I am an instructor, a designer, a developer, a human problem-solver!
That’s how I wrote the main heading on my portfolio website two years ago, and it still works well enough. But with so few words, a lot is left unsaid. So here’s a fuller picture of who I am today and how I think about learning.
I didn’t arrive at instructional design through the front door. I came in through a side door marked product design, then web and graphic design, then front-end development, and only later teaching. For more than twenty years I’ve designed brands, websites, publications, digital products and, more recently, museum experiences. Somewhere along the way I realized that most of that work was about learning. A well-structured website teaches you where to look next. A museum exhibit teaches you how to wonder. A meaningful brand teaches you to trust it..
Today I teach design and web development at North Island College, where I’m also faculty and department coordinator for our Digital Design + Development programs.
Empathy has always been my north star
I learned design thinking at university almost 30 years ago, and it shapes how I approach just about everything in life. Say my daughter is having a bad day. I’ll empathize, define the problem, and try a solution, maybe a cup of tea or a hug. If that doesn’t work, I iterate. Whatever I’m doing, I start by imagining what it feels like to be on the other side of it and I problem-solve.
The same process shows up in my teaching. My classroom works more like a design studio than a lecture hall. Students work on real projects, sometimes for real clients. I flip the content delivery so class time can go to team-based learning and critiquing, which is where the learning actually happens. Empathy starts with recognizing that students are complete human beings, so I let them guide the process, and I try to design for accessibility from the outset. I don’t use textbooks; I design every course from scratch. In a way, each one is a prototype: I watch how students experience it, listen to what’s not working, and redesign.
Two lies I’ve been telling myself
“I’m not creative.”
Although I’ve always been labelled “the artist”, I never believed I was creative, because I arrive at ideas through logical sequences of thought. I never understood people whose ideas seem to come from nowhere. This might be the biggest lie I’ve told myself. Even though I love logic, clarity and purpose, I am creative, deeply creative. I have a need to produce, make and build, and the medium barely matters: a mural, a website, a theatre set, a brand, a workshop. Lately even an academic paper gives me the creator satisfaction I crave.
“I’m a jack of all trades and master of none.”
That’s my imposter syndrome talking. But I know I’m an excellent worker and thinker, and I bring a rich multidisciplinary lens to every problem. Having moved between design, development, teaching and leadership means I can see connections that might be invisible to others.
Going forward
Writing this, I realized how much of my story is about unlearning things I believed about myself. I’m not a jack of all trades; I think I’m now ready to call myself an expert at designing for people, in whatever form that takes. And as AI shifts the value from polished output to judgement, I believe my messy, cross-disciplinary path has prepared me well. As I work through the MALAT, I’m curious to see where that expertise takes me next.