Capabilities
DESIGN | PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT | FOLLOW-UP
DESIGN
Needs Assessment/Business Analysis:
Once we’ve confirmed our role and identified project team members on both sides, we meet to discuss your objectives and goals. It’s important that we all share the same road map as we move forward. Often projects require additional structure and definition before development can begin. LSW works with your team to brainstorm ideas and potential solutions to reach stated goals. Along that path we help you set milestones and results that are realistic and measurable. From there we can decide on appropriate instructional strategies and deployment methods.
In some cases a project requires a more thorough business analysis in the early stages. In those instances we help map educational technology projects to a litany of business demands such as:
- matching, complementing, or extending print components in a concurrent development cycle
- stakeholder identification and interviews
- creation of use cases
- competitive analysis
- delivering along pedagogical frameworks
- adhering to state and national standards
- hitting key adoption/marketing-driven release dates
- reverse engineering existing products for the sake of re-purposing
Functional Specifications
Once we know what we want to build and why, it’s time to put it on paper so the development team will share our vision and have a road map to follow. This step can be a bit tedious and can feel somewhat unnecessary. However, truth be told – nothing in an educational technology project saves more time and money than solid specifications and requirement documents. Not to worry – we do the bulk of the work and look to you for feedback and eventual approval. LSW project managers create the specifications documents with input from our designers and technical staff.
Graphic Design:
Our award-winning graphic designers begin with mock-ups and rough layouts. They are accustomed to matching or complementing existing print designs and working with company style guides. They’re equally happy to start with a clean slate and propose unique and enticing new ideas. At this point there is plenty of time for back and forth as we lock-in a look that matches everyone’s expectations.
Instructional Design:
During this phase our instructional designers are available to work closely with your subject matter experts to make sure that established learning theories are applied to the organization and design of your technology programs. Regardless of the medium, we’re experienced with educational technology creation and know how to work closely with editorial groups to ensure that we create effective and useful solutions.
User Interface Design
Effectiveness of technology depends largely on how user interactions are designed. With educational technology it matters even more. We apply cognitive theories not only to instructional design, but to the design of user interaction as well. We produce programs that facilitate learning – not hinder it. After all, the high stakes test is not going to focus on finding the ‘Quit’ button. We often encourage and subsequently facilitate usability testing with students (and teachers) to verify that our user interfaces are performing as intended.
Formative Evaluation
Depending on your needs and target audience we design and conduct formative evaluation that feeds back into the development process at various stages of the project. This is the most important process in the development of any instructional software – to ensure that the program is usable, effective, and bug free.
Accessibility/Universal Design for Learning
Everyone is different and the more learning styles we can accommodate the wider the audience we’ll reach and educate. In many instances, designing for learning differences is required by law. We’re in tune with these issues (including Section 508) and will help you ensure that your technology products don’t leave anyone out.
SCORM/AICC compliance
The acronyms may look complicated but building a compliant product is not rocket science. To guarantee that your courseware functions with a variety of Learning Management Systems, we follow the strict standards for course structure, data models, content launch and metadata. We’ll be happy to help sort all this out so you end up with content that is searchable, sharable, and reusable.
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