Design principles for L&D professionals

Delivering workshops or presentations can be a daunting task, especially when you are worried about losing your audience's attention. Of course you can know about the neuroscience behind learning, but let me tell you something else, you also need to understand basic concepts of design.?

A well-crafted, compelling design can make the difference in captivating your audience and ensuring your message sticks. It is a key component when preparing workshops or providing advice to other trainers as BP or creating e-learning content. Also is important when you handle external partners that create content for you.?

“A good design is critical in learning”

Before continuing let deep dive in why learning design is critical in learning:

The basic design principles for L&D profesionals

1. Create the structure and storyboard then think about the design.

In this stage it is important to set up realistic goals, align with your audience needs. and create a structure of content that will cover these gaps. for example: if you are creating a learning content for delegating task addressed to middle managers with the purpose of delivering a workshop or creating a learning pill? you can develop the next curriculum:?

Course Structure: (90 minutes)

1. Introduction to Delegation.
2. Objectives of the training.
3. Definition of delegation.
4. Benefits of delegation for the manager, team, and organization.
5. The role of middle managers in delegating tasks.
6. The Delegation Process.?
7. Choosing What to Delegate.
8. Communication and monitoring.?
9. Delegating to Different Team Members.?
10. Conclusion and Key Takeaways.

Having created the curriculum then you need to create your storyboard and after that you may start the creative process.?

You have the structure of the content (the curriculum) you have the content, and you have the storyboard, now you? can start the process of designing, combining those 3 tools you have following the next principles.?

2. Craft a Visual Story.

We visual by definition, and a well-designed presentation tells a story through visuals. A strong narrative grabs attention, but the visuals are what hold it.?

So decide about the narrative behind your story to guide the structure of your presentation. Start with an engaging hook to capture interest, build through a logical sequence, and finish with a powerful conclusion.

3. Think in subtract, not add more information.?

Think about the design and how it fits with the content. it is time to compress the content if need be. Probably you have a lot of information that is relevant and you want to include it, is a hard but useful exercise.

4. Visual order.

To organize the content follow CRAP principles that stands for:

• Contrast. Helps to emphasize the difference between two elements, making the important elements stand out.
• Repetition. Remember to use the same or similar elements consistently throughout a design to create a sense of unity and cohesion. Also repeat key concepts, to help learners retain them.
• Alignment. You need to ensure that every element on the page has a visual connection with something else on the page
• Proximity. You need to create a relationship between items and organizing the content logically. Proximity helps in doing that.

Those design principles are pretty important in e-learning since we need to rely on content itself to guarantee that learners are not just understanding the content, but they can read and navigate through it seamlessly.?

5. Use visual design toolkits.

Finally, remember that we have a variety of visual design tools that we can introduce to create multimedia learning experience, but, be aware that using the right tools is an important decision, don't overwhelm your users with a battery of different design artifacts, use them based on a previous criteria.?

Check the arsenal you have and then pick up some of them to create a consistent narrative:?

• Photographs?
• Illustration and icons
• Characters
• Screen captures?
• Animated gif
• infographics
• Pictographs and Comics?
• Visual notes and visual design?
• Videos

I trust this article will be helpful for you as a trainer, L&D or instructional designer. And feel free to share it with your community