Design Journal

Our class learning materials this week were chapters from Creative Confidence by David Kelley and Tom Kelley, and Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge. The readings gave me insight into the end goals of a creative design project and the human-centered processes that go into it. Any design endeavor I can think of (architecture, fashion, industrial, instructional) demands not only creative skills but also a technical skill set, as these two elements are always inherent to design. I have previously explored the concepts of growth and fixed mindsets  earlier after reading Mindset by Carol Dweck, and I see their applications to the creative and design spaces. The Kelleys describe a growth mindset as a "passport to new adventures" and a prerequisite for achieving creative confidence. Individuals with a growth mindset believe that their capabilities can be expanded through passion, effort, and training, regardless of their starting level, while those with a fixed mindset will stay in their comfort zone due to the belief that their abilities are innate and discomfort in exposing their limitations.

Creativity necessitates observation, experimentation, self-efficacy and a growth-mindset to cultivate the design thinking skills such as empathy and problem-solving. These skills, in turn, foster intuition, enabling the creation of high-performance products that can cater to a diverse audience. What distinguishes innovative design that can drive performance and outcome improvements from design that merely creates a product is the exploration of human interactions with the product. This requires a significant amount of empathy, research, and imagination to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes,” as well as collaboration with interdisciplinary teams to achieve. Morridge presented several quotes from both design professionals and others that he found to be inadequate explanations of the definition of design. Among these quotes, I found the one from a 10-year-old to be the most insightful! "With art—if you like, you can be really weird. But in design you have to think about what other people will like." 

I created the mind map below to visualize the connections I made from the subject matter from both sets of authors. The second image is the hand-drawn map I created on a tablet from my reading notes; the first image was created by Google Gemini's Nano Banana using my hand-drawn image the input. 

This week, I also worked on expanding my professional learning, by attending a webinar on ensuring accessibility on open education resources (OER). I have recently become more interested in OER and am seeking out opportunities to learn more and interact with groups that promote these resources. I definitely see how creativity and design thinking contribute to both OER and accessibility, in making resources available and usable for as broad an audience as possible.

I have been greatly interested in accessibility for several years, and it profoundly influences my work; I believe accessibility is an inherent component of any educational technology or instructional design initiative. To maintain my CPACC certification, I will participate in further continuing education in the coming months.  

I am still considering several ideas for what type of artifact to create for my  course design project. As I weigh options such as an interactive module or a facilitation guide, I am paying close attention to how each possibility would allow me to demonstrate empathy for learners, thoughtful use of technology, and clear alignment with instructional goals. This week's learning has framed the design, technical and user-centered skills as all parts of the same creative process. 

Our continued readings from Creative Confidence and Designing Interactions with the additon of Design as Storytelling by Patrick Parrish, have further informed my perspective on the intersection of mindset and methodology in instructional design.

One of the most compelling concepts in Creative Confidence is guided mastery. By breaking down daunting challenges into small, incremental successes, designers can dismantle the "fixed mindset" that leads many to believe they simply aren't "creative types." Albert Bandura called this "self-efficacy", the resilient belief that one can influence outcomes through their actions. I’ve realized that this isn’t just about feeling good; it’s what I have known as an "ethic of experimentation". It’s the willingness to throw-everything-at-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks, knowing that even an unsuccessful attempt is a data point that leads to a better solution.

This culture of experimentation is mirrored in Moggridge’s discussion of rapid prototyping. He argues that breakthroughs occur when we move ideas out of our heads and into the world every day. Whether it is "experience prototyping" to understand a user’s current pain points or using a prototype to communicate a vision to stakeholders, the goal is to fail frequently to succeed sooner. Interestingly, he noted that the fear of this process exists at both ends of the skill spectrum. Highly skilled designers often battle perfectionism, refusing to share work that isn’t "finished," while novices may lack the confidence to share anything at all. To counter this, we must build design teams that prioritize the "rough draft" over the final product, ensuring no one’s ideas are shut down prematurely.

Finally, Patrick Parrish’s work adds a vital layer of empathy to this technical process. He suggests that instructional design is less about technical problem-solving and more about storytelling. By viewing a design story as a form of immaterial prototyping, we can inhabit the learner's journey before a single instructional or digital asset is built. This narrative approach eliminates the emotional distance inherent in technical specifications. It forces us to ask: What will improve the learner's engagement? How can we make the learning expereince better for them? How do we give them a sense of choice, voice, ownership, and authenticity? 

By combining the self-efficacy of guided mastery with the iterative rigor of prototyping and the empathy of storytelling, we can create learning environments that are not just functional, but deeply meaningful.