A recent project made us remember the challenges of designing to the unknowns. When we talk about solving a need that could be anything we always discuss the end first. It’s like having dessert before dinner. Most times when we perform analysis we try to steer our clients away from thinking or getting too sold on what they are having for dessert, not because you can’t make it, but because it might not be feasible.
This project brought back to light why it’s ok to sit around and conjure up the most fantastically delicious notions for fulfilling our educational sweet tooth – it helps us analyze our audience. When we must start from nothing we would rather know if cake or pie is more appealing and whether or not we are going to need ice cream and how many flavors instead of just making brownies that no one wants.
Inventorying and grouping possible solutions can guide us as we write a set of assessment questions to gain better understanding about our learning audience and their preferences. Perhaps leading us to let them have their cake and eat it to!
2 Responses
February 26th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
This post makes complete sense. The title and your analogy is so fitting. Although not working with a client for actual compensation yet, I have noticed this trend as well. Our client is unsure of their outcome because there are so many possibilities. We had to sit down with our client and discuss in the end what is feasible in the amount of time we have. Without taking this approach, our client would have wanted their cake, ice cream, brownies, and pie all at once. I enjoyed this very much!
February 28th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
It is so easy to agree to something before you actually know what you’re getting yourself in to, I’m sure everyone has done this one time or another. This post is so very true! Fulfilling a client’s needs is sometimes rather difficult, since they aren’t familiar with the approach to attain the goal of the project like Instructional Designers are. Determining the overall need and deciding if it’s actually feasible should most definitely be figured out first. This is necessary so you don’t agree to something before it’s too late to realize the task can’t be completed at once. Thanks for the insightful post!
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