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Area 06

Teaching and designed environments

2 questions

Can the design of a lesson or a space change what a person understands?

Teaching, interfaces, objects and spaces all act on what a person understands. This area treats them as interventions to be tested: whether a lesson, an interface or a layout changes what a person understands, remembers or can do, and how that could be measured.

A weathered wooden stake on a pale rock ledge at a calm sea, and a worn stone stair descending through clear water into a vast basin of uneven water-worn terraces, faintly lit at its lowest level.At night, a stake on a rim-lit ledge and a stair descending into a basin of soft luminous terrace rims, its lowest level glowing pale aqua.
Plate 06 · A way laid down step by step, into something far larger.

Learning by building

Understanding through working implementations

  • Question

    What does working through a real implementation teach that reading about it does not?

    Reading about an implementation and building one may leave a person with different understanding, shown in teaching and in transfer to unfamiliar tasks.

Designed environments

Spaces and interfaces as interventions

  • Question

    Can the layout of a space or an interface change what a person remembers or can do?

    Spatial cognition studies how a space is understood and kept as a mental map, and design studies how appearance signals the actions an object supports.