User-centered (a cognitive/perceptual term) and usage-centered (a behavioral/functional term) are postmodern
design descriptors often arbitrarily or ambiguously defined and interchangeably used and misused. In the context of 21st century instructional product
design theory and practice,
user-centered design focuses on constructing a user experience and environment with physical and virtual affordances that are manipulable, controllable, customizable, and adaptable from the essential perspective of the conceptual model of the learner. This means both (a) the learner’s metamodel of their own learning processes and the learning activities and environment, and (b) the
designer’s model of the learner and the corresponding educational activity and experience, with the former driving and superseding the latter in the
design solution. Thus, the conceptual model of the learner becomes the superordinate principle guiding the
design process and learning outcomes (i.e., the highest level of the prescriptive taxonomy). Usage-centered
design focuses primarily on the functional goal-based behavior of learners and structuring activities, procedures, processes, and corresponding affordances to optimize the effectiveness of the learner to efficiently accomplish those intrinsic goals. In both of these approaches, however, the conventionally deterministic structure of the content and the underlying information architecture of the knowledge domain are secondary considerations, while the learner’s conceptual model and intrinsic goal-driven behavior provide the guiding blueprint for the instructional
design solution.
Learn more in:
Developing Prescriptive Taxonomies for Distance Learning Instructional Design