What is Reverse Engineering?
wikipedia
“It is the process by which a man-made object is deconstructed to reveal its designs, architecture, or to extract knowledge from the object; similar to scientific research, the only difference being that scientific research is about a natural phenomenon.”
Applying this concept to instructional Design means taking apart a learning object to understand the design decisions made during its creation.
Why Should Instructional Designers Apply this Concept?
To Create their Own Designs.
Using other people’s work as a model can help you create your own. Reverse engineering contributes significantly to an instructional designer’s innovation and productivity. The reverse engineering process allows designers to examine something that already exists.
In Instructional Design, reverse engineering requires exploring the design decisions, visual designs, structure, content instructional objectives, instructional strategies, assessment strategies, and practical exercises that went into constructing the learning object. Learning from other people’s work is immensely valuable, and by analyzing others’ designs, you will develop your ability to create such products.
To Develop a Critical Eye
Not only does examining others’ work inform your own development as an Instructional Designer, but it also equips you to provide critical and strategic feedback on their work. For instance, if you collaborate with other instructional designers, you might be expected to provide actionable feedback that will help them improve their Design.
Your ability to effectively deconstruct other learning designs to understand and learn why or not they work well will be essential when you give feedback.
To Inspire Creativity
While Reverse Engineering Design starts out as a way to gain insights into a design, it can also spark creativity and encourage innovation. Often designers can use the design work of others as a catalyst to come up with more ideas and innovations influenced by the designs they studied.
Ryan Martin, the designer of ‘the Broken Coworker, says many of his creative ideas and work come from reverse engineering. To create one of his courses, he reverse-engineered the dashboard navigation from the XBOX dashboard. Flipboard also influenced the course navigation.
You can find the video describing how he reverse engineers video games to influence his eLearning designs here: Storytelling in Elearning – Part 10: Steal Like an Artist.
To Eliminate Blank Page Syndrome
Blank page syndrome isn’t unique to writers alone. Most creatives will face it at some point in the design process. Often it hits when you are starting out and staring at a blank document, unsure of where to begin. Reverse engineering comes in handy by eliminating the need to start from scratch. Taking apart the beginning of other designer’s work can trigger thinking of the design decisions that went into the course introduction. Reverse engineering is basically working your way forward from the back end of Design, and sometimes that is all a designer needs to get rid of the mental block that hinders them from the beginning.
To Update an Outdated or Ineffective Design
The process of redesigning an existing learning object may require first deconstructing it. This is especially helpful if you were not responsible for the Design in the first place. Hence, it might be necessary to disassemble a design to ensure that the older and new designs complement each other. By reverse-engineering outdated or ineffective designs, you can eliminate the obsolete kinks in the Design to produce more effective, up-to-date designs. Reverse engineering inadequate designs can also better help you understand your own designs. Say you build triggers into a slide in Articulate, and they don’t work as desired; you can use reverse engineering to figure out the problem.
Conclusion
You don’t have to be an engineer to apply the concept of reverse engineering. It is common practice in engineering and military contexts, but almost every creative could benefit from the skills and develop expertise through reverse engineering. While reverse engineering might sound complicated, it is simply a process of figuring out how someone else did something, then following these steps to accomplish your objectives.
Instructional Designers reverse engineer designs by starting at the end and working their way back to decipher how the object came together piece by piece.
By reverse engineering a design, you engage with what a learning object looks like but, more importantly, how and why it works. It isn’t stealing but seeking to understand a design so you can enhance your skills and abilities as a designer. Reverse engineering is a skill every Instructional Designer should have in their arsenal.
Are you ready to dedicate time to reverse engineering as part of your professional development as an Instructional Designer?
Would you mind letting me know in the comments below?
Also, check out my post 4 Tips for Designing the Impossible for more ways to inspire your creative process.