Reflecting on the design process for creating my digital resource, one of the most important elements to my design was for it to be user friendly. During the empathy stage of my design, ‘ease of use’ was a term that came up often in feedback from intended users. Although this was expected, one theme that presented itself was “what seems easy to one person, may not be easy to another.” It was important for me to gather a wide assessment of what ‘ease of use’ actually meant to the users, as we all interpret this differently.
During the design process, I ended up changing the platform for my digital resource to more accurately reflect this concept, switching from a less known collaborative wiki to GoogleDoc in order to reach more users and make the resource more accessible.
In the past I have created many digital resources and curriculum content that is within my field of healthcare and paramedic practice. Using the design process for this content has been relatively straightforward because I am familiar with the material and the intended use of the resource within the field of paramedicine. In the future, I would like to use the design process to design resources that have content I am not familiar with. I feel the design process will be a successful map I can follow to evaluate the needs of the user, develop strategies to relay information, and develop material that reflects content that is new to me.
Hi Emma, you make some great points in your post on your design experience. User friendly is indeed contextual to the user and individually contextual (so therefore tricky to embed in design). I appreciate your idea that designing on a topic and for an audience that includes you (as a knowledgable practitioner) and designing for an audience in subjects you are less familiar with will be different experiences. That adventure is some of the great fun of working as an instructional designer for multiple organizations or in post-secondary. You get to learn a lot about subjects during the process!