This morning I've been doing so of the more boring work for an M.A. project: coordinating research on best practices for planning and implementing media and education products. I recognize, that what I am working on my be beneficial to everyone else, so I am sharing my top planning resources and approach. Actually, following this approach will largely get me to the proposal submission phase, rather than final project (I hope).
First off, frameworks:
1) Backwards Design
Backwards Design (Wiggin) is an educational planning practice where you start with your objectives and evaluation and then ultimately plan your learning experience. Although not user centered, it is objective driven, and I recognize combined with user centered principles can create a meaningful structure that provides positive outcomes.
Step 1: Identify desired outcomes. These should be action verbs that are measurable and precise. I include terminal (end) objectives and enabling (scaffolding) objectives when I do this process. This is the initial essence of thinking backwards.
Step 2: Definite measurement/evaluation of desired outcomes.
Step 3: Design the learning experience. Step 1 and 2 provide a road map to the structure of the content.
2) Atkin's Persuasive Health Message Design
Ask yourself:
Who is your target audience?
What is your target objective?
Why should my audience care? --give compelling evidence.
How does one accomplish the objective and measure the accomplishment?
3) IDEO Toolkit
4) Design-Play-Experience (Brian's awesome framework for game design)
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So my planning is going to look something like this:
1) Brainstorm areas of interest, then narrow down to compelling, useful areas to explore. I've done that, mine is creativity.
2) IDEO's Design Challenge (toolkit p23)
a) This defines a problem space.
b) This answers the "who" in Atkin's message design.
3) Explore the design challenge space. Come up with a list of essential questions in the area.
4) Explore the audience through the challenge, generate personas, wide ranging, find who really needs your challenge and eliminate the others.
5) Redefine design challenge, this is establishing (hopefully) an initial Terminal Object (step one of backwards design and the What? of Atkin).
6) Redefine, add, change essential questions.
7) Using defined design challenge, personas, essential questions, begin compiling (or if you are crazy like me, prioritizing) secondary research. The priority pre proposal stage should be research that shows a need for your project! This is Atkin's "Why?"
6) Develop a plan for formative and summative research (design and evaluation). This is Atkin's "How" and step 2 of Backwards Planning. Secondary research can help provide possible methods and show potential risks needed for any IRB proposals.
7) Define tentative project (because you have to propose it to do the design research to make it better or change it).
8) Proposed budget/timeline
9) Hey, choose a committee chair and write that proposal.
10) Committee formed, credits assigned (bureaucracy stuff).
11) IRB form baby (bureaucracy stuff), more secondary research and playing around the problem space while we wait for approval.
12) The fun begins!!
Start work on project: (Hey, new road map when we get here, because that must of course be defined by the project) :D
-Ethnographies
-Surveys
-Enabling Objectives
-Design Play Experience
-Playtests
-Iterations
-etc.
More on this when I get to each step.
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