Words

This is sort of a rant, here goes. While reading The UX of Learning article on A List Apart, I came across the Bloom’s Taxonomy for learning. It looks something like this:

As a User Experience Designer, my mind runs through this stack on a daily basis. Whenever I’m called upon to create (synthesize) something, I know that it won’t turn out great until I actually understand what it is that I’m creating. Which leads me ask the question of whether it’s possible to increase the speed in which you can cycle through the stack? Is it possible to train your mind to learn faster?

I believe that my experience as an engineer gives me a mini-advantage in the bottom 4 stacks. Those were pretty much beaten into me during my 4 years of college and 1 additional year of grad school. Learn and understand this formula. Apply and analyze that problem set.

The 2 upper levels, synthesis and evaluating, seem a little tougher to master. Synthesis takes creativity, which isn’t like spare change. Where you simply pull out of your pants pocket. Where does creativity come from? With an increasing focus on design, I’ve noticed a myriad of self-help books written recently on the topic of creativity. I haven’t read any and I don’t know what the tricks are. But I do consider myself as a creative individual, at least that’s what people around me says, but maybe they’re just lying. Maybe being creative has to do with an inert desire to have to understand everything. Whenever I see something, I always have to get to the bottom of how it works, and how it’s applied, and such and such. And according to this pyramid, you cannot have synthesis unless you truly understand and have experienced something. So maybe the fact that some individuals find it hard to be creative, is that they don’t have the desire to understand things in the first place. Maybe it’s necessary to start at the bottom, and then work youself up the pyramid no matter what it is. Repeating that many many times will probably make it faster, just like exercising.