Design feature
From The Learning Engineer's Knowledgebase
A design feature is a specific activity, interaction, or interface of an educational product that is a focus of learners when they participate.
Definition
A design feature is a specific or unique element or aspect of an educational product design in which people perform a specific activity or interaction intended to improve the learning experience. Most educational products have multiple design features that all serve to promote learning.
Most often, a design feature will be an activity or interaction, which could in turn use technology and media to assist with the activity. Under this definition, design features also includes teacher roles and actions, as well as support mechanisms such as scaffolds.
Additional Information
There's no specific definition that makes something a design feature or not, aside from the feature being used for something specific in the learning experience. It takes some decisions and creativity on part of the designer to determine which things in their product are the design features of the product. Designers should consider what aspects of their design are noteworthy and are specifically intended to have the learner do something that will promote achievement: these are the likely design features of a product.
Characteristics of a design feature include:
- It is something that a learner interacts with in the learning environment (e.g., interface, media resources)
- It is an intended activity or interaction for learners that will ideally lead to learning outcome achievement (e.g., an educational game, an assigned forum discussion, a written report assignment)
- It can be described well and has a design specification that establishes its stylistic look and feel, and what actions the participant is expected to take.
- It is noteworthy and a key characteristic that would be used to describe the product to another person.
- Consists of interactions or activities that has learner participation can be measured for evaluation purposes.
It is ultimately up to the designer or evaluation team on whether they will classify something as a feature or not in the product. For evaluation purposes, it is important to specify the design features of a product so the effects of each feature's use can be examined. Additionally, specifying design features allows people to make better decisions about whether the product is useful for them or not, or to compare products and their design features.
Designers also organize and deliver the design features in ways that are most beneficial to learners, such as by sequencing activities based on progressively improving skills and organizing informational sources and media for learners so that it is presented in a logical and usable way.
This wiki has a procedure on helping designers think about and define their design features.
Non-learning activity. There are also frequently times when people use things in a learning environment for a purpose that is not for learning, such as having a casual chat in the discussion forum about the latest shows that came out on streaming services. These interactions or activities should likely not be considered a design feature, as it was not an intentional interaction or feature by the designer, based on the definition above.
Emergent behavior. Similarly, sometimes unexpected behaviors emerge or pop up in a learning experience that are not specified in a design feature, but are shown to be helpful for people to interact or achieve the learning objectives. For example, an emergent or unexpected behavior that is helpful to learning might be learners organizing outside of time to collaborate on course materials, or the use of a general chat message forum to organize content or build a glossary to solve an assignment. Although these circumstances are not design features as they were not intentionally placed in the product by the designer, they are useful to identify and document for designers to consider new features and how people use them.
Additionally, the inclusion of a technology is not necessarily a design feature - the technology has to be intentionally used for something to be a feature. Similarly, interfaces can also be seen as design features if they have specific actions that people are intended to take, as they can influence different types of behavior based on how they are constructed.
Tips and Tricks
- Consider the different types of activities and interactions that learners in your product will perform. These different types of activity are likely your product's design features.
- Think about which elements most stand out to you or are noteworthy if you were talking to someone about the product. What is special about your product with how people interact and use it, and how do the different activities or assignments work together to promote the achievement of the learning objectives? These elements and activities are likely the design features than can be used to describe your product.
- Review the procedure for thinking about and defining design features to determine your own list of features.
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