Prototype
Completing the Design phase allowed us to give our final idea shape and form through the creation of a prototype. During this phase of Development, we paid special attention to ensuring that not only were our learners' needs being addressed but that those of our sponsor's were as well.
This section was informed by the Design Thinking Process (in particular, the Prototyping phase).
When I create instruction...I make a list of the functions that are specified for the product that I have never before attempted...I think of this as a mini prototype for one portion of the finished product.
Brown, 2015, p. 192
Quick Recap
Who is it all for?
At the beginning of this project, we set out to create an instructional intervention in order to offer a solution to the problem of financial illiteracy. We conducted the necessary analyses of our learners, the context, the need, as well as the content and goals. It was always clear who our end users were, in other words, and why this solution was meant for them.
However, the other important element in this equation that deserves just as much attention is our sponsor. Let's take another look at what they are looking for and why it matters.
Why sponsor this?
The Problem
for Coinbase
Coinbase wants its users to enjoy their interactions with the company, but when users make poor investment choices and lose money, they sometimes direct their disappointment at Coinbase by filing complaints or leaving harsh reviews.
The company was thus able to identify a need for instructional intervention, which is why we were hired to design a learning solution for their users.
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What they seek from this intervention are two things: (A) a way to resolve this problem of users making poor investment decisions and (B) to do it in a cost-effective way. While these needs are very much kept in mind through all phases of our design, they are especially relevant to take note of as we move through the next few resource-intensive stages.
Design in Action
You can interact with the prototype towards the bottom of this page, but first, we wanted to provide some screenshots to illustrate exactly how we incorporated the learning theories, strategies, and methods that our group had converged upon at the end of the Design phase.
How was it incorporated?
Under the lens of Cognitivism, learners process the information they receive by seeking to understand how it relates to what they already know. Therefore, we began the module with a short Pre-Assessment quiz with which to gauge the learner's pre-existing knowledge, which we used to assign them to the most fitting learner track for our lessons.
Pre-existing Schema
How was it incorporated?
The theory behind Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) assumes that students can
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improve their learning abilities through the selective use of metacognitive and motivational strategies
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independently and proactively select and structure learning environments that are advantageous to them
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select the form and proper amount of instruction that they need
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Taking all of these facets into consideration, we designed a solution that provided a great degree of user freedom and flexibility in terms of selecting how much to learn and in whichever sequence they saw fit.
Self-Regulated Learning
Cognitivism posited that our brains are really only capable of handling a finite amount of information at once (ie. psychologist George Miller's 7 +/- 2 argument). We also knew from our learner analysis that they wanted a stress-free learning environment that did not feel like a traditional instructionalist environment. To that end, we made sure that the content was not only chunked adequately, but that there would be frequent and short knowledge checks to help keep what was just learned active in the learners' working memory banks.
Cognitive Load
How was it incorporated?
Our learners expressly let us know during our research phase that they strongly preferred learning through a visual medium rather than text. We applied this to our solution by limiting the amount of textual explanations as much as possible. Therefore, whatever text we did have was usually just there to provide instructions. And we let our videos and interactive images do the heavy lifting when it came to instruction and teaching content.
Media Selection
How was it incorporated?
Not everything was about Cognitivism, however. While it was our guiding theory, we found that it was actually most beneficial to the learning experience when we were able to incorporate some of the best elements of other learning theories if the situation called for it. In this case, we took a page out of the playbook of Behaviorism with our rewards and incentives system. Simply put, if you complete the learning modules, you win points and these points can earn you fabulous prizes.
Rewards
How was it incorporated?
The Prototype
The prototype was built using Articulate Rise 360 and was designed to replicate the experience of going through just one of many learning modules that will be offered with our solution.
