In LearnLab` one of the important Instructional Principles is Visual-Verbal Integration. Their page about it begins with a summary:
Visual-Verbal Integration Principle: Instruction that includes both visual and verbal information leads to more robust learning than instruction that includes verbal information alone, but only when the instruction supports learners as they coordinate information from both sources and the representations guide student attention to deep features. [bold-emphasis added]
The verbal-and-visual features of Design Process certainly do "guide student attention to deep features" in a process of design, to clearly show the logical framework of Design Process. An overview of Design Process shows how to "coordinate information from both sources," from verbal explanations and verbal/visual diagrams. / I.O.U. — Later, there will be deeper examinations of strategies (by a teacher and with instruction modules) to "support learners as they coordinate information from both sources," visual and verbal.
The benefits of logical organization (whether it's done verbally and/or verbally-and-visually, or...) are discussed in reasons to use Design Process and (when you follow the links) in other places, including Transfers of Learning. A special feature of Design Process is its logical verbal-and-visual organization of Procedural Skills.
For a long time, verbal-visual representations have fascinated me in many ways, on many levels, as a learner, teacher, and scholar/learner.
Learning: I like to learn by reading and seeing, individually or together.
Teaching: I've made a wide variety of verbal-and-visual summaries, for physics, chemistry, music, dancing, juggling,... as explained in my web-portfolio and then, as you can see in this website, for Science Process` & Design Process`.
Learning: In the early-1990s, as a preparation for my PhD proposal, I wrote Visual Thinking in Education: Visual-Verbal Language in Learning & Teaching.
I.O.U. — Later, there will be more information from LearnLab and other sources, plus more of my comments about verbal-and-visual instruction.
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Verbal-and-Visual Representations of Design Process The sections below, which are “guided exploration” commentaries, originally were in 10 Modes of Design Process; the first section was at the * (where the link takes you) and the second followed a paragraph about the logical framework of Design Process`. For two reasons — I decided to streamline the "10 Modes..." page, and increase the level of diagram-descriptions in an overview of Design Process — the sections were moved here.
Verbal-and-Visual Representations Beginning here, that are explained in For a perspective on Design Process that I think you'll find very useful, study these five diagrams`. Beginning with the 2nd diagram, notice the background-colors (especially the yellow & green, but also blue & yellow-green) and the many interactive relationships. For the top three diagrams, explanations of “what is happening” are in an overview of Design Process, or you can just explore them and learn by discovery. The 4th diagram shows the flow-of-action from Designing Experiments to Experiments & Evaluations, and back, with interactions of modes that include using creative-and-critical retroductive logic to generate options; click on the 3rd diagram, then compare the 3rd and 4th, and in each compare experimental action on the left side (yellow) and right side (green). In the 5th diagram (at bottom) the focus is on Designing Experiments; notice the interactions between evaluating and experimenting, which you also see in the 4th and (with or without clicking) the 3rd. MORE — a deeper examination of verbal-and-visual representations [this linked to the page-ending section below]
Logical Integration — Verbal-and-Visual Representations The modes of thinking-and-action in Design Process are shown in five diagrams with different perspectives and levels of detail. You may want to explore them for awhile [this linked to the section above] before reading the "deeper examination" commentaries below. • The top diagram describes preliminary actions (Choose Objective, Define Goals, Prepare) in Modes 1A-1B-2A, then shows a simple Two-Step Cycle of Design with GENERATE Options (old in 2A or new in 2B) and EVALUATE Options (in 3A, using information from 2D or 2E). • The second diagram shows the same cycle but from a “one cycle at a time” perspective, and with more detail. • In the third diagram, the focus is on "3 Comparisons" of Goals, Predictions, and Observations. You can read explanations of the top 3 diagrams in Design Process. • The fourth diagram shows a different perspective, focusing on flows-of-action when you GENERATE-and-EVALUATE: you GENERATE Options (2A-2B) for a Solution or a Theory, and Design Experiments (2C) so you can Do Experiments (2C-2D) to generate Predictions or Observations that you EVALUATE in two types of Quality Checks (3A) or in Reality Checks (3B) that provide feedback (notice the upward arrows) for Generating Options and for the Design Project. Study the actions, noticing the colors and relationships. Guided Generation of Ideas: In this fourth diagram, purple text shows the actions in creative-and-critical retroduction that is also in the 3rd diagram (when you click on it) and in a detailed version of it and is examined in Guided Generation of Ideas which (in Part 2) explains why the 4th diagram has purple text on its lower-left side (yellow for Mental Experiments) but not the lower-right side (green for Physical Experiments): "During retroduction there is a difference between the two kinds of Quality Checks" because "mental predicting is required for retroductive generation" so in the 3rd diagram "one of the arrows has a dotted line." Adjustments during Design: Analogous to a hockey player with a "strategic plan that is intentionally flexible,... improvising in response to what happens during the game," designers also improvise. Early in a design process, for example, usually a major activity is ideation to generate ideas; later, after many ideas have been evaluated in Mental Quality Checks, there is more emphasis on testing the best idea(s) with Physical Quality Checks; therefore, typically there is a shift of emphasis from mental action (on the left side, highlighted in yellow) to physical action (on the right side, in green) during a process of design. • The bottom diagram shows details of a Two-Step Cycle, focusing on the way evaluative Quality Checks are used for a Guided Generation of Options and a Designing of Mental & Physical Experiments. It was inspired by my efforts to explain how metacognitive Learning Strategies are developed-and-used in an iterative process with Two-Step Cycles of Design. MORE — The Benefits of Verbal-and-Visual Instruction |