And for those of you who love to hate the pad, fret not, there’s something beyond the big Apple too. Learn how you can stay on top of current events, eLearning market stats, the future of education, the evolving role of an Instructional Designer and more. Find it all here in our Weekly Digest – a collection of our top 18 links from the week gone by, each accompanied by a quick brief.

Need to quench your thirst for the latest in learning, technology and media links further? You can dig into our previous lists here.

1. What do Students Think of Using iPads in Class?
It’s almost a year since the iPad was first released. With an intent to explore different ways in which the iPad could be used by students and with a hope of transitioning to e-Books instead of paper textbooks, a pilot survey is conducted in one of the high schools. Read the results here.

2. 10 Sites to Learn Something New in 10 Minutes a Day
This list of web-based resources will point you toward web sites that will help you learn how to do new things, stay on top of current events, and learn about topics where your current knowledge may be lacking.

3. A Day in the Life of the iPad Class
If the goal of learning is to figure out the “how” and not just the correct answer, then the gadget is doing its job. This article takes you through a day in the life of an iPad class.

4. Nuts and Bolts: SURPRISE!
Incorporating what we understand about the role of surprise can help us overcome several common challenges in e-Learning design. Read this article to know how.

5. 20 Tips to Get Started With Your First E-learning Project
A must-read for those venturing into custom e-learning business or people who are getting started with their first e-learning project. Here are some guidelines for startups and individuals alike.

6. First Impressions Using Android Honeycomb, Google’s iPad Rival
Google has finally launched Android Honeycomb, the new version of the mobile OS that is focused on tablets. See some of the features and apps in action.

7. 7 Hot Trends in Mobile App Design
The mobile application space is exploding. Users increasingly turn to smartphones and tablets to consume and create content, whether on the go or on the couch. Here are seven of the hottest trends in mobile app design as found on App Store and Android Market.

8. Classroom iPod touches & iPads: Dos and Don’ts
Bringing iPods and iPads into the classroom is a great way to give students access to learning tools. However, there are so many things to keep in mind to make the devices work smoothly in the classroom. While this list of dos and don’ts mainly addresses iPod touch, the same advice goes for iPod touch and iPhone.

9. Learning occurs in many contexts
Learning may or may not be the reason we go to work, but it is an inevitable consequence, whether or not the employer or employee makes a deliberate attempt to promote it. The learning architect has to appreciate the many contexts in which learning takes place within the working environment. Read this article to know these contexts.

10. The New Age Instructional Designer
The role of an instructional designer is essentially driven by a need to find appropriate solutions by applying instructional design strategies and models to transfer information to users who use a particular product or service to perform their jobs. However with the changing learning methods, the role of the instructional designer as we understood it several years back is undergoing a paradigm shift. Take a journey down this road.

11. Infographic: See the Future of Education
As education reform becomes a more and more prominent topic in the national discourse, there is a phenomenon that hasn’t received much coverage though it’s silently transforming learning. Luckily, this infographic simply sums it up.

12. Survey reveals educators’ must-have technologies
Interactive whiteboards are the classroom technology that teachers say they most value, and though tablet-style eReader devices such as Apple’s iPad haven’t been around for long, they’re already considered the second most useful mobile classroom technology behind laptops, according to a national survey of teachers’ digital media use. This article reveals the must-have technologies in classrooms.

13. Making It a Mobile Web App
Ask any interactive agency nowadays what their clients are asking for when they need a mobile experience — the answer will inevitably be “an iPhone and/or an iPad app.” Native Apple apps are a hot commodity, and in today’s mobile application ecosystem, mobile web apps are not sexy. Read about the challenges and possibilities in making a mobile web app.

14. Importance Of Having A Design Methodology
A guide and tips and tricks for designers to improve their productivity and cost effectively using time management techniques.

15. The Components of True Collaboration
Dan Pontefract has a wonderfully clear and thought out model on The Collaboration Cycle. In fact, to summarize it wouldn’t really do it justice. Highlights the 3 basic components of true collaboration.

16. eLearning Market Grows 16.8 Percent Over 5 Years
A new report released by market research firm Ambient Insight has found that the U.S. market for self-paced e-learning products and services in preK-12 education has increased 16.8 percent over the past five years.

17. Mobile OS Adoption: A Tale of Two Graphs
When it comes to statistics, it seems that you can find anyone to back whatever opinion you might have. The competition between smartphone operating systems is a heated one” with a three-way tie between Blackberry, Android and iOS. Check out this article which will help you get a better perspective on these warring OSs.

18. Video Search Engine Qwiki Is Now Available To The Public
Qwiki, for those of you who haven’t been following the hype, basically reads heavily Wikipedia-sourced articles out loud with photo and video accompaniments. Here’s the lowdown on this new engine.

The post 18 Top Learning, Technology & Media Links: Weekly Digest –12 first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

1. Don’t create a course until it is really necessary and useful.
2. Write activities in which a character faces a realistic scenario.
3. Put the information outside the course.
4. Use the course to show how to use the job aids.
5. Let the activities, not the content, drive the design.

I believe this approach could be really useful to design eLearning courses on budget. The key is to not compromise on analysis and design phase. Reduction in fancy media and cutting down on unnecessary information is better.

The post Memorable eLearning on Budget first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

The Tuts+ (pronounced tutsplus) education network which has tons of “How To” tutorials is now focusing on “Why” tutorials as well. They plan to put up two week ‘Sessions’ on various creative subjects like interface design, illustrative typography and creative freelancing, etc. Each session is a block of articles, interviews, tutorials and content on a particular creative subject. A session will have these posted every day. The first session is about creative character illustration and they have already (it’s just day 4 of the session today) shared a lot of useful information there.

I think this is a great resource for all Graphic Designers working in Custom eLearning Development who often need to create scenario based content for different domains like management, sales, production, etc. Well designed and appropriate characters certainly help in creating more effective and engaging scenarios. Using these tutorials, even instructional designers can understand what goes into creating a good character and how they could influence a graphic designer when getting characters for their scenarios designed and illustrated.

The post Do You Know The Why Of Design first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

1. User Experience Design is not User Interface Design – Yes, it’s not really about the user interface at all. In typical elearning, it’s the content player window that offers basic navigation and interaction. Designers spend a lot of time on the interface and visual appeal of the player. It’s important to understand that a visually pleasing and well designed interface does not equate to a pleasing user experience. Focus on the experience and NOT the individual components of the user interface.
2. User Experience Design is not a step in the process – Whitney makes a crucial point with this one. User experience design is not something that’s a part of the process; rather the entire process must be modeled around the design of the experience. Contrasted with typical elearning development, this is the total opposite.  Current eLearning development processes revolve around instructional outcomes and meeting those with solutions that use technology and content; there is NO or rare focus around designing experiences. Inverting this to purpose content and technology to provide an experience is a better way to look at it.
3. User Experience Design is not just about technology – In eLearning, both content and technology is used to provide the learning experience. It goes without saying that for the learning to effective, proper attention to design, the use of content and associated technology must blend smoothly. Focusing on just one of these detracts from the learning experience.
4. User Experience Design is not just about usability – eLearning has to be usable if humans are expected to learn from it. It’s almost impossible to learn something if during the experience, you find the content hard to access and tools difficult to use. While usability is important, user experience design is not about making your solution more usable. Usability matters of course, to the extent that it supports or to some extent even enhances the experience. Think of it this way, you can create an imminently usable learning solution, but it’s useless without offering a good learning experience.
5. User Experience Design is not just about the user – For learning designers, they aren’t just users – they are learners.  Trained instructional designers spend substantial periods of time understanding and designing for the learner. It’d also help if the designers of the learning experience spent some time understanding the technology that delivers the experience. User experience design involves balancing all aspects required to provide a quality learning experience.
6. User Experience Design is not expensive – I don’t know quite what to make of this misconception, except to agree that its one. A similar construct applies to learning experience design as well. Good learning experiences aren’t expensive to develop, what they require is careful attention to design, choice of media and delivery technology. Over time, I’ve found you can create great learning experiences on a budget.
7. User Experience Design is not easy – One could go so far as to say nothing is easy. That doesn’t imply that we stop ‘designing experiences’ because of the difficulty and challenges involved. Creating effective learning experiences demands that we consider the requirements to do so before embarking on the development process.
8. User Experience Design is not the role of one person or department – Pretty much the same applies to the design of learning experiences. It’s never the role of a single person or department; varied cross- functional teams are required to design and develop a quality learning experience. It’s unrealistic to expect instructional designers to take ownership of the learning experience. While, I agree they do drive the design of the experience. The actual design and creation is still left to the development team; creating good user experiences is about teamwork, cross functional competence, and a clear vision of the learner experience sought to be delivered.
9. User Experience Design is not a single discipline – This is my personal favorite amongst the ten. User experience design and similarly learning experience design aren’t something easily done. Just like the design of games, the design of learning experiences is part philosophy, part skills and part technique. Good learning experience designers draw from a variety of disciplines – instructional design, information architecture, interaction design, visual design, communication design, game design, industrial design, media design and other such. To be able to deliver a quality learning experience, individuals or teams need to be skilled across such a variety of domains.
10. User Experience Design is not a choice – yes, this applies equally well to learning experience design as well. Oftentimes, the delivery of a quality learning experience takes a backseat to meeting the ‘instructional outcomes’ or ‘technology limitations’ or ‘budgetary limitations’ or even ‘deadlines and go-live dates’ on occasion. This should never really be the case, regardless of the limitations and constraints, the designer should still be focused around creating and delivering a quality learning experience. In doing so, (focusing on delivery quality learning) learning experience design takes precedence and becomes a natural part of the learning design and development process.

Take the time to look at the original presentation, its great and include lots of great graphics that could give learning designers loads of ideas about the way design the learning experience.

The post Ten Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

“Interaction” isn’t only about technology or software. Industrial designers are taught to design ‘things’ that engage people and facilitate their relationships with those things.

These days, those things could range from information, objects, and activities to services and systems. This is a very broad range of activities that involve interaction design.With the growing convergence of physical form and computing an entirely new style of digital interaction design is emerging, an area called “tangible” interaction design,  this is an area where designers seek to create objects or artifacts that interact with people, react to them, behave with them. This is not just about computing ability or adding intelligence to objects. The focus is always the human experience and behavior. Tangible interaction designers work on the integration of technology and its effects on human experience.

Design has always been about interaction, and interaction is something that’s tangible. Over the time one major factor that’s emerged to influence tangible design is the growing physical embodiment of computing. Again, the iPhone is a good example of just such a physical embodiment of computing. It’s really quite simple – as a designer of physical things, you must now decide whether to embed software in the ‘thing’, something that’s very common these days. As a designer and writer of software, we must consider and use the limitations and affordances of the real world. New paradigms of interaction are emerging because of the instantiation of such technology. Integrated form and computing will enhance our experiences with objects, systems and the very places we inhabit. We’ll rapidly be living in a world with adaptive, responsive, real-world physical objects that invite interaction. Objects will be more ‘alive’ than ever and you’ll possibly never look at the toothbrush the same way again if it interacts with you.

Embedded computing forces a change in the direction of design, simply by making objects that just weren’t possible to create a decade ago. Interaction design is not just screen-based digital interaction anymore. Tangible interaction is the physical embodiment of computation. Tangible interaction designers must use traditional interaction design, engineering, computing, and robotics in a mash-up of skills and methods. We must start to think and make in physical form, electronics, and software. We must work across the old disciplinary boundaries – form and computing.
Form is an important element in design and similarly so in tangible interaction. Form visually communicates and physically represents a ‘thing’s functionality, it gives cues for understanding, and provides the basis for interaction. Form connects with computing through sensors and effectors .

Sensors provide input. The simplest sensor is a switch; buttons dominate our interaction with electromechanical products. There are loads of sensors out there – temperature, movement, pressure, force, moisture, chemicals, stretch and strain, etc. Effectors provide output. Used as indicators, LEDs are used to indicate an electromechanical device’s state. There are audio indicators too, beeps, bleeps, dings, and buzzes. We could do so much more with sound design. Motors are effectors as well – providing motion and other physical action. For example, vibrator motors in cell phones bring a physical quality to digital interaction.

The new element in design is software, a fundamentally abstract and disembodied way to prescribe behavior. Earlier, designers made decisions about physical form and materials to govern the interaction with the designed ‘thing’. Now the designer must also script the thing’s interactive behavior. The simplest program relates inputs directly to outputs (”when this lid is opened, the lights go out”). The software itself is a more subtle model of the design in use.

Artists, hobbyists and DIY hackers built entirely new hardware tool kits and platforms to make it easier to build and program working prototypes of products with embedded electronics. Today the Arduino family of microcontroller boards, including the Lilypad, engineered for embedding in textiles. Hardware design environments such as Fritzing and a host of programming environments such as Pd and Funnel invite designers to play with and provide the ability to get your hands dirty with electronics and code. Such tool-kits and platforms are critical to moving tangible interaction design forward; we’ll see more of them emerge as these products and experiences become mainstream.

As a learning designer, I’m quite challenged to imagine a world where every object is capable of providing information about itself and that too in an interactive manner. This would change the way we design and deliver learning. We’ve always looked at learning to be separate from the objects/environment that it is about – we learn to use something. While we accept learning is enhanced by interaction, how will tangible interaction change things? What if every object came embedded with the ‘training’ required to use it, easily accessed through simple interaction with the object itself, perhaps with the object having a ‘learning mode’. As learning designers, we need to force ourselves out of imagining interaction as being human mediated or digital – there’s a new type of interaction that we’ll need to be leveraging soon – tangible interaction.

The post Digital Interaction Design to Tangible Interaction Design first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.