Oooh... so that's why I love or hate everyday websites

As part of Designing Web-Based Instruction I completed an online personality index. While it was not required, I did two different ones to verify results from two different indices. What I found confirmed some of my suspicions. I am definitely a visual learner, I am an active learner, I am slightly intuitive with a predisposition for relationships, abstraction and mathematics - go figure, no pun intended; I am a math teacher - and I prefer sequential models over random thinking - I knew this before as I tend to think best when I jot my ideas down in lists, and hated concept maps. But the more I think about things the more I tend to begin drawing (literally) connections between ideas. I have recently become slightly better as concept mapping - but only after I have my trusty lists complete. (Moses, 2008).
Optimizing the User Experience further deepened my personal beliefs as well as preferences. This chapter read like an excellent check list for developing web-based learning environments. All the while confirming what I like or hate about certain websites.
Certainly graphics are a major aspect of developing user-centered learning environments. Guidelines 2:4 &2:5 suggestion to refrain from requiring users to do mental calculations was in consensus with Vicente's( 2004) suggestion to do the same. Whether it be for mortgages(USDH&HS, 2006 p12) or for monitoring a nuclear power plant, (Vicente, p133) graphics are a powerful yet unobtrusive information delivery method. Being a visual learner, I can certainly concur with this recommendation.
I wholeheartedly agree with Guideline 2:5 "Do not require users to remember information from place to place on a Web site". The challenge now is to design for this suggestion. How will I organise the page to display new information while connecting it with previously needed or used information? This is re-iterated ironically on page 19 with guideline 2:13 "Do Not Require Users to Multitask While Reading". I found myself thinking back to guideline 2:5 as I was reading 2:13. This was definitely something to remember as a "what-not-to-do" as I develop my course shells.
While "Format Information for Reading and Printing" appears to be a final consideration, perhaps it needs to be a-priori one. To design with the user in mind is to recognise that not everyone will want to read items off of a computer screen. It will be advantageous for myself as a designer to consider this as I put large amounts of text (although undesirable, sometimes altogether unavoidable). Taking this into consideration before-hand will probably save me a tonne of work afterwards. Instead of creating something that will eventually need to be re-formatted, why not put it in that format to start (USDH&HS, p16, 18,20)? Good idea.





References
Moses, S. (2008) Typical of Me. Discussion thread entry as part of University of Calgary EDER 679.06 Designing Web-Based Instruction. Retrieved electronically October4, 2008 from https://d2l.cbe.ab.ca/d2l/orgTools/ouHome/ouHome.asp?d2l_stateGroups=grid~gridpagenum~mycoursesstategroup&d2l_stateScopes=OrgUnitSession~GridPageNum~Search~PageNum%5EOrgUnitUser~LCS~MyCoursesStateGroup%5EUser~Grid~PageSize~HtmlEditor~HPG&d2l_statePageId=389&d2l_state_grid=mcg17957~0~~Asc~~0&d2l_state_gridpagenum=mcg17957_pgN~0&d2l_state_mycoursesstategroup=mcg17957_tree~37239%2C31819&ou=68439.
United Staes Department of Health and Human Services. (2006). Research-Based Web Design &Usability Guidelines. Retrieved October 4, 2008 electronically from http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html.
Vicente, K.(2004) The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live withTechnology. Vintage Canada, Random House. Toronto.