Competing Goals

The primary goal of the VizAbility design team was to make a product that helped people learn to express themselves visually and the practice the visual thinking techniques that are critical in art and science. The CD-ROM is loosely based on Experiences in Visual Thinking, Robert McKim's text book for a mechanical engineering class at Stanford. The design team is passionate and enthused about the educational aspects of this product, and consciously did not succumb to the insidious temptation to produce "edu-tainment" that would sell well but that would not realize its full educational potential. While there are game-like exercises in VizAbility, this is not a game program; learners are guided through a multi-media experience involving interviews with professional designers and teachers as well as warm-up stretching exercises designed to foster a fertile creative mindset.

Despite the idealism that defines this product, however, keeping the budget reasonable was definitely one competing goal for the design team. Budgetary concerns made user studies of VizAbility infeasible. User studies could make it possible to determine whether the product is indeed meeting its educational objectives, and in what ways that is happening. The lack of user studies means that there is no concrete evidence that the product works as intended and that there is no concrete specification of what exactly it is teaching. This makes it difficult for educators and learners to determine the value of the product.