Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime

1.6. DESIGN FIRST, LAST, AND IN BETWEEN

This book is about design. Many people think design is what occurs only at the beginning of a project. That view cannot withstand the realities of the design process. The process of design is simple in theory but complex in practice.

1.6.1. Design is a process

First you analyze your requirements and design the course. Then your build it and test it. Oops! Better analyze the results and redesign a bit. Then you need to build in a few changes and test again. And so it goes.

The design process proceeds in a cycle of analyze, design, build, and test. Thus, design is a series—sometimes a seemingly endless series-of decisions. The design process is essentially cyclical, corkscrewing in from high level to detailed issues while continually revisiting the same requirements over and over again.

The design process involves top-down design gated by testing at every level and tempered by a willingness to back up and start over where called for. At the beginning, you deal with high-level issues and work with a crude prototype, perhaps nothing more than a stack of sketches on index cards. At the end of the process, you are fine-tuning individual pixels of the final course.

1.6.2. Religious issues and why we avoid them

This book does not prescribe an ...