Link library helps design learning technology interfaces with science
LINK: A Corpus-Grounded Design Pattern Library for Educational Technologies
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
Designing learning technology interfaces is complicated because what works depends on many factors like subjects, learner needs, and context. The authors created LINK, a collection of 27 common design patterns organized around 9 big learning goals to help guide designers. They studied how useful LINK was with 14 designers and found it helped generate ideas and explain design choices based on learning science. LINK connects learning theory more directly to interface design than previous work.
What this means in practice
- •For educational software developers: Create more effective learning interfaces by using LINK to generate and justify design ideas grounded in learning science.
- •For user experience designers: Use LINK as a structured resource for designing interfaces that support specific instructional goals across various learning contexts.
Authors
Lorena Lyon, Hyoungwook Jin, Vincent Cavez, Roy Pea, Xu Wang, Hari Subramonyam
Abstract
Designing learning interfaces is often an ill-structured problem: effective solutions depend on learning goals, subject matter, learner characteristics, and interaction context that are difficult to generalize. Designers must integrate knowledge from learning sciences, interaction design, and subject domains when translating learning goals into interface decisions. Yet, prior efforts to connect learning theory and design have largely focused on learning activities or specific technologies, leaving interface-level design knowledge fragmented across systems. In this work, we take a bottom-up approach to surface this knowledge from existing educational interfaces. We present LINK (Linking INstructional Knowledge to interfaces), a library of 27 recurring interface patterns, organized under nine higher-level design commitments, which describe broader learning-science-grounded goals for interfaces. As part of developing LINK, we conducted a user study (N=14) with designers to evaluate LINK's generative power. Our findings suggest that LINK helps designers generate interface ideas and articulate theory-grounded rationales for design decisions.