Behind every workbook is a series of questions, revisions, and small design decisions. Here’s what we’re working on now.
Designing the Next Visual Echoes Workbook – ROOTS
Every page in a workbook teaches something.
Not only through the words it contains, but through the experience it creates.
One of the questions we’re wrestling with in the next Visual Echoes workbook – ROOTS is deceptively simple:
How much guidance is enough?
Too much structure, and children learn to look for the “right” answer.
Too little, and the page becomes confusing rather than inviting.
Some pages ask children to observe.
Others ask them to wonder.
Others invite them to notice patterns they may never have considered before.
Each activity is designed with the same question in mind:
Does this page create curiosity, or merely ask for compliance?
At this stage, we’re moving sketches across the desk, rewriting prompts, and testing different visual layouts. Often the smallest changes make the biggest difference.
Sometimes a page is technically correct but emotionally flat.
Sometimes removing a single sentence creates more room for a reader to think.
Progress rarely happens in a straight line.
Design, much like development itself, often advances through revision rather than certainty.
This workbook is still becoming.
Currently exploring
- How much guidance encourages curiosity without directing it.
- When illustrations support thinking and when they distract from it.
- How reflection pages can become conversations rather than worksheets.