Design Rationale
Strategy:
Think, pair, share
In typography, readability refers to how comfortably text can be navigated and read. Factors affecting readability include font size, line length, and line spacing, among others. Poor readability is immediately obvious — the text simply feels physically uncomfortable to read. By contrast, good readability goes unnoticed.
When laying out text, students often struggle to achieve readability. If identifying poor readability is obvious, why is it difficult to put into practice? The teacher could easily list the "rules of thumb" when it comes to readability — that body text should sit between 8-12 points, for instance — but readability is perceptual. No rule tells you what 'comfortable' feels like until you've experienced the difference yourself.
For students navigating the unstable liminal state between novice and mastery (Cousin, 2006), the rules offer an appealing shortcut. But applying rules without understanding them is a form of mimicry — the student performs readability rather than seeing it. To move through this space, a shift has to occur in the way they observe and analyze typography. Their tacit knowledge needs to be activated and this begins with showing them what they didn't know they already know.
I chose a think, pair, share as the strategy for readability in which I ask the students to compare and analyze an example of poor readability with an example of good readability. This scaffolded approach moves students through the liminal space by asking them to make the implicit explicit. At each phase, they gain confidence to trust their observational skills - a critical skill for design thinking.​
Think
Working independently, students are asked to compare two texts, the content of which is identical. One illustrates poor readability, the other good readability. The distinction between the two is unmistakable by design. The contrast needs to be extreme because if it's subtle, students second-guess their perception and retreat to the rules. Using typography terminology, they are asked to write down as many factors as they can that are facilitating good readability.​
pair
In pairs or small groups, students compare their answers. When similarities are discovered, that instinctual, tacit knowledge becomes something that feels real and can be communicated. Consensus also helps to build confidence.
share
The first two phases prepare students to speak with confidence in the final discussion in which the whole class comes together for a teacher-facilitated group discussion. During this time, observations are synthesized into a collective vocabulary. It is also an opportunity for the teacher to assess understanding and course correct if necessary.
Threshold Concept:
Readability
Simulation Analysis
I started my simulation with a quick exercise to illustrate the difference between readability and legibility: two terms that are commonly used interchangeably but have different meanings. Students were given two different texts and asked to read each one, focusing on the physical experience of reading rather than what they were reading. After they finished reading the text I asked them to describe their reading experience.
All three students agreed that the first example could be read but with difficulty and for the most part, the second example could not be read at all although it was possible to make out a letter here and there. I concluded by explaining that this exercise demonstrated the difference between readability and legibility. The first example could be read but it was a struggle (readability). Example two couldn’t be read at all (legibility). From here we moved into the think, pair, share as described in my design rationale.
readability
Readability refers to how easily and comfortably a reader can move through passages of text.
legibility
Legibility is how clearly individual letters and characters can be visually distinguished from one another.
Overall, the simulation went smoothly. The exercise to illustrate the difference between readability and legibility unfolded as intended, with the students struggling to read the example of poor readability and giving up entirely on the example of legibility. The only time I felt like I needed to intervene is when I noticed that they were focusing too much on understanding the text itself when comparing the examples of good and poor readability in the think phase. I don’t expect this to happen with students in my discipline who are being trained to separate form from content when it comes to typography.
Peer Feedback Synthesis
To facilitate the feedback I asked my peers a few specific questions to help me with some ideas that I was grappling with.
Are the examples that I use of good and poor readability too obvious?
No, because it helps to explain the concept to novice learners and keep them focused on what is being taught. A less experienced student won’t necessarily have the observational skills required to analyze a less obvious example.
Is the exercise to make the distinction between readability and legibility necessary considering the concept is only about readability?
Yes, it is important to clear up potential misconceptions between these two terms before proceeding. It also helps reinforce the correct use of specific terminology.
Suggestions for improvement from my peers​
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As a follow-up to the activity, have the students find their own examples of readability.
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Demonstrate step-by-step how to use the software (InDesign) to fix the example of poor readability.
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Have the students fix the example themselves.
Future Iteration
Based on the feedback I received, I intend to add two steps to this strategy to make the path that the students need to take to get past the threshold explicit (Pace, 2021).
Demonstration (Modeling)
Using InDesign, give a step-by-step demonstration of how to fix the example of poor legibility. This will show how to put theory into practice.
try it!
Allow some time for the students to try fixing the example themselves.
Reflection
My biggest takeaway from this experience is to trust my instincts. As a novice teacher, I do a lot of second guessing. Without a lot of pedagogical knowledge to draw on, I often rely on my instincts when it comes to teaching. I felt unsure about my choices going into the simulation but the feedback that I received from my peers was reassuring. I often forget about the novice learner, skipping over the crucial steps that I am accustomed to that have become invisible to me (Pace, 2021). This project will help me be more in tune with the novice learner going forward.
Creating this toolkit has allowed me to take a close look at how graphic design is taught and learned in ways that I have never considered before. Dissecting my discipline has shown me how to think beyond what I have to teach and focus on optimizing learning.
Ai Transparency
In completing this assignment, I used Claude (Anthropic) in three ways. First, I used it to generate the definitions of readability and legibility that appear under "Simulation Analysis". Second, I used it to help me work out the connection between the Cousin article and my strategy. Third, I used it to receive feedback on a section of my writing, which I critically evaluated and used to inform my own revisions. All analysis, reflections, and conclusions presented in this assignment are my own.
This AI transparency statement was written by Claude (Anthropic).
Example of feedback from Claude: “The Pair phase still leans too heavily on confidence. Confidence appears twice in this phase and "tacit knowledge" appears almost as an afterthought in the final sentence. But the Pair phase is actually where the most interesting epistemological work happens — when two students compare observations, they discover that their perception was shared, which transforms a private feeling into something that feels knowable and real. That's not just confidence-building; that's the moment tacit knowledge becomes communicable. The rationale would be stronger if that were the focus.”
Cousin, G. (2006). An introduction to threshold concepts. Planet, 17(1), 4–5.
https://doi.org/10.11120/plan.2006.00170004
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Pace, D. (2021a). Beyond Decoding the Disciplines 1.0: New Directions for the Paradigm.
Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 9(2), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.9.2.3
References