I was asked to answer that question in a Blackboard posting in a graduate class. My response is no doubt influenced by my newfound love for thinking about design, inspired by Dan.
Here is what I said. It’s off the cuff, so give me grace.
***Original post below:
These are prima facie thoughts about Instructional Design:
The word “design” conjures up images of advertising grunts trying to figure out how to best fashion a brand or a new product to make it marketable to the target demographic. Different design styles are employed by different folks with recent techniques bringing forth a more avant-garde form of minimalism and less forceful colors with a touch of existential angst. This design technique seems to reflect the emotions of a younger society writ large.
Instructional design, however, takes a tactic focusing much less on the idea of “selling” a product or marketing a lesson. Instructional Design must take the brain’s cognitive functions as well as solid pedagogical foundation into account. Tragically, the more aesthetic functions of design often take a back seat.
A good marriage of instructional design and marketing design can be created, as they are not mutually exclusive. Appropriate aesthetic design, for example, can decrease the level of cognitive load be reducing distractions and promoting a clean document design.
Instructional Design at its base is about creating a lesson/unit/spoken paragraph that relays the information desired while helping prevent an overwhelmed learner.
