Functional Design III

As decisions are made, either in singles, in clusters, or in order to serve an operational principle, each new decision imposes new constraints on future decisions, redefining again the options left in the problem solving space, making certain future decisions imperative, and shifting priorities for the next decision. This cycle of progressive placement of constraints continues until the minutest decision has been made firm. Functional design is a natural companion of design layer theory. Initial constraints on a design problem affect different layers. One project may require a particular medium to be used; another may require a particular social setting. Constraints influence the options available within different layers of the design. Moreover, constraints on one layer ripple effects to other layers, constraining decisions within them. 

Functional Design II

It is called "functional design" because it employs layers, and layers correspond with functions of the artifact being designed. I propose that instructional designs have layers that correspond to:

• the representation function (provide sensory experience for the learner)
  
• the control function (give the learner a way to respond to the sensory experience)
  
• the message function (construct the individual messages of the instructional conversation--the ones that are to be represented)
  
• the strategy function (determine high-level strategic moves that support learning and drive messaging)
  
• the content function (supply content in appropriate form to the strategic, messaging and representation functions)
  
• media-logic (execute all functions)
  
• the data management (record data from the instructional encounter).  
  

Functional Design I

I couple the use of design layers with an approach to design process that I call functional design (Gibbons, DESRIST 2009, see http://prezi.com/58265/edit/ ). Functional design is based on the principle that a designer can make design decisions in any number of orders. It supplies the designer with a guideline for determining the order that follows the best strategic sequence for the particular project.

Most designers recognize that design problems come to the designer with diminished degrees of freedom—with constraints imposed by goals, resources, client desires, and time. It is generally recognized that fixed-process models are not sensitive to this fact of life and that there are generally no guidelines for adapting the generic process to a specific project. Further complicating things is the fact that different projects place different value on full-featured models due to time, staff, or client interest restrictions.   

To deal with this, functional design removes order constraints from decision-making during design. Design decisions can be made in any order. However, functional design also incorporates the principle that each decision, firm or tentative, imposes constraints on future decisions—creating some new decisions while cutting off others. This leads designers to hold decisions tentative where possible until correlation has been made across all areas of the design to ensure coherence and unity in the whole design.

Learning versus Instructional theory

It is a general but, I believe, mistaken idea that learning theories can be applied directly into instructional designs. I think there are translations necessary to convert a learning theory into an instructional theory that can be applied directly. By looking more closely at theories, you can see that the ones that tended to be most easy to apply to designs are those that considered themselves "instructional" theories rather than "learning" theories. I think the key difference is that a learning theory posits from what is exists or is thought to exist. Instructional theory posits from what can be made to be there. It supplies terms for elements that can be created.

Two kinds of theory?

To make sense of these ruminations on layered decomposition of instructional design problems one has to accept a distinction between two kinds of theory: instructional design theory and instructional theory. To put this in general terms, it means for designers accepting the existence of two kinds of design-related theory--one kind pertaining to how things are designed, and one pertaining to what kinds of structures those designs might contain. The first of these can be called a design theory; the second can be called a domain theory. 

Donald Schon (umlat over the "o") describes domain theories in some detail in "Educating the Reflective Practitioner" (Jossey-Bass, 1989). He gives an account of a tutor helping a student solve an architectural problem. In the process, Schon reveals his view that different parts of the problem become most critical at particular times and that each sub-problem constitutes a "domain" which has its own terminology, principles, and practitioners.

At the same time as we acknowledge domain theory as a kind of theory required by designers, we can also see that designers draw on another type of theory--design theory--which is theory about how something is or can be designed.The subject of Herbert Simon's "Sciences of the Artificial" was this kind of theory.

The two types of theory relevant to a designer may puzzle the scientifically-oriented person, who is used to there being only one kind of theory--and that an explanatory , not a synthetic, kind. What answers this puzzlement is the realization that designers use theory, but that the theory is not scientific theory: it is design-related theory. Moreover, the identification of two kinds of design related-theory (with the expectation of even more being identified) means that design-related theory is a different species of theory with different properties and different uses: technological theory.

Seeing more deeply into the heart of design problems

Studies of designers and the process of designing have shown that expert designers perceive the problem in more sophisticated ways than novices, seeing different conceptual categories at a deeper level of organization. As the instructional design field continues to mature, its problem-solving constructs and processes can also be expected to evolve and consider deeper structures. Myself and Clint Rogers have proposed a theory of design layers as a way to describe the architecture of the deep structure of instructional designs (“The Architecture of Instructional Theory”, in Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman, 2009, Instructional-Design Theories and Models, Volume III, Routledge). The theory describes several levels (layers) of structure that can be used to decompose and solve instructional design problems. The appeal to a layered design architecture has been made in other design fields but is new to instructional design.

Approaching design problems differently

Instructional designers have become accustomed to decomposing their design problems in terms of general phases or steps of problem solving. This approach, however, is but one of many possible avenues to simplifying problems for solving. Design fields other than instructional design have employed approaches that break the design problem down in terms of the characteristic functions of the artifact. I suggest we think in terms of a layer theory of design architecture that leads to a method of decomposing design problems by the generic functions of the class of artifacts being designed—functional design.