Service Design for Education Part 2: Learning How to Use InDesign

This post is part of an independent study project. I am working with two professors on an ongoing research project about service design for education. My role involves developing materials for workshops where full-time, part-time and tenured educators can collaborate on curriculum development. Please start by reading Part 1 first.

What I Did

InDesign

Over the past week I experimented with InDesign. I watched many tutorials, learned how to use data merge, how to display multiple records by using master pages (kind of, still learning), and worked out many bugs and errors along the way.

Pica

Usually I work with inches or pixels, but since the original documents were measured in pica, I learned how to work with picas.

Planning and Prototyping

Quick sketches for 4 cards that fit on an 8.5 x 11" paper and only need to be cut twice

I tested cards with both 0.125" (0p9) and 0.25"(1p6) bleed margin in Illustrator

0.125" (0p9) bleed margin vs. 0.25" (1p6) bleed margin

Physical print outs to see if the smaller bleed was easy enough to cut and which one felt better to hold

The .125" (0p9) margin was enough for nothing important to be lost when the cards were cut, but also left plenty of space for content

Empty Card Template — > Prototype with Merged Data

Prototype Printed + Cut Out

I also simplified the Excel sheet to make it into a template by changing the column names and removing categories that were ATEC-specific

Excel Template

What I Learned

1. InDesign seems simple but is not easy to use. Data merge has a lot of quirks
2. Physically testing out your designs is helpful to see how it will look in reality, if it’s not digital

Feedback from professor Farrar:

• Experiment with increasing the font size since the card sizes are bigger
• Color code portions such as lower/upper level requirements, core/gen-ed classes, foundation classes (for design degrees)
• Figure out how to differentiate between all the different options for pre-reqs (needing all of them, or just one of a few options)
• Clearly state what FREQ means on the cards

The meaning of FREQ (frequency): T= every two years, R= rarely, S= every semester

New Questions

• What do design degrees look like in other universities and how might that affect our design choices?
• What is the best measurement system to use for this project so it is accessible and understandable for the majority of users?
• How might color codes be incorporated in a way that works for a template?
• How might pre- and co-req requirements be differentiated clearly?
• Is there a way to ensure words are not cut off awkwardly in the description portion of the cards?

Continue the Series:

Part 3: The Iterative Process