Design Tool
NotebookLM is another design tool you may want to consider when creating a visual syllabus. Recently rebranded as Gemini Notebook, it offers a range of AI-powered features for creating audio or video overviews, slide decks, infographics, quizzes, and more.
By simply uploading your source materials—such as PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, and Google Docs—Gemini Notebook can summarize the content and identify interesting connections among topics. These capabilities can make it a useful design tool for visualizing and presenting your syllabus in more engaging ways. However, as with other AI tools, it is important to use its features thoughtfully and critically, reviewing and refining the generated content to ensure accuracy, relevance, and alignment with your course.
Best Suited For
- Ease of Use: Simply upload or paste your content to quickly generate design ideas and materials.
- Multiple Formats: AI can automatically transform your content into different formats, including slide decks, quizzes, flashcards, audio overviews, and more.
- Creative Content Generation: Particularly useful for creating engaging formats such as quizzes, flashcards, and podcast-style audio overviews.
Limitations
- Limited Fine-Tuning: Refining minor or specific design elements through prompts can be time-consuming and challenging.
- Accessibility Considerations: Although one-click design generation is convenient, the resulting designs may not automatically align with UDL and WCAG principles. More specific prompts and manual review may be needed to ensure accessibility and inclusive design.
- Avoid Transforming the Entire Syllabus at Once: Rather than attempting to transform an entire syllabus in a single step, consider working with smaller sections or specific components. This approach allows for greater control over the design and makes it easier to review and refine the generated content.
How-to Guide
Watch this narrated slideshow to learn how to get started with your design project in Gemini Notebook and how to use multiple prompts to refine and achieve the design you want.
Key Takeaways
1. Consider Accessible, UDL-Aligned Designs.
Unlike Napkin AI, Gemini Notebook does not generate multiple design options for you to choose from. Instead, it provides one design output at a time. This means you may get a design you like with a single click (if you’re lucky), but you may also need to use additional prompts to refine and revise the design.
In my experience, Gemini Notebook tends to generate dynamic and visually dense designs with vivid colours and frequent use of icons. Without specific design guidance, these outputs can feel visually overwhelming for learners. When accessibility is not considered from the outset, it can also be difficult to determine whether the generated design is effective or identify how it could be improved.
As a starting point, I recommend using the sample prompts below to guide the design process and help ensure that the output aligns with UDL and WCAG principles. (Click the accordion menu to find the prompts.)
Gemini Notebook Design Prompt: Accessible and UDL-Aligned Visual Design
Task:
Create a clean, accessible, and cognitively supportive visual learning resource from the provided content. Throughout the design process, prioritize clarity, readability, accessibility, and the most important learning outcomes over visual decoration. Preserve the accuracy and meaning of the content while presenting it in a simple, engaging, and learner-friendly format.
### 1. Apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Reduce cognitive load
* Keep the design visually simple and focused.
* Avoid decorative or redundant visual elements, including unnecessary icons, clipart, illustrations, patterns, and visual effects.
* Include graphics only when they directly support understanding, explain relationships, or highlight an important concept.
* Avoid excessive use of colours, icons, shapes, or visual callouts.
* When in doubt, simplify rather than add.
Chunk and organize information
* Divide content into clear, meaningful sections or cards.
* Keep each section focused on one main idea.
* Use concise headings and subheadings to communicate the structure.
* Group related information together and create clear visual separation between sections.
* Provide generous white space to prevent the design from feeling crowded.
Emphasize what matters
* Make the primary learning outcome or key takeaway immediately visible.
* Establish a clear visual hierarchy, with the most important information receiving the greatest visual emphasis.
* Use bold text, size, spacing, or a single accent colour sparingly to emphasize key concepts.
* Avoid allowing multiple elements to compete for attention.
### 2. Apply WCAG-Informed Accessibility Principles
Design with accessibility as a core requirement from the beginning.
Perceivable
* Use strong text-to-background contrast. Aim for **WCAG 2.1 AA** contrast levels: at least **4.5:1 for normal text** and **3:1 for large text**.
* Never place essential text over busy photographs, illustrations, gradients, or patterned backgrounds.
* Do not use colour alone to communicate meaning or distinguish categories.
* Ensure important information remains understandable without relying on colour.
* Avoid overly saturated or visually distracting colour combinations.
Readable
* Use a clean, highly legible sans-serif typeface.
* Establish a clear and consistent typographic hierarchy.
* Provide comfortable line spacing and adequate spacing between paragraphs and sections.
* Avoid long blocks of dense text.
* Avoid all caps, decorative fonts, and excessive typographic styling.
Navigable and predictable
* Establish a clear top-to-bottom and left-to-right reading order.
* Use a simple grid-based or single-column structure.
* Maintain consistent alignment, spacing, headings, and visual patterns throughout the design.
* Make it immediately clear where learners should begin and how the information progresses.
### 3. Keep the Visual Design Simple and Focused
Use white space intentionally
* Create generous breathing room around text and visual elements.
* Do not fill empty space with decorative graphics.
* Avoid crowded compositions and excessive visual density.
* Aim for a balanced, spacious, and calm visual experience.
Use a simple layout
* Use a clean grid-based or single-column layout.
* Maintain consistent margins, alignment, spacing, and section widths.
* Avoid overly complex layouts, overlapping elements, or competing focal points.
* Create a clear visual path through the content.
Use colour purposefully
* Limit the palette to **2–3 purposeful colours**:
1. A neutral background colour
2. A high-contrast primary text colour
3. One strategic accent colour for emphasis or navigation
* Use the accent colour sparingly.
* Do not use multiple bright colours simply for decoration.
Use graphics and icons selectively
* Include only graphics, diagrams, or icons that directly support the learning objective.
* Remove or avoid redundant icons and decorative illustrations.
* Do not use multiple icons when text would communicate the information more clearly.
* When an icon is necessary, use it consistently and pair it with a clear text label.
### 4. Preserve Content Integrity
* Do not remove essential information simply to make the design shorter.
* Do not change, reinterpret, or invent learning outcomes or key concepts.
* Prioritize and reorganize the provided information rather than adding unnecessary content.
* Preserve terminology that is important to the course or subject area.
* If the content is too extensive for one visual, organize it into smaller, clearly connected sections rather than creating a crowded single graphic.
### 5. Final Design Criteria
The final output should be:
* Clear: Learners can quickly identify the main purpose and key takeaways.
* Focused: Every visual element serves a clear instructional purpose.
* Accessible: Colour, contrast, typography, spacing, and visual hierarchy support a wide range of learners.
* Scannable: Learners can easily locate and process important information.
* Calm: The design avoids unnecessary visual stimulation and cognitive overload.
* Consistent: Layout, typography, colour, icons, and visual patterns are used consistently.
* Instructionally purposeful: Visual choices support learning rather than decoration.
Before generating the final design, make sure that:
* The main learning takeaway is immediately apparent.
* There is a clear and predictable reading order.
* Important information does not depend on colour alone.
* Text has sufficient contrast against its background.
* There is adequate white space between elements.
* Unnecessary icons, graphics, and decorative elements have been avoided.
* Every visual element serves a clear instructional purpose.
* The design remains understandable when viewed without colour.
* The overall layout supports learners with different levels of attention, visual processing, and prior knowledge.
Core principle:
Prioritize instructional clarity and accessibility over visual richness. When there is a choice between adding visual elements and simplifying the design, choose simplification.2. Be mindful of unintentional auto-phrasing.
I noticed that Gemini Notebook auto-generates text content, not just visual designs. Over multiple iterations, this means the AI might stray too far from your original source text. Certain syllabus elements—such as official course descriptions—are formally approved and require specific wording or terminology. In these cases, it is crucial to explicitly instruct Gemini Notebook to use the exact text provided and avoid auto-generating new phrasing. While iterative prompting is standard and (actually) encouraged in AI design, be mindful of unintentionally letting the tool rewrite pre-approved language.
Check out the audio and video overviews generated by Gemini Notebook as examples. The source content used was the simple assessment table in the syllabus. While it is remarkable to see AI transform text-based content into creative formats in just a few minutes, you will also notice how easily AI can stray from your original course text.
If you find a design you like after a few iterations but notice it contains too much auto-generated text, I recommend exporting the artifact into an editable format—such as PowerPoint—to modify it as you see fit.
3. Take full advantage of interactive learning activities.
While Gemini Notebook can generate various design formats—such as slide decks, infographics, and mind maps—in just a few seconds or minutes, I see great potential in using it to build interactive learning activities. Beyond simply visualizing sections of the syllabus, you can create activities to ensure students grasp critical course information. These activities can be integrated into your first class or used at the end of a syllabus tour to boost student engagement.
Here is example of an interactive learning activity. By uploading your syllabus or pasting specific sections, you can easily generate custom quizzes or flashcards using Gemini Notebook.
Syllabus Quest: Course Assignments
Check your understanding of the assessment plans outlined in the syllabus.
Launch Quiz ↗True/False Flashcard Quiz: Course Policies
Check your understanding of the course policies outlined in the syllabus.
Launch Flash Card ↗