Shawn A. Shepard
Portfolio
background

comprehensive reflection

Introduction

I’ve been reading and writing marketing and technical communications for more than 30 years. I began by proofreading magazines, newspapers, and an occasional book, and then graduated to writing user guides, press releases, marketing collateral, quality assurance documentation, and much more. I have also spent a lot of time training others to write these materials.

When I began the Educational Technology program at San Diego State University, I had just been hired as an Instructional Designer in the Education Department of a software company called Symitar. For the first time, I began to think of marketing and technical communications from an educational perspective. It slowly dawned on me that the intent of most of the communications I had dealt with was performance improvement. I had recognized that the obvious ones like job aids were intended to improve performance, but I was just beginning to realize that user guides, reference guides, and even data sheets and advertisements were also intended to change behavior, i.e., to “improve” performance.

Three ideas in particular brought this into focus for me because I see examples of them every day, and I’ve started to see connections between these three ideas.

The Four Basic Principles of Design

In her book, The non-designer’s design book (2004), Williams explains the four basic principles of design that ensure a printed work effectively conveys what it was meant to convey, nothing more and nothing less:

In The non-designer’s web book (2006), Williams and Tollett extend these guidelines to web pages. I suspect that these guidelines can be extended even further to encompass any visually or audibly transmitted message such as a movie, a painting, or a radio program. But, I haven’t reached that conclusion myself, so I won’t try to defend it.

The next time you listen to Garrison Keillor see if you can detect Williams’ four principles of design in the messages he transmits in the form of stories to paint scenes in your imagination. (If you’ve never listened to Garrison Keillor, take advantage of this opportunity to remedy that deficiency.)

What I have concluded though, is that incorporating these design principles in any instructional message composed of any combination of text and visuals will clarify the message and make it more effective.

Design PrinciplesIt was very satisfying to read Williams’ book, The non-designer’s design book. Although I didn’t know them by the names she used, I had been using the four principles for many years. It was gratifying to learn that what I had been doing was an accepted practice. For instance, I used all four principles in this job aid that I created in EDTEC 540 to help Boy Scouts tie a bowline. I used the proximity principle to group the text with the appropriate illustration; I used the contrast principle to show how the rope is woven under and over itself; and I used the repetition principle by bolding the text I wanted to highlight in each instruction.

One of the things I realized as I read through her book was that her principles had a bearing on performance improvement.  In order to promote performance improvement you have to communicate your expectations. But a poorly formatted instructional message hinders communication. Following Williams’ principles will help ensure that the message format enhances communication.

Theory-Based Message Design

Designing the message based on sound instructional theory goes even farther toward ensuring that it will be communicated effectively. For instance, the load in Cognitive Load can be an instructional message in the form of text, visuals, and audio that progresses through sensory receptors to working memory and then to long-term memory. Long-term memory is regarded as permanent, unlimited, and the repository of meaningful learning. Working memory is transitory and limited. Cognitive load theory provides guidelines for designing the instructional message to give it a better chance of getting through the bottleneck created by working memory and into long-term memory to effect meaningful learning.

Working Memory In the article I wrote for the Encyclopedia of Educational Technology (EET) in EDTEC 541, I tried to outline and illustrate the mitigating techniques proposed by Mayer & Moreno (2003). The basic idea is that there are two channels into working memory, the visual channel and the auditory/verbal channel, and if either of these channels is overloaded, some of the incoming information will be lost.

Mayer & Moreno (2003) propose nine methods for designing multimedia instructional messages in the form of text, visuals, and audio to avoid overloading working memory. For instance, learners are sometimes required to read text describing or explaining a graphic. This message is exclusively transmitted on the visual channel; the auditory channel is unused. By substituting narration in place of the text, the load is more balanced between the two channels and the information is more likely to get through.

Although it would be too simplistic to suggest a one-to-one correspondence, the Williams’s principles of design nicely complement Cognitive Load theory guidelines for designing an instructional message. For instance, Williams’ Proximity principle complements the Aligning method (put related elements close together). If you design the message using the Proximity principle to put the text close to a graphic, as I did in the bowline job aid, you are also using the Aligning method to reduce cognitive overload. Similar complementary relationships can be seen between Synchronizing and Aligning, Signaling and Contrast, and Repetition and Eliminating Redundancy.

But, Cognitive Load Theory goes beyond message formatting and addresses how the message should be delivered. For instance, the offload method seeks to balance the load between the visual and auditory channels to avoid an overload on a single channel. I used the offload method in a movie I made for EDTEC 561 called, Eating Penguin, about one of my Antarctic experiences. I balanced the load between the auditory and visual channels by narrating the movie and using very little text.

The Drivers of Performance

Of course, even a instructional message perfectly formatted according to Williams’ principles, and delivered in exactly the right way so as not to overload working memory, can still fail to effect a performance improvement. Rossett’s drivers of performance explain why. If a person isn't willing to improve because of a lack of motivation or counter incentives, or if a person isn't able to improve because of a lack of knowledge or skill or because of obstacles created by the environment, then that person’s performance is not going to improve.

I addressed these drivers of performance in a proposal to the Director of Network and Hardware Services (NHS) at Symitar for an EDTEC 685 assignment. NHS technicians were so busy with client visits, they weren't’t able attend classes to keep up with the latest best practices. I proposed an internal networking certification program to maintain the technicians’ skills. I explained that the following questions needed to be answered at several stages, if the plan was to be successful:

Example

As I said, I see examples of these three ideas every day, particularly at work. Not too long ago, I saw a great example of all three working together to hinder performance improvement.

I was responsible for evacuation training at Symitar some time ago. I gave presentations at several meetings to explain where people needed to go and what they needed to do when they got there. And I handed out credit-card size job aids for everyone to carry with instructions to follow during a drill or an emergency.  Soon after the meetings we had a drill.

It wasn’t a disaster, but the performance made it clear that my training had not been effective enough. Many people couldn’t remember where to go; many people couldn’t remember what they were supposed to do; and many people had trouble reading their information cards. The four principles of design, Cognitive Load Theory, and the drivers of performance help explain what went wrong.

Evacuation CardThe information cards did not follow Williams’ four principles of design. We had crammed as much information as possible on the little card, so everyone would have it available when they needed it.  Everything on the card was in close proximity and there was no contrast. Unfortunately, most people felt it was quicker to ask a neighbor, who frequently gave them the wrong information, than it was to understand the information on the card.

During the training, I was guilty of overloading the working memory of the members of my audience with poorly designed slide shows. I packed every slide with lots of bullets and then read the bullets to the audience. I was really using the slide as notes. This meant that the members of my audience were using their auditory channel to listen to me and overloading their visual channel trying to read all the information on the slide. The end result was that they learned less than if I had simply asked them to read the slide to themselves.

As for the drivers of performance, most people involved in the drill had no incentive to do well. Their performance wasn’t tied to anything they cared about. And there were no repercussions for poor performance.

Looking to the future

I was promoted while pursuing my Educational Technology degree. I’m still in the Education Department, but I’m no longer an Instructional Designer, at least not in title. I’ve become the technical publications supervisor.

But, this time around I’m thinking about technical publications in educational terms. The old adage that technical publications are meant to reduce customer support calls has taken on a whole new meaning for me. I’ve started looking at our behemoth 6000-page user guide with an eye toward redesigning it to be an educational document instead of just a technical publication. My official title, Applications Education Supervisor, reflects this synthesis of education and technical publications.

I have already been implementing what I’ve learned from my educational technology studies. I attempt to apply Williams’s design principles, Cognitive Load Theory, and Rossett’s drivers of performance in everything I do. When I put together a presentation, I apply the design principles; I think about how the audience will process my message on their auditory and visual channels; and I consider how my audience will be affected by the four drivers of performance.

We’re also doing a better job with slide shows these days. There has been a growing interest for the last year to get away from reading slide after slide of bullets toward a minimalist standard.

References:

Clark, R., Nguyen, F., & Sweller, J. (2006). Efficiency in learning: Evidence-based guidelines to manage cognitive load. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Mayer. R., & Moreno. R. (2003). Nine way to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 43-52.

Rossett, A. (2009). First things fast: A handbook for performance analysis. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Williams, R. (2004). The non-designer’s design book. Berkeley: Peachpit Press.

William, R., & Tollett, J. (2006). The non-designer’s web book. Berkeley: Peachpit Press.