{"id":275,"date":"2018-01-08T13:42:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T21:42:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/?p=275"},"modified":"2018-01-11T13:01:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:01:55","slug":"lrnt534-innovations-design-and-learning-environments-design-for-design-principles-and-writing-for-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/lrnt534-innovations-design-and-learning-environments-design-for-design-principles-and-writing-for-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"LRNT524 – Relating Readings From Units 2 & 3 – Innovations, Design and Learning Environments: Design for Design Principles and Writing for Readers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSimplicity is the ultimate sophistication<\/em>.\u201d \u2013 Leonardo Da Vinci<\/p>\n

A simple one-liner is easier heard than said<\/strong><\/p>\n

I often hear people say \u201cwhat\u2019s the elevator pitch,\u201d likely, because I tend to go on, but that pitch doesn’t always come easily. I recently had the opportunity to develop design principles for an assignment in partial completion of the course LRNT524 \u2013 Innovation, Design and Learning Environments. After a reading from Unit 3,\u00a0Design Principles \u2013 a guide<\/strong><\/a> (Cable, 2015), I was inspired to revisit these principles to make some adjustments. In the guide, Cable (2015) suggests that designers resist giving users too much information at once. It strikes me that this is a general mark of good writing, so why bring it up here, specifically? The point of design principles is to help make complicated decisions simpler. Perhaps, if your principles are not simple and straightforward, you may find the waters only get muddier further on. In order to effectively reduce cognitive load, logically, a principle must be quick to recall and apply. It’s the hard work you do early on to save yourself exponentially more work later.<\/p>\n

Writing headlines is writing for readers<\/strong><\/p>\n

In our reading from Unit 2, we learned that students without design backgrounds have been found to focus less on the needs of others and design primarily for themselves, while students who have participated in the d.thinking process show improvement in the ability to ask clarifying questions and design for someone else\u2019s needs (Goldman et al. 2012). In other words, they learn to design with empathy. In addition, we learned that d.thinking students develop the ability to headline ideas. Before developing this skill, designers are \u201cunable to headline when expressing ideas [and] use excessive explanations\u201d (2012). This cognitive skill allows designers to organize their own ideas more efficiently but also helps in communication as writing good headlines, whether for academic literature, e-magazine articles or design principles, helps your reader organize your <\/em>thoughts by helping them find<\/em> and remember<\/em> the key takeaways. In this way, the writer must empathize with the reader. David Ogilvy reputedly said, \u201cOn the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.\u201d How often, in your own research, do you skim through articles only reading the headlines until you find what you are looking for? In light of this, my New Year\u2019s Communication Resolution is to spend more time fine-tuning that elevator pitch and less time expanding my ideas, as much as I enjoy the latter. I’m hopeful that working on this skill will help me in communication with\u00a0others as well as in my own creative processes.<\/p>\n

How much thought do you put into headlining your ideas in your creative process? How about in your writing? Is there a significant difference between headlining you do in your own planning phase as compared with writing you do for others?<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Goldman, S. et al. (2012).\u00a0Assessing d.learning: Capturing the journey of becoming a design thinker<\/strong><\/a>. In H. Plattner, C. Meinel & L. Leifer (eds).\u00a0Design thinking research: Understanding innovation<\/em>. (pp. 13-33). Berlin: Springer.<\/p>\n

Cable, S., (June 18, 2015).\u00a0Design Principles \u2013 a guide<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0CXPartners [Blog post]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSimplicity is the ultimate sophistication.\u201d \u2013 Leonardo Da Vinci A simple one-liner is easier heard than said I often hear people say \u201cwhat\u2019s the elevator pitch,\u201d likely, because I tend to go on, but that pitch doesn’t always come easily…. Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt524","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0027\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}