Design for Learning- Principles, Processes, and Praxis, 2021a

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The Design of Holistic Learning
Environments
Jason K. McDonald
One of the factors that makes a design compelling is when it has a
sense of harmony and completeness. When we experience the design,
it does not feel like a collection of individual parts that just happen to
be together. Instead, they “fit” together. In fact, we likely do not stop
to consider the discrete components making up the design at all. But
if we do notice the individual parts, we typically can sense how each
belongs. There is a sense of balance and resonance that emerges from
the precise configuration we experience. We see the design as a
whole, meant to be experienced as a whole. And in the best cases, the
sense of completeness and balance somehow extends into us—we feel
more complete and more in balance because we have encountered
something as complete and in balance as this design. Nelson and
Stolterman (2012), in their book, The Design Way: Intentional Change
in an Unpredictable World, call this type of experience holistic design.
In this chapter, I consider some of the conditions that lead to holistic
designs, along with what these conditions could mean in the context
of instructional design.
Figure 1 presents a diagram from The Design Way that highlights the
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