Educational design functions to uplift the community it serves. It inspires, it pleases, it facilitates connection, and it is culturally relevant. Design is a space where learning is organic, challenging, unexpected, and intentional. The core values that enhance the design of such an environment are intentional and deliberate data-driven decisions, highlighting simplicity and aesthetics, and embracing a collaborative design process that actively seeks out diverse and evolving user perspectives.  

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Being intentional and deliberate in the functionality of a design takes center stage. Above all, a design must have a clear and meaningful purpose. In being intentional and deliberate, designs are informed not by generalizations and assumptions, though a good idea may initially spark from them, but through pointed research and thoughtful reflection. They are data-driven decisions that inform the purpose and functionality of the design. And the design of how that data is collected can ultimately determine the relative success or failure of a new design or product.  

 

Simplicity and Aesthetics. The user experience must be intuitive and aesthetically pleasing, allowing learners to focus on the purpose of the learning tool rather than on how to use it. Cognitive scientist Don Norman illustrates the connection between emotion and design as they relate to what he names the visceral, behavioral, and reflective levels of processing, and while he calls on the importance of all levels, it is the visceral level that he emphasizes first, the subconscious, immediate response to one's environment, the “good or bad, safe or dangerous” type judgments. Learning begins from a place of vulnerability where this “visceral level” of processing is heightened, and designing to first and foremost trigger a sense in safety and trust is a crucial to an environment where learning thrives. In Design: The Key Concepts (2019), D.J. Huppatz emphasizes the role of aesthetic design and its relation to user processing: “The visual impression of a page arrests us before we can decipher the words (23).” Valuing simplicity and aesthetics in design means that images, lines, and graphics are functional and meaningful as well as precise in their communication and reflective of the cultural aesthetics of the audiences.  

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Perspective and Culture. Design is informed by the culture(s) it serves, and crucial to the design process is understanding, inviting, collaborating with the users of the design. The diversity of experiences and the perspectives and insight that result from those experiences are crucial collaborators in the design process. Design choices from the “big picture” to the finer details will benefit from this type of collaboration and will contribute to a more inclusive and equitable product. D.J. Huppatz notes that even “Words are ultimately symbolic marks, and the choice of type—the form of these words—is still an important facet of design practice” (24). And he goes on to emphasize that “access to language forms is also a matter of inclusion and exclusion” (24). How we communicate is conditioned by the various cultural environments we navigate, and language offers implicit access to the environment of the product and such access should be carefully constructed to not value certain power structures over others. In addition, culture in and of itself is a continuously evolving phenomenon and so too are product designs. Therefore, also integral to the design process is the continuous practice of reflection and revision in a collaborative environment that represents the diversity of evolving user perspectives and needs.