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47 Design Languages Andrew S. Gibbons Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
Luca Botturi NewMinE Lab, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland
Eddy Boot TNO Human Factors, Soesterberg, the Netherlands
Jon Nelson Utah State University, Logan, Utah
CONTENTS Introduction .....................................................................................................................................................................634 What Are Design Languages? ........................................................................................................................................634 Design Layers and Design Languages..................................................................................................................635 Design Languages and Natural Languages...........................................................................................................635 Instructional Design Languages......................................................................................................................................636 Instructional Design Layers...................................................................................................................................636 Example: Design Languages of the Content Layer ....................................................................................636 Practical Application: The 3D Model of Design Documentation...............................................................637 Instructional Design Languages and Theories of Instruction...............................................................................638 Design Languages and Innovation ........................................................................................................................638 The Range of Instructional Design Languages ..............................................................................................................638 Examples of Specialized Instructional Design Languages ............................................................................................639 Why Study Instructional Design Languages? ................................................................................................................639 Design Languages Encourage Disciplined Design Practice.................................................................................639 Study of Design Languages Gives Direction to the Growth of Design Fields....................................................640 Evolution of Design Languages Gives Historical Context to Design Fields.......................................................640 Design Languages Connect Practices of a Design Field to Theoretical Concepts..............................................640 Social Learning Theory and Sociolinguistics..............................................................................................640
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Andrew S. Gibbons, Luca Botturi, Eddy Boot, and Jon Nelson Cognitive Semantics and Linguistics...........................................................................................................641 Computer Science ........................................................................................................................................641 The Natural History of Instructional Design Languages ...............................................................................................641 Design Languages and Notation Systems ......................................................................................................................642 Design Language Research.............................................................................................................................................642 Anticipated Benefits ........................................................................................................................................................643 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................................................643 References .......................................................................................................................................................................643
ABSTRACT Design languages and notation systems hold great practical and theoretical significance for instructional design. Instructional designers use multiple design languages in the creation of designs. Notation systems make design languages visible and document those solutions. Design languages provide the building blocks of an evolving design. Design languages are used by individual designers; shared design languages and notation systems are necessary for multi-participant design teams to function, even at a basic level. Design languages for instructional design allow us to view instructional design, instructional theory, instructional design theory, and day-to-day practice in a new way that enhances our understanding of all of them.
KEYWORDS Design language: A set of abstractions used to give structure, properties, and texture to solutions of design problems; designs are expressed in terms of design languages. Design layer: One aspect of a decomposed design problem that can be approached using one or more design languages; a subdomain of the larger problem to which one or more design languages pertain.
INTRODUCTION Design languages and notation systems hold great practical and theoretical significance for instructional design. In this chapter, we examine the evidence of the value of design languages, arguing that designers in many fields already realize significant benefits from conscious study and application of design languages. These benefits include: • Improved design team communications • Improved designer–producer communications • Improved designer–client communications 634
• Promotion of design innovation • More direction from theory and more applicable theory • More nuanced theory integration with designs • Improved design sharing and comparison of designs • Improved designer education • Design and production automation
WHAT ARE DESIGN LANGUAGES? As instructional designers, we all use multiple design languages. The very words that we use, such as discussion, portfolio, and formative evaluation, code special or professional concepts that help us explore an instructional problem space and identify, refine, and plan a solution (Goodwin, 1994). A design language is a set of abstractions used to give structure, properties, and texture to solutions of design problems. Design languages provide building blocks for designs. Design languages provide categories for thinking about design problems. Design languages provide an important link between technological theory and design practice. Design language terms signify objects to be acted upon, actors, actions, concepts, types of relation, composite objects, qualities, and properties. One reviewer, a design theorist, commented that “whenever designers talk to members of their team they are using [the terms of] a design language” (private communication). Consider the following scenario illustrating a typical design situation: As an instructional designer, you are asked to support a communication specialist in the design of a blended learning course in effective communication skills for a company’s workforce. At a meeting, you and the communication specialist are discussing lectures, discussions, case studies, exercises, online discussion forums, and other possible activities. As the discussion proceeds, you realize that the communication specialist does not recognize some of these terms. Further, you realize that the definitions of the terms that you do both
Design Languages recognize differ, sometimes in significant ways. You begin to find it difficult to discuss design details because you are not yet working from a common framework of meaning, and you do not have shared languages for communicating meaning. The designer and the communications specialist need a shared set of terms for shaping their design that will be understood in roughly the same way by both. They will build one, drawing on personal and public design languages from their own training and experience, and new terms will be invented within the scope of the project. A shared local language will evolve through meaning negotiation (Winograd and Flores, 1987). Local notation systems that include drawings, symbols, and words will also evolve to publicly represent the design. This notational expression will be directed toward a specialized audience whose members know the language and its notation well enough to understand the implications of the design for manufacture. The design documentation will therefore be rich and dense and difficult for non-team members to interpret. Schön (1987) described designing as a languagecentered social phenomenon. Design languages are common to all fields of design (Gibbons and Brewer, 2005; Rheinfrank and Evenson, 1996; Waters and Gibbons, 2004; Winograd and Flores, 1987). We can discern features common to design languages in many fields.
Design Layers and Design Languages Numerous design languages are required in the creation of a single design, according to Schön (1987). He related design languages to domains of the design problem, and different problem domains represent subproblems to be solved during the completion of one design (Schön, 1987, p. 58): Elements of the language of designing can be grouped into clusters, of which I have identified twelve…. These design domains contain the names of elements, features, relations, and actions and of norms used to evaluate problems, consequences, and implications.
Schön’s domains correspond roughly with the design layers described by Brand (1994) with respect to building designs. Brand identified six layers of a building’s design: site, structure, skin, services, spaces, and stuff (furniture). He proposed that describing a design in layers allows the designer to change the design within one layer with minimal disruption to other layers. This results in design modularity, allowing individual layers to age independently. Separate layers can be designed
to flow past each other without disruption. Baldwin and Clark (2000) claimed that design modularization of this type governs the economics of the modern computer industry. This principle seems to apply to software design as well (Bass et al., 2003; Czarnecki et al., 2006; Rosenberg, 2007). Gray (2006) described how this principle supplies a major competitive advantage for the merchandiser Amazon. Layers are clearly defined in some Web design languages such as W2000 (Baresi et al., 2001) and IDM (Bolchini and Paolini, 2006). These examples suggest that design languages and their layered relationship frame a coherent theory of designing.
Design Languages and Natural Languages The term design language raises the question of the relationship between design languages and natural languages. To understand this relationship, we must consider the nature of natural languages. Contrary to our usual conception of languages as static lexicons and grammars, McWhorter (2003, p. 12) described how “everything about a language is eternally and inherently changeable.” Words establish legitimacy. The word language itself connotes something bounded and settled. McWhorter said that instead “there is not even really such a thing as ‘a language’ at all. …It’s the nature of language change that makes the concept of ‘a language’ logically impossible” and “most ‘languages’ are actually bundles of variations on a general theme, dialects” (McWhorter , 2003, pp. 52–53). McWhorter’s view of a single natural language as a multiplicity of dialects serves to situate the concept of design languages within natural languages. Design language expressions are made in a specialized dialect of a natural language. Design language expressions blend with natural language expressions in everyday use, being indistinguishable to a non-native listener. What makes a design language distinct from natural language is its unique semantics: one not shared by the general population of the language’s users. To a mathematician speaking with another mathematician, for example, the term code might be most readily understood as the key to an encryption, but to a computer programmer speaking to another computer programmer the term code will more likely refer to a work product. Gibbons and Rogers (2007) characterized the differences between natural languages and design languages (see Table 47.1). Design languages are a special case of natural languages in which a subpopulation of language users share terms, expression syntax, and semantics. Design language expressions mix specialized language elements with natural language elements, so design language users might appear to be speaking in code, 635
Andrew S. Gibbons, Luca Botturi, Eddy Boot, and Jon Nelson
TABLE 47.1 Natural Languages and Design Languages Compared in Terms of Primitives, Syntax, and Semantics Primitive terms Syntax Semantics
Natural Language
Design Language
Centered in everyday things and events; abstractions of experience; common to a wide range of users Based on words as a medium of expression in which linear or positional order is critical Derived from the world as it is experienced and things that can be, or are desired to be, communicated
Centered in specialized tools, processes, technologies, theories, or best practices Dependent on the medium of problem solving and solution; sometimes spatial or view oriented Derived from the problem domain and the context of problems in the domain
Source: Adapted from Gibbons, A.S. and Rogers, P.C., in Instructional-Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory, Vol. III, Reigeluth, C., Ed., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, 2007.
which is in a sense what they are doing. It should be emphasized that the shared conceptual sets of the users are what allow the design language to make sense among users. These shared conceptual sets may find expression in diagrams, drawings, or other representational forms, so the syntax of design language expressions may include spatial and metaphorical dimensions also peculiar to the users (such as blueprint or schematic conventions). Design languages exist along a continuum of formality. It is difficult to resist the temptation to treat design languages as a logical formalism, but design languages are at the same time a tool for and a byproduct of designing. They may be formalized for special purposes in the way in which computer languages are, and those formalisms may result in more precise and sophisticated designs, but overemphasis on formalism can replace the metaphoric uses of language and injure creativity. By far the most common use of design languages falls short of formalistic communication; instead, the more common use of design languages is joint problem solving and the negotiation of ever more precise meaning among designers and design team members.
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN LANGUAGES Design languages relate to instructional design architecture: the internal structure of an instructional artifact and its external structural relationships with its context. In this section we describe design languages for instructional design.
Instructional Design Layers Gibbons (2003) applied Brand’s idea of layered designs to the architecture of instructional designs, describing instructional designs in terms of seven main layers, each with potentially many sublayers. Layer 636
identities are based on a functional rather than processoriented decomposition of the design problem. The main layers named are content, strategy, controls, message, representation, media-logic, and data management (Gibbons and Rogers, 2006). Within each layer, multiple instruction design languages now exist, implicit in the practices of instructional designers. Each language within each layer represents an approach to the design of a particular function. The multiplicity of usable design languages within a single layer shows how rapidly changing technologies, methods, processes, theories, tools, and styles are absorbed into languages. Example: Design Languages of the Content Layer The design languages pertaining to the content layer of instructional designs have evolved and multiplied over the past 50 years. These languages identify possible partitionings of subject-matter elements. When behaviorist influence was strong, designers thought of subject matter in terms of operants and operant chains (Gagné, 1965). Over time, the prevailing view turned in the direction of information processing theories of learning, and new categories of learnable subject matter appeared (Gagné, 1985). New design languages or design language migrations occur frequently and can be stimulated by changes in theory, technique, tools, or conceptual systems. Viewing Gagné’s learning categories as the terms of a design language for content description suggests we also consider the taxonomies of Bloom (1956), Miller (1971), Merrill (1994), and many others as content design languages. It also gives us a new perspective for considering the great variety of predesign analysis methodologies described by Jonassen and colleagues (1999), Gibbons (1977), and Gibbons and colleagues (2000). These attempts to understand the nature of analysis methodologies catalog languages for content description.
Design Languages
Data Management Media Logic
Message Control
n
Strategy
Stratificatio
Representation
Content
ation
za tio n Conceptual
Specification
or Elab
Implementation
ali
mal Infor
rm
l
Fo
a Form
Figure 47.1 The 3D model of design documentation. (From Boot, E.W., Building Blocks for Developing Instructional Software, Ph.D. dissertation, Open Universiteit of the Netherlands, Heerlen, 2005. With permission.)
New theoretical developments continue to spawn new content layer languages. Anderson’s instructional designs (Anderson, 1993; Anderson et al., 1995) describe learnable subject matter in terms of productions (if–then rules) and working memory (semantic) elements. Anderson and his associates have applied this content design language to automated tutors in multiple subject-matter areas (Anderson et al., 1986, 1989; Koedinger and Anderson, 1998). This line of research continues (Koedinger and Corbett, 2006). Collins and colleagues (1989), in their description of the instructional theory of cognitive apprenticeship, defined four areas of design guidance, one of which they titled content, referring to four types of knowledge designers may use to perform subject-matter analyses. Situated learning theory, as described by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998), examines participation within communities of practice. This theory implicitly defines the practices of the community as the content structures. Practical Application: The 3D Model of Design Documentation The Developing Design Documents (3D) model of design documentation (Boot et al., 2005) applies design layering and design language principles to the problem of design documentation. Design documents transfer information from instructional designers to producers to describe artifacts to be produced. Design documents may be difficult for producers to interpret for three reasons: (1) the artifact’s instructional and technical description does not readily translate into the terms of the producer; (2) different levels of design
detail may be mixed together from the producer’s point of view; and (3) design expressions may be used in an inconsistent manner. The 3D model was introduced to guide designers in creating design documents that are better stratified, elaborated, and formalized. The model is illustrated in Figure 47.1. • Dimension 1. Stratification—Stratification helps the producer determine the relationships between the functionally different instructional and technical structures while at the same time providing an orderly way of representing the integration of those structures within the complete design. The 3D model defines the seven design layers proposed by Gibbons (2003) for the stratification of the design document. • Dimension 2. Elaboration—Fowler (2003) described three possible levels of elaboration in an instructional software design: (1) a conceptual perspective, which describes the structure of the major elements of the design with little technical detail; (2) a specification perspective, which provides sufficient detailed information for a skilled and experienced producer; and (3) an implementation perspective, which describes the design with a high degree of technical detail. The level of elaboration informs the level of detail in the design languages that must be used. • Dimension 3. Formalization—Designers may determine the formalization of their design, making their choice of informal or formal 637
Andrew S. Gibbons, Luca Botturi, Eddy Boot, and Jon Nelson design languages explicit. Using the 3D model, designers can determine the level of documentation and the design languages used to communicate with different specialist groups taking part in design.
Instructional Design Languages and Theories of Instruction Gibbons and Rogers (2007) described a relationship between design languages and instructional theories: We propose that what an instructional theorist expresses in an instructional theory is a set of specialized, mutuallyconsistent design languages…that are distributed across multiple design layers. …[Layers] can be used by the same observer to analyze and compare different instructional theories. To the extent that different observers can agree upon a common definition of layers, they can jointly and publicly carry out such analyses and comparisons.
This relationship between design languages and theories—that one source of design languages is the terms introduced or given special meaning by theorists— answers the questions “Is there a best design language?” and “How can you tell whether one design language is better than another?” The answer to both questions is that it is not appropriate to declare a single language superior. A later section of this chapter describes how multiple instructional design languages (strategy languages, representation languages, control system languages, etc.) are required just to make a single instructional design. These languages interact in ways that bring out the strengths of language combinations. To say that one language is by itself superior is evidence of a misunderstanding of the composition of designs. Languages interacting with other languages can be judged on the basis of comparative effectiveness in use. A given combination of languages may be superior in a given context; the same combination may be inadequate to satisfy the needs of a different design problem within its context.
Design Languages and Innovation Polanyi (1958, p. 87) described the role of language in innovative thought where “symbolic operations … outrun our understanding and thus anticipate novel modes of thought.” He suggested that we may use linguistic rules and linguistic symbols to create combinations that seem not to make sense at first but that on closer examination define a new path of innovative thought, either through: (1) a fumbling to be corrected later by our tacit understanding, or (2) a pioneering to be followed up later by our tacit understanding (Polanyi, 1958, p. 93): 638
We should say we are referring … to a state of mental uneasiness due to the feeling that out tacit thoughts do not agree with our symbolic operations, so that we have to decide on which of the two we should rely and which we should correct in the light of the other.
Designers who consider design languages are accepting to a degree what Polanyi would term a “formalism [through language] of thought” (p. 94). Just as a child uses natural language, a design language user can form nonsense expressions using design language terms. This is a risk, he says, that comes with adopting any formal system for giving public form to what would otherwise remain personal or tacit knowledge, but he said there may also be benefits (Polanyi, 1958, p. 94): Remember how various new kinds of numbers—irrational, negative, imaginary, transfinite—were produced as a result of extending familiar mathematical operations into unexplored regions, and how these numbers after having been repudiated as meaningless, were eventually accepted as denoting important new mathematical conceptions. Such spectacular gains, achieved by the speculative use of mathematical notations for purposes not originally entertained, remind us that the major fruitfulness of a formalization may be revealed in its entirely uncovenanted functions, precisely at points where the peril seems greatest of drifting into absurdity.
The principle, then, of using design languages as a type of formalism for thinking about instructional designs might be stated (Polanyi, 1958, p. 95): Just as owing to the ultimately tacit character of all our knowledge, we remain ever unable to say all we know, so also, in view of the tacit character of meaning, we can never quite know what is implied in what we say.
In this spirit Botturi and colleagues (2006) proposed a two-dimensional classification of design languages according to their purposes for communication and creativity (see also Stubbs, 2006). These dimensions can be used to compare design languages in terms of the intentions of their creators to support particular aspects of the designer’s activity. Figure 47.2 shows this kind of comparison among design languages for learning object design.
THE RANGE OF INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN LANGUAGES Design languages vary across a range of characteristics, according to Gibbons and Brewer (2005, p. 113):
Creativity
Generative
Design Languages
E2ML
PCeL Modeling
Finalist
UML AUTC POEML
IMS/LD
Reflective Communicative Communication
Figure 47.2 An example of the use of the communication and creativity aspects of design languages for making comparisons among languages. (From Botturi, L. et al., A Classification Framework for Educational Modeling Languages in Instructional Design, paper presented at the International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, July 5–7, Kerkrade, the Netherlands, 2006. With permission.) Some of our design languages, such as computer programming languages, are formal, and when we use them it is a conscious, deliberate design activity. Many of our design languages, however, are so subtle that we do not recognize them and realize that we use them to structure designs.
Gibbons and Brewer described several dimensions of design language variation: • • • • • • •
these languages are defined by: (1) a productivityrelated instructional design concept (learning objects), (2) a programming paradigm (object-orientation), and (3) a programming tool concept (UML-like). Within this design space, these design language tools will grow over time, informing each other, migrating to new forms like natural languages, and producing dialects through processes described by McWhorter (2003).
Complexity–simplicity Precision–nonprecision Formality–informality Personalization–sharedness Implicitness–explicitness Standardization–nonstandardization Computability–noncomputability
All of these characteristics can be seen in instructional design languages. The languages related to high-tech media design and production tend to be complex, precise, formal, shared, explicit, standard, and computable. Languages that describe instructional strategy structures tend to be relatively simple, nonprecise, informal, often personalized or stylized, implicit, nonstandard, and noncomputable.
EXAMPLES OF SPECIALIZED INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN LANGUAGES Several research groups have pursued specialized design languages for use in designing learning objects (Botturi, 2006; Caeiro-Rodriguez et al., 2006; Derntl, 2007; Koper, 2002; Koper and Tattersall, 2005; Paquette, 2005). The boundaries for the application of
WHY STUDY INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN LANGUAGES? We identify four main reasons for the serious study of instructional design languages: (1) They encourage disciplined design practice, (2) they give organization to the growth of design fields, (3) their study gives historical context to evolving design fields, and (4) they connect practices of a design field to theoretical concepts.
Design Languages Encourage Disciplined Design Practice In many design fields, making design languages explicit has resulted in rapid advances in design productivity. Computer chip designs were originally recorded by hand in large and very detailed drawings. Over time, highly repetitive and detailed local design decisions were identified and ways were invented to express design problems in multiple, strictly bounded design languages. These languages could be translated into computer programming languages for solving. The end result has been a computer chip design process in which most low-level design decisions are made automatically. Chip design is now faster, and designs have increased exponentially in complexity and sophistication. A return to handmade and hand-drawn designs is unthinkable (Brayton and Darringer, 2003; Del Man and Rabaey, 2003; Kuh and Hsu, 2003; Sakallah et al., 2003). Without the creation of design languages for problem expression, the computer would be irrelevant to designing. The earliest use of computers in computer-aided design was merely to record design decisions and eliminate drafting tables. Conscious attention to formal use of design languages has accelerated progress in many other design fields as well, including aviation, software, automotive, and architectural design, among others (Kuehlmann, 2003; Newsome et al., 1989; Saabagh, 1996). McDonald (McDonald, 2006; McDonald and Gibbons, in press) described how design practice can be disciplined through the explicit use of terms that describe the design practice itself. 639
Andrew S. Gibbons, Luca Botturi, Eddy Boot, and Jon Nelson
Study of Design Languages Gives Direction to the Growth of Design Fields Design languages help organize the growing knowledge base of a technological field. Design usually involves the efforts of teams of specialists. Planning and coordination of their practice involve the use of specialized design languages. The use of the languages is most visible in the jargon of design team members. Families of languages needed to make coordinated action possible include: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Artifact design and development languages Languages related to the design process Languages related to development processes Tool languages related to design and development tools Production specialty/specialist languages Artifact description languages Structure and dimension description languages Functional description languages Languages that describe artifact properties or qualities Artifact operation languages Languages describing artifacts and their contexts physically Languages describing modes of operation and use Measurement languages Instrument design languages Measurement process design languages Measurement concept and interpretation languages Status/state description languages Intervention planning languages Intervention pattern languages Intervention process languages
Design language terms support communication about specialized objects, dimensions, properties, qualities, and processes by design teams. Most instructional designers are not aware of their tacit use of a great variety of design languages in written and spoken communications, nor are they aware of the important function of those languages in making useful and increasingly subtle design distinctions (Stubbs, 2006).
Evolution of Design Languages Gives Historical Context to Design Fields The evolution of the design languages of a field reflects the changing questions of the field and their scope. By identifying the design languages of the past, research640
ers and students can: (1) chart trajectories that point to unsolved problems, (2) recognize the scope and limitations of past questions, and (3) extrapolate from past questions to form and set the scope of new questions. For example, successive attempts have been made to codify a definition for the instructional technology field and define its theoretical and practical issues (Dijkstra et al., 1997; Januszewski, 2001; Reigeluth, 1983, 1999; Richey, 1986; Seels and Richey, 1994; Snelbecker, 1985; Tennyson et al., 1997). Such publications give a snapshot of the implicit design languages of a period that can be used by researchers and students to understand their questions in a historical context.
Design Languages Connect Practices of a Design Field to Theoretical Concepts The study of design languages reveals avenues for the grounding of instructional design practices in the theories of related disciplines. Social Learning Theory and Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the study of the role of language in social interaction. The study of design languages within a sociolinguistic context is important to researching the inward conversations of designers and the outward conversations of design teams. Sociolinguistics allows the design theorist to consider the implications of research by studying discourse analysis (Barton and Tusting, 2005; Bazerman, 1999), conversation theory (Pask, 1976), conversation analysis (te Molder and Potter, 2005), and design as a social process (Bucciarelli, 1994). Sociolinguists Barton and Tusting (2005) proposed that communities of practice cannot exist without a common language for communicating about the community’s shared interest. Wenger’s (1998) description of communities of practice anticipated the centrality of language to the function of communities using the concept of reification, which Wenger (1998, pp. 58–59) defined as: The process of giving form to our experience by producing objects that congeal this experience into ‘thingness’. In so doing, we create points of focus around which the negotiation of meaning becomes organized. …Any community of practice produces abstractions, tools, symbols, stories, terms and concepts that reify something of that practice in a congealed form.
Barton and Tusting (2005, p. 26) noted that “reification entails not only the negotiation of shared understandings but also enables particular forms of social relations
Design Languages to be shaped in the process of participation.” In a community of designers, the formation of design languages is not just an interesting byproduct but an essential process that makes possible the existence of the community. The specialized communications of the community are carried out in the terms of these languages. Cognitive Semantics and Linguistics Cognitive semantics (Jackendoff, 1993; Talmy, 2001) is the study of how humans develop and express meaning. Design languages are in some ways similar to other verbal, written, and symbolic languages; therefore, principles of cognitive semantics, linguistics, and semiotics may be used to study these specialized, local, and bounded languages. Semantically, design language terms take their meaning and interpretability from their context of use, from the intentions of the designer, and from the negotiation of meaning between designers (Winograd and Flores, 1987). This principle extends to the semantics of the design languages used by the many stakeholder communities that surround and support the use of a technology. Bazerman (1999, pp. 336–337) provided an account of the stabilization of the new technology of electrification and electrical lighting in the time of Thomas Edison: Technologists are tied into less obvious meaning systems for their development, appreciation, production, funding, operation, maintenance, social control, evaluation, and distribution. Moreover, these (and possibly other) functions are likely to be distributed among different groupings in the society, requiring differential distribution of representations to various social components that may not overlap. Papers must be filed with financial backers, government regulators, technical R&D departments, sales forces, material suppliers, production machinery producers, and shop floor designers.
In the future, descriptions like Bazerman’s applied to the stabilization and mass application of instructional technologies of many kinds will become an important factor in establishing and maintaining them. Computer Science Design languages can also be related to the specialpurpose languages of the computer. The study of programming languages suggests possible connection points between computation and design languages. Early artificial intelligence research included experiments in intelligent tutoring. In many of these experiments, the goal was to generate some portion of the instructional experience in real time, taking into account a number of factors that included the structure
of the subject matter and the history of recent actions of the learner. These experimental systems explored the real-time generation of many elements of the instructional experience, including generation of message (Carbonell, 1970; Drake et al., 1998; Stevens and Collins, 1977), generation of representations (Hollan et al., 1984), generation of strategy (Buchannan and Shortliffe, 1984; Clancey, 1984), and generation of control systems (Johnson et al., 2000), among others. Design languages give designers a tool for discussing with greater precision which instantaneous design decisions can be shared with the computer; for example, Exploring Emergence (Resnick and Silverman, 2006) places side-by-side fixed traditional instructional forms and the computations of a dynamic graphical model, whose unpredictable variations no designer would think of creating and prestoring in graphic form. Design languages are also related to the emerging study of ontologies for systematic semantics searches for patterns of relationship within databases (Nirenburg and Raskin, 2004; Noy and McGuinness, 2006). Ontologies will be pivotal in the development of a Semantic Web. Ontology-based searches will include finding resources with standard functional characteristics, such as those that contain specific modularized instructional functions.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN LANGUAGES Design languages come into being in different ways. McWhorter (2003, pp. 11–12) described the natural history of natural languages in transformative terms: Language is … analogous to cloud formations. We look at a cloud formation with full awareness of its inherently transitory nature: we know that if we look up again in an hour, the formation will almost certainly be different….
Most design languages are neither formalized nor standardized. Many of them enter widespread use with only the most vague specification and definition of terms. Even for languages whose terms are clearly defined, there is a danger that the terms may be appropriated by others or applied with modifications (McDonald, 2006). Those modifications may become a de facto alternative standard, and the originator of the design language must either live with the fuzziness or issue a correction reexpressing the original terms and definitions. This occurred when Barrows restated his definition of “problem-based learning” following many years of definition creep (Barrows, 1998; Barrows and Tamblyn, 1980). Design languages are in 641
Andrew S. Gibbons, Luca Botturi, Eddy Boot, and Jon Nelson constant flux. As McWhorter (2003, p. 53) said of natural languages, “Dialects is all there is.” Primitive terms of design languages tend to be invented, and invention can take place suddenly with the introduction of a new process, tool, or theory. Most design language terms do not find their way into the lexicons of natural languages. Design languages may obey some of the rules of natural languages but tend to be separate from natural languages. Design languages are often promoted by the originators of the language, and language wars may occur. Sponsors may include theoreticians, special-interest groups, businesses, or business communities with connected interests, particularly in software tools or hardware they have created. The syntactical rules of languages emerge slowly from usage. Syntax gives order to expressions of meaning. Through transformation, words and phrases can be placed in different surface arrangements that preserve meaning, but the surface form of the new arrangement is still linear. Design language syntax, on the other hand, is multidimensional. The primitive terms in a design language may be expressed as words, but expressions in a design must describe multiple relationships for every design element in adequate detail to support creation of an artifact. Relationships may be spatial (two- or three-dimensional), temporal (four-dimensional), or more complex (conditional). Design languages often require more complex notations to contain the amount of information requisite for a design. This can lead to three-dimensional drawing or models, four-dimensional animations, and even more complex modeling systems that involve multiple representation forms (Stubbs, 2006). Systems such as traditional architectural drawing have become so specialized that language notation standards are created to govern the representation of designs. Natural language semantics is derived from patterns of cause and effect and states of being in realworld experience or by metaphorical processes operating on them (Talmy, 2001). The semantic of a design language is limited to a problem domain within which the design language is specified, such as Schön’s architectural problem-solving domains or Brand’s layers (Schön, 1987; Brand, 1994). Design language expressions have meanings bounded by the problem worlds for which they were created.
DESIGN LANGUAGES AND NOTATION SYSTEMS Waters and Gibbons (2004) made a distinction between a design language and public design representations through speech, writing, drawing, and ges642
tures. Private design languages exist that do not have corresponding symbolic forms and rules for sharing. Bucciarelli (1994, p. 159) described this: Shared vision is made explicit in documents, texts, and artifacts—in formal assembly and detail drawings, operation and service manuals, contractual disclaimers, production schedules, marketing copy, test plans, parts lists, procurement orders, mock-ups, and prototypes. But in the process of designing … each participant in the process has a personal collection of sketches, flow charts, cost estimates, spreadsheets, models, and above all stories—stories to tell about their particular vision of the object. The shared vision, as some synthetic representation of the artifact as a whole, is not in the documents or written plans. To the extent that it exists as a whole, it is a social construction….
Design languages and notation systems support growth and improvement in each other. Once a consistent notation system is established, it can become: (1) a tool for remembering designs, (2) a structured problem-solving work space where designs can take form, and (3) a laboratory tool for sharpening and subdividing abstract design categories. Through a continuing cycle of refinement, both design language and notation system grow in parallel, and more sophisticated design ideas result.
DESIGN LANGUAGE RESEARCH Gibbons and Brewer (2005) proposed several directions for research in design languages and their potential uses: • Identify, document, and study existing design languages. • Extract principles in existing languages and learn to apply them deliberately. • Obtain better language grounding through attachment to theory. • Examine the generative principles of language that lead to new design languages. • Generate better-defined languages and grammars. • Create tools that emphasize the designer’s languages rather than the computer’s. • Use design languages to redefine design processes. This list can be supplemented with additional ideas described in this chapter: • Explore the relationship between ontologies and design languages.
Design Languages • Explore computable instructional design languages and their role in adaptive instructional experiences. • Explore social dimensions of language use during designing. • Explore positive economic benefits of design language use for design teams. • Explore lessons learned in other design communities from design language application. • Explore the use of design languages in educating new designers. • Explore the role of design languages in securing new technologies and promoting their use among a range of stakeholders.
increases in productivity and creativity. Design languages are not an invention but the description of a new way of seeing what designers naturally do in every field of design. As such, it is a conceptual tool and not a truth, but as a conceptual tool we should explore the new possibilities design languages open to us for improving the range, precision, and sophistication of our designs. Consideration of the design languages of instructional design present us an opportunity to view instructional design, instructional theory, instructional design theory, and day-to-day practice in a new way that may advance our understandings of all of these.
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ANTICIPATED BENEFITS Several benefits may be expected from the above research: • Improved tools for the support of all stages of instructional design, from initial conception to documentation of the completed design • Clearer relationships between design decisions and structures, features, and qualities of designs • Improved techniques for facilitating the formation of instructional design teams and their rapid movement toward productive activity • Improved approaches for the training of new instructional designers • A broader view of new designers with respect to the spectrum of design languages used by the many specialized members of their design teams • New understanding of the nature of instructional designing and new processes that tailor the design process to the design problem
CONCLUSION Design languages supply primitives for private design and for public discourse about designs. In a complex technological world where designing can no longer be considered a single-person activity, increasing emphasis should be placed on the importance of design languages as a vehicle for sharing design processes. In addition to their use in creating designs, design languages supply a means by which theories used in designing can be examined, understood, compared, and implemented. In many design fields, attention to design languages and their use has produced enormous
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