The answer to this, for design decision-making at the micro level, is ‘yes’. The language you choose (out of the several possibilities) depends on who brought you up as a designer, and upon your own experience. I was brought up as a designer to value and use the stimulus-response (S-R) paradigm as the language of design decision-making at the learning experience design step. I still use and value it today. For some discussions, it can be a useful language at the curriculum and even policy levels. However, for most discussions (and for most people) the ‘S-R language’ is a singularly inappropriate language at the meso and macro levels of design decision-making. Its use can make people very angry.
The S-R paradigm sees any teaching-learning event in a course or lesson as a ‘stimulus-response’ event. The event (a lecture, a laboratory experiment, the analysis of a problem, a tutorial, a period of observation in a work situation, the flying of a kite, an educational visit to an art gallery, etc) must contain the appropriate stimuli (S) to which the learner responds (R) and, as a result of this response, learns. The S-R paradigm is the special language of design which this book recommends for use at the micro level of design. If the designer is willing to think in terms of stimuli (pictures, words, problem statements, film content, etc) and responses, and the association between them, the design task becomes a more concrete one. The S-R paradigm contains, essentially, the prescription for any learning experience. But be careful …
To use the S-R paradigm and its language does not mean, as Kendler (1961) has pointed out, that complex behaviour actually consists of S-R connections. As this same writer goes on to say, the concept of the S-R association, therefore, must be judged not in terms of its ability to provide a clear image of behaviour, but rather its capacity to represent the facts of behaviour.
With the help of the S-R-paradigm, the designer must use her or his intuition, creativity and logical thinking to set up an environment of appropriate stimuli to which the learner can respond, is willing to respond, likes to respond, and as a result of this response, learns. Failures to learn are frequently the result of inappropriate stimuli for wished-for responses or inappropriate responses to appropriate stimuli. The S-R paradigm and its language are, as this implies, valuable tools in diagnosing and correcting problems with course and lesson designs.
‘Learning experience design’ at the micro level is in fact to be equated with ‘response environment design’. The designer’s task at this level is to focus her or his attention on what produces learning: the stimuli (words, pictures, concepts, directives, etc), the responses evoked, and the associations between the two.
A summary of the concepts Tony Earl is using click here.