Totem Learnings design philosophy

This blog describes our overarching principles for learning design regardless of content, format or mode of delivery:

Follow the laws of learning 

Everything we create is aligned with psychological principles that explain how our memories, attention spans and reward centres work. Our designs are sympathetic to these principles ensuring we achieve high levels of engagement and transference of knowledge and skills. The laws of learning include risk and reward, engagement, motivation, attention balancing, cognitive overload and primacy and recency effects and mastery as well as several other psychological principles. 

Simplicity

We follow the design principle of Occam's Razor  that states ‘Entities should not be multiplied without necessity’ or to paraphrase  ‘the simplest solution is most likely the right one’. 

We believe simplicity is beautiful and we take this principle forward into our visual design and game design to ensure solutions are simple to develop, deploy and use. 

Repeatability 

We believe learning is a continuous process and ideally the learning journey should be endless; it should avoid having a defined end, as that limits how far a user can go. 

Being able to repeat content is a great way to ensure that users return, otherwise they’ll stop as soon as they’ve completed certain learning objectives. 

Focus on learning culture, not just learning solutions 

When designing it is critical to understand the learning culture in an organisation. Games, Simulations and gamification require investment in the process of creation as well as investment in the learners journey. An open learning environment is most suitable for solutions that encourage exploration and experimentation. 

Collaboration

We believe the best design solutions occur when experts work together. Totem are experts in digital learning and our clients are experts in their subject matter domain. When these two worlds come together to collaborate, creative solutions with high impact are produced. 

Iteration

It is rare that the initial idea is the best solution and therefore Totem believes in iterative design. We believe in learning through failure and improvements. We believe iterative design, coupled with user testing, produces the strongest results.

Technology is an enabler 

Technology is a means to an end and should not be viewed in any other way. It is a powerful tool when used at the right time for the right reasons. Therefore we will always evaluate the best approach for learning before suggesting a technology solution.