Journaling About Creativity, Design, and Collaboration: 22. Ready to Grow and Meet All Skills

This is the last page in my creativity, design, and collaboration journal so far. I'll reflect on the whole 22 page series tomorrow. Today I'll consider this transcription about designing for multiple skill levels.

Ready to Grow and Meet All Skills

Provide a relatable learning path

in what you design and build.

So that when what you make

meets your audience,

they can identify a meaningful way forward.

Second part of this:

Your audience is at a variety of

levels of skill to use what you make.

Third part:

Skill can and likely should change

over-through time and action

of applied skill.

Your product can serve a person

where they are now

so if they wish they can grow

more skillful

And your product can be purposefully

ready to serve, grow, meet that skill level.

Brief reaction to transcribing this page.

When you have an idea who you're making something for there's still a wide range of experiences to consider. People who fit in that space you were designing for come from a variety of situations. Meeting someone where they are is a concept that holds a lot of ideas. You can design for where someone is in space, time, abilities, cognitive load, and also skill level. How ready is what you create to meet someone's skill?

You learned to do all kinds of things. Some of those things you are proficient at. Some you may even know why you're proficient. And others you may even know how to teach other people because you can explain how others may become proficient. Maybe you're a person of such skill you have extended the very idea of what that skill means. Each of these describes a bit of the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. It's a useful mental model to apply to design. To see skill as an overall progression from novice to expert gives another context your design can meet people where they are.

What you make can be learnable and designed to reach:

• people who are beginners at using what you make.
• people who are getting skillful looking to get more skillful.
• people who are invested experts looking to go further and optimize how that skill can get things done for them.

Learnability means being ready to meet a range skills. In a given situation you've succeeded in being learnable if folks of different skill levels can succeed with what you make. I see learnability fitting well with principles of usability and accessibility to make things that care about other humans.