Reflection of class on Jan. 10^th

  In last semester when we had class for Web 2.0, we had looked though a lot of relevant websites about different topics such as online teaching and commented on them from various views which included interface designing.

  I remembered that I talked about a resource website which just had text information and hyperlinks on it without any images or graphics. I pointed it out directly and said that website did so bad on drawing guests’ attraction that nobody wanted to keep on searching resource from it because it was too boring to read text only contents consistently, people usually prefer looking at the graphics of a web page than text. And just like the promoting of computer system, I think nobody wants to back to codes instructed interface from today’s graphic-based system such as Windows and Mac.

  Well, people always prefer reading graphical information because several decades of research have established that in most recall and recognition memory tasks, concepts that are learned by viewing pictures are remembered better than their counterparts in words (Hockley &Bancroft, 2011).

  This phenomenon is known as the picture superiority effect (Page 5). And it’s the major reason that I didn’t pass the American Driver License for 2 times because there are too many words in manual that I didn’t want to touch it. So I really hate someone put so many words on PowerPoint or Keynote slides for presentation when I evaluated their teaching in China before.

  As we all know, many tools and objects we usually use in our lives like smartphone and various furniture are all well-designed by experienced or talented designers and proven to be perfect design in practicing.

  Visual design is utilized extensively in advertisement, better design can attract clients’ attention easily and convert to consuming directly, and I think visual design also need to be considered seriously in the process of teaching, that is, teaching material arranging and activities design.

  Teachers need to define the actual problem first they have met which may impact the effect of teaching such as biology teaching if they used text only content to teach the structure of cell. Then, they need to do some detailed research on this problem around students by face-to-face interviewing or paper investigation and discover their authentic needs. After the research, they may use mind-mapping or brainstorming to generate their own ideas or adapt others’ proven designs prudently according to their previous learning. So, it’s time for them to conceptualize and visualize their ideas to make it possible for real teaching from rough pen sketches or professional design tools like Photoshop. Finally, they also need to review their drafts and do some necessary promotion if possible. Well, they also need to implement them to real teaching and get immediate feedback from students and refine it according to that.

  So, each teacher can also be a talented visual designer without any strong art literacy if they wonder.