Designing in...From evolution to education

Michel AubéUniversité de Sherbrooke

maube@courrier.usherb.ca

Why designing?

It’s part of current tool craftmanship to support humans’ work through the functional assembling of simpler objects or processes.

Tools, conceptual ones as well as physical ones, evidence both syntax and semantics.

Tool use and crafting probably appearedsimultaneously with language capabilities.

Why designing?

Designing works because your body and mindprovide the interface with the tool you’re using (you wouldn’t give a dog a hammer…)

Hence, good designing requires experience and/orthinking about the particular interface «in you» that this particular tool is going to call upon.

Pedagogical designing?

It has to do with principles and techniques concerning how to best carve physical as well as conceptual tools, in order to sustain learning and cognitive work.

Those principles rely upon our current knowledge of perceptual, cognitive and motivational processes..

A few good references for understanding the...

...psychological

foundations of good design:

Hints for better designs

1. Hints from work on perception

2. Hints from work on memory and cognition

3. Hints from work on motivation

4. Hints from work on cooperation and social behavior

1. Hints from work on perception

• We’re built to recognize, and to react to, certain recurrent patterns («affordances») of the environment

• We tend to prefer open spaces but with a few places for further explorations

• We tend to favor balance, symmetry and hierarchy

• We’re mostly top-down left-to-right readers, perhaps because of our right-handedness bias, and most syntax (be it verbal or iconic), builds sequences accordingly

• We’re built to react to alert signals that are often conveyed by moving objects, bright colors, sudden flashes...

For signals of concrete actions, choose preferably iconic representations (because of the affordances)

For signals of abstract actions, choose preferably verbal labels...

As an example of left-to-right syntax, most menu bars post the most generic commands to the left, and move towards the right for increasingly more specific functions:

2. Hints from work on memory and cognition• From the capacity limitation of STM, we can process only about seven items at a time. Hence try to avoid overloading documents with too much information

• To exceed that limitation, one needs structure (hierarchical, syntactical, visuo-spatially familiar…)

• We acquire new knowledge by building over previous ones (and well-used hyperlinks are good for this)

• Consistency most frequently favored. When violated, it launches further processing with additional costs. Expectations met means processing load reduced

3. Hints from work on motivation

• We favor familiarity, and it builds up by itself in nature. Hence do exploit it by recurring and consistant menu bars, by congruent navigation tools, etc.

• Humans, as other animals, are extremely sensitive to payoffs, even small ones

• Be fair, do not blatantly deceive commitment taken, stick with expectations aroused in users

4. Hints from work on cooperation and social behavior

• In general, we prefer to know whom we’re talking to, especially if there is exchange of ressources involved

• Humans love gossip, are much curious about each other and typically look for opportunity of knowing more about whom they’re visiting or whom they’re visited by. Provide opportunities for exchange...

• There is no such thing as a «culture-less» interface, or a «pan-cultural» interface… Familiarity hits again!

In general, we prefer to know whom we’re talking to,especially if there is exchange of ressources involved

There is no such thing as a «culture-less» interface,or a «pan-cultural» interface...

As for esthetics, there is no clear path or strategies, and there exists blatant differences between styles and tastes…

Yet, there is always the possibility oflistening to more experienced designerswho propose some guidelines...

http://www.smartpixel.net/chromoweb/fr/index.htm

Perhaps a final word?

Design has to do with constraints and functions.

To design is to constrain motor actions or processing so as to meet certain requirements and thus help achieve some goal.

Good design meshes with Nature’s constraints.