never done anything like that, so I went through several examples of web forms on the web, borrowed lines of code here and there and basically pasted something together that does what I want it to do. It took about four hours of lots and lots of frustration and change, but I finally got it to work. Now, according to the Farkases, I probably should have taken an hour or so and sat down, mapped out my goals, and systematically figured out how to reach each one of them.
Sure, maybe I did that in my head, but I definitely didn't commit any plans to paper or really consciously make any plans for that matter. I had a vague idea of what I wanted and an even vaguer idea of how I wanted to get there, and with a lot of frustration and an equal amount of perseverance I managed to get where I wanted to go.
Most the web designers I know operate a lot more like this than the Farkases methods. They have ideas about what they want and a vague idea about how to get there, and they just go, rapidly without a lot of planning. Most of the writing they do comes about during the bug fixes when they start making lists of problems, and putting those into hierarchies. I think Krug's examples of the problems found during user testing are a good example of this aftermath.
I kind of had the same problem when I was reading Contextual Design last semester. It's a great idea, it probably is a necessity in a corporate design setting where there are multiple people working on a project, and it is probably a good idea for an individual to take notice of the pre-planning stages, and it would have saved me a lot of work with the project I'm working on now if I worked this way, but it's a lot more fun just to jump in the pool with both feet and not worry about the sharks swimming in the deep end.
Sure, maybe I did that in my head, but I definitely didn't commit any plans to paper or really consciously make any plans for that matter. I had a vague idea of what I wanted and an even vaguer idea of how I wanted to get there, and with a lot of frustration and an equal amount of perseverance I managed to get where I wanted to go.
Most the web designers I know operate a lot more like this than the Farkases methods. They have ideas about what they want and a vague idea about how to get there, and they just go, rapidly without a lot of planning. Most of the writing they do comes about during the bug fixes when they start making lists of problems, and putting those into hierarchies. I think Krug's examples of the problems found during user testing are a good example of this aftermath.
I kind of had the same problem when I was reading Contextual Design last semester. It's a great idea, it probably is a necessity in a corporate design setting where there are multiple people working on a project, and it is probably a good idea for an individual to take notice of the pre-planning stages, and it would have saved me a lot of work with the project I'm working on now if I worked this way, but it's a lot more fun just to jump in the pool with both feet and not worry about the sharks swimming in the deep end.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The Paradox of Thinking About Not Thinking
Reading through Steve Krug's, Don't Make Me Think has made me realize how much thought and planning goes into an effective website's numbing ease of use. My own tendency to get bored and move on if a page doesn't load fast enough or if information isn't easy enough to find, definitely makes me aware of the need for this kind of design for mass consumption, but the classicist in me rages against it. Let's step out of reality for a moment and look at the ideal. Just because the masses crave simplicity and usability are we as designers, writers, and educators really doing them any favors by pandering to their capitalistic induced desires for expediency and ease of use?
Not thinking and considering the world around us, even the virtual one, is bound to have some long term effects on us as a society. While there aren't any studies on the subject, I find it interesting that rate of ADHD diagnoses has increased significantly over the past few years--3-5% of Amarican children in 1990 to 8% by 2004--as has the increased availability of the internet, and it has been shown that a child's environment is just as likely to be a cause for ADHD as genetic markers or any other as yet unproven causation, and this isn't even taking in to account the equally large numbers of adult ADHD cases diagnosed every year. 1 Now keep in mind I'm just musing on the subject and none of this has been researched specifically, but if we're designing sites, stores, advertisements, and life in general to require as little attention as possible, is it any wonder that we're having so much trouble paying attention as a society?
And yet while the classicist in me rages against the idea, I know that if a company is going to be successful, it must conform and continue to propagate the problem. As Krug points out, if a customer is looking to buy a chainsaw, they want to go to the store and buy it, not get bogged down in aesthetic choices and intellectual musings (51-55). 2 And yet, it is only a certain demographic that would go to a store or website looking to buy a chainsaw, and in this proletariat demographic, a marxist would see a propagation of social hierarchy brought on, not by the nobility, but by the corporate elite.
And speaking of the the subjugation of the masses, what's really interesting is the comments Krug makes about economy of space. He says "Keep the noise down to a dull roar . . . when everything on the page is clamoring for my attention the effect can be overwhelming", and yet the purpose that would cause a company to take this advice and be economical in space is to get a consumer to buy more physical stuff to clamor for attention in their physical space (100). 2 Paul Graham writes, "Unless you're extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one's spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there's more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting." 3 So, the principles of web design are based on normal human reactions, and yet these commercial sites are also convincing buyers that somehow the more stuff one has the better life is, and it is in part due to economical design: "they make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that 'shopping' becomes a leisure activity". 3 And thus create a disastrous cycle for the consumer, "I can escape my overcrowded life of stuff by going to the store or getting online and getting more stuff in a less crowded environment." It's amazing how the powers that be moved from not giving the masses anything, to giving them too much. Brilliantly devious, no?
That's enough ranting for one day . . .
Not thinking and considering the world around us, even the virtual one, is bound to have some long term effects on us as a society. While there aren't any studies on the subject, I find it interesting that rate of ADHD diagnoses has increased significantly over the past few years--3-5% of Amarican children in 1990 to 8% by 2004--as has the increased availability of the internet, and it has been shown that a child's environment is just as likely to be a cause for ADHD as genetic markers or any other as yet unproven causation, and this isn't even taking in to account the equally large numbers of adult ADHD cases diagnosed every year. 1 Now keep in mind I'm just musing on the subject and none of this has been researched specifically, but if we're designing sites, stores, advertisements, and life in general to require as little attention as possible, is it any wonder that we're having so much trouble paying attention as a society?
And yet while the classicist in me rages against the idea, I know that if a company is going to be successful, it must conform and continue to propagate the problem. As Krug points out, if a customer is looking to buy a chainsaw, they want to go to the store and buy it, not get bogged down in aesthetic choices and intellectual musings (51-55). 2 And yet, it is only a certain demographic that would go to a store or website looking to buy a chainsaw, and in this proletariat demographic, a marxist would see a propagation of social hierarchy brought on, not by the nobility, but by the corporate elite.
And speaking of the the subjugation of the masses, what's really interesting is the comments Krug makes about economy of space. He says "Keep the noise down to a dull roar . . . when everything on the page is clamoring for my attention the effect can be overwhelming", and yet the purpose that would cause a company to take this advice and be economical in space is to get a consumer to buy more physical stuff to clamor for attention in their physical space (100). 2 Paul Graham writes, "Unless you're extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one's spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there's more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting." 3 So, the principles of web design are based on normal human reactions, and yet these commercial sites are also convincing buyers that somehow the more stuff one has the better life is, and it is in part due to economical design: "they make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that 'shopping' becomes a leisure activity". 3 And thus create a disastrous cycle for the consumer, "I can escape my overcrowded life of stuff by going to the store or getting online and getting more stuff in a less crowded environment." It's amazing how the powers that be moved from not giving the masses anything, to giving them too much. Brilliantly devious, no?
That's enough ranting for one day . . .
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