Here's how we created a learning design process that scaled with our team

It was 2017, I was working on a project to help recruiters onboard candidates through a recruiting platform. Alongside that project I was working on multiple other projects. I found myself recreating the same elements over and over again. The same project settings, buttons, and other UI elements repeated and recreated across projects. And it was happening all across our team. Around the same time I stumbled upon an article by Airbnb on design systems. It seemed to be the perfect solution for the problem I was experiencing.

Shortly after reading the article, I set out to create a design system that could help us build faster with more cohesion across projects. When I moved into a people leader role, I set monthly meetings where we discussed areas of opportunity on the team. A theme came up. It was around standard process. Everyone followed a slightly different process. Sure everyone used the same learning plans, project structure, templates, and the design system. However, the process everyone followed was different and we started to notice a difference in quality across our team's work.?

We knew we needed to create a process that was regularly visible to everyone. Not just a document that was shoved into a folder and forgotten about.

The design system seemed like the perfect place for our process.

So we did it. We met as a team to map out our current process, ideated and iterated on the original, and made plans to regularly update the process.

Brandon Lynn, our team's UX Designer, mocked-up and then built out the newest version of our design system including the process.

The design system with our learning design process embedded allowed us to improve quality and speed up production. With the new design system we saw about a double in the number of projects launched compared to previous years.

Here are some things that helped us gain success with our process.

1. Mapping out the current process together

Everyone had equal voices when it came to how we shaped the process. Folks on the team knew what was working and what wasn't and why. It was so important to listen and make changes based on what they knew as the experts. I believe having the team create the process together ultimately drove greater adoption of the process.

2. Fostering adoption and continuously improving

We made sure to have the process front and center for our team to drive adoption. At first folks would ask for the link to the design system and that's when I decided to create a chat web-hook to repost it to our team chat on a regular schedule. That way between pinned posts, bookmarks, and the posted link it was very visible.

We'd also revisit the process at least once a month to make improvements. We'd discuss recurring business problems that our process could solve. For instance, we saw a need to better understand our customers which led to greater efforts in user research.?Dom Calderon, a Sr. LXD, and Brandon Lynn partnered together to build out our user research mechanism including guidelines and user research templates.

In fact, everyone on the team had a role to play when it came to our process and design system. Brandon owned design changes to the process and our design guidelines. Morgan Monzalvo, a Sr. LXD, owned accessibility efforts, especially for new templates to be reused.

3. Picking the right tool to build the process

When I first created the design system it was not easy to update. I used a framework where the theme had to be coded and then all other updates were done in markdown. It meant that everyone needed to learn how to use the console and markdown. When we added in the process we moved to a new tool that allowed us to move more quickly for updates. When choosing a tool to build the system in it's important to choose something that can be easily maintained.?

4 Tying team systems together

Our process pointed back to key documents and guidelines in our design system. This helped to reinforce those materials at certain steps. For instance, when it came to accessibility we would have checklists for both design and development which were embedded in our process. We also loosely mirrored our learning design process in our overall team's project management tool. The two were linked together. For instance, in our project closeout we linked to our closeout form in our project management tool.

5. Using the process to earn trust with cross functional partners

Prior to the start of a new project I would walk our project stakeholders through our process using a sample project that had been done following process. I explained the reasoning behind each step, what to expect from timelines to reviews, and the risks if specific steps are skipped.?This set expectations and helped us to take a consultative approach from the get go.

So, you might be wondering what a process like this could look like?

I created a mock-up of a learning design process within a design system. Each step makes use of templates, guides, checklists, and other resources within the design system to help you build projects at scale. I named my mock design system, Photosynthesis, inspired by the colors and organic shapes used within it. It's loosely based off of learning design processes I have used in the past.? View the full learning design process mock-up.

Let's take a look at each phase of the outlined process.

Review?

Whether a request comes from the business or is self-submitted the review gives you a touch-point to quickly determine whether to move forward or not. You can create a questionnaire to help guide you in prioritizing project requests.

Analysis

The analysis gives you a chance to do a deeper dive into the project's need. This is where you can better understand the problem, if learning is the right solution, and learn more about the user's needs.

Kick-off

Assuming that your analysis pointed to a learning solution, the kick-off is a time to set the stage. You might set up a RACI as a part of a learning plan, identify key milestones, and gain alignment from those involved.

Design

In this phase design encompasses content design and parts of visual design. This can be anything from a high-level content outline, to a more detailed outline, to materials such as user interface mockups, storyboards, and scripts.

You might look at things like tone, visual brand consistency, accessibility, and conduct user research. You can create and link resources to help you in each of those areas and link to them.

It's also an opportunity to build in quality checks and reviews and indicate the number needed. For instance you may consider repeating a quality review twice to catch any typos or ensure the content makes sense in the context of the design.

Develop

Develop is where you'll create web-based learning, videos, and other multimedia content. It's a good place to point to resources and pre-made components, such as buttons, to be reused in development. This might also be where you localize content as needed after it's been reviewed in the design stage.

You'll also want to do accessibility checks, including with a screenreader. You may also consider doing user testing to get final feedback on a project before go-live.

Launch?

At launch this is the time to align with stakeholders on final communications, what needs to be done to finalize the project, test, and publish the project. This is where we would link to documents on publish settings and testing guidance. We had a two person rule which meant that at least two people would do a final review before a project was assigned or communicated out.

Closeout

Finally close out is the opportunity to ensure all source and published files are retained, maintenance recommendations are made, and success measures are being followed up on.?One of the most critical pieces of close out was our project catalog. This allowed anyone on the team to search for a project, know who all had worked on it, when it was last updated, and access all of the files for future updates.

Not every learning project needs to go through the exact same process. As a team we used our best judgement and expertise to determine what steps were needed. For instance, if the project wouldn't benefit from user testing that might be skipped.

What does your learning design process look like? Share in the comments!

-Mel