Learning + Design Thinking = Learning Experience Design

It all started with the world calling it training and it was all about transfering knowledge to support development of new skills.

The problem was however in the focus which was not exactly on the learners who would go through the training program but on the needs of th organization or what management thought their employees must know and learn.

Then, the term training and development was re-framed to Learning and Development - The focus shifted to learners but did it really?

Or is it just the name that is changed?

That is for you to think about in your organization.

But if the focus really changed in your organization, you could be taking the next step. When focusing your training programs on true needs of learners, you can do more to create a learning intervention that would do more than just deliver knowledge and skill guidance. Learning interventions can motivate, engage, develop, and much more.

But how? One way is to connect learning design with design thinking that is an audience-centric approach, in this case, it would be a learner centric approach in which you do not just consider learners but you understand them and you create programs for them.

How can you make your interventions learner centred?

First question to ask before you start designing is - What do they already know and do compared to what are they expected to know and do?

If you are designing any training program with some expectations on their performance, it must be because their current performance level might not be reaching the desired mark and behind this could be some challenges that they maybe facing. The job of you intervention thus should not just be giving knowledge but also helping them solve these problems. You might already have a set of them in mind for which you have designed the program. But are the challenges you are thinking about as an L&D person or management same as the real challenges faced by employees? if the answer is no then your program is doomed.

Take a scenario of a sales team not meeting targets so a training program is aligned by the management. To the intervention designer, management reveals that performance is hindered by their people's incapability convince customers on selling products that are priced higher than the competition. The training should focus on guiding them how to sell high ticket products and shift the focus on customers to quality from price.

Will this program be effective? Most likely as it is addressing a specific challenge. But what if the view of the employees is different from this?

"The customer is willing to pay more for higher quality but they find the product difficult to use because of lack of prompt guidance," says the employee.

Now, think, will the planned training help? Most likely not! So what would you give them?

1. Product training to simplify it for salespeople
2. Training on giving demo to customers making understanding easy for them
3. Short videos for quick tips on steps that are available to be shared with the client

Will this be a better learning program? Note that the last point is not really the part of training but since we are talking not just about training but a learning intervention, it is like a job-aid that we are creating both for salespeople and for customers who can learn from the videos directly.

Its always good to have learner-centric programs but it is not just the learners but also company that matters. And an organization would have a goal that is to be met by the employees as a result of skill development. So the program has to cover the topics that addss these goals as well.

How can we make a learning intervention goal-oriented?

When it is about goals then it has to be something measurable. The skills they develop - what is the level of their proficiency? The tools they use - How many learners are able to use them?

In a recent learning program that I am attending with Growth School, they taught us how to develop a GPT using ChatGPT. To measure if the skill was actually gained, they gave us an assignment to develop GPTs. We were asked to put the link to these GPTs on a Google sheet for everyone to know. The number of entries in the sheet could then measure how many learners were able to use the tool taught. They also taught us how to add an API to a GPT which was the next level of proficiency. And the next assignment was to create another GPT but with API integration. Measuring this would tell them if we were able to reach a higher level of proficiency.

Now, going back to the intervention planned for internal employees. What could be the business goal for a sales team training and how can it be measured? This is where the Kirkpatrick model could be really useful. At the 4th level of its ladder, Kirkpatrick recommends identification of specific metrics to measure the impact of learning. For a salesperson, how can we measure ones impact on business?

Designing competency based interventions can help in designing an intervention beneficial to company, identifying metrics, and measuring it.

Increase in revenues? Increase in technology adoption by customers? Referances from existing customers? Identify competencies associated with these measures to inculcate through training.

A company could be using any of these or all of these measures to find out if the learning intervention helped the company achieve its goals besides helping minimize the challenges of learners.

Now that we understand what our learners need and what our organization needs, how can we design a learning intervention that can meet both needs?

Meeting the needs with Design-Focused Strategy

Before crafting a design, we need to understand the journey of learners keeping in view the needs of both learners and company. With this journey identified, we use our design thinking approach to put the right pieces in the right places on the journey. With this approach, you should be able to maximize the potential of learners. And how do we do that?

Let us apply design thinking approach here:

1. Empathize: The empathize step in designing learning interventions begins by engaging deeply with learners to gain insights into their lives, contexts, perspectives, challenges, and realities. This empathy allows for the creation of learning interventions that are not only relevant and tailored to the learners' specific needs but also resonate with their personal and professional aspirations. This approach enhances engagement, applicability, and learning outcomes by addressing real-world scenarios, making the educational experience genuinely transformative. Talk to them to understand this. You can use focus groups, surveys, or interviews to collect data from your potential learners. Then, you might utilize tools like personas and empathy maps to put together your findings into a structure to lead your team into creation.
2. Define: Now that you have a fair understanding of learners needs, you are equipped to go deep into the observation and extract the key problem statement to guide your program design. Try to find the root cause of the challenges you need to address. Let us take forward our earlier example in which we found that employees were finding it difficult to explain how the product was to be used. Is the product really difficult to uset? if it is then why? Or is it a process that cannot be simplified further? Why? Drill deeper into the why's to define a problem and then think about what can be done to solve them. Your problem statement could be: Despite training, employees struggle to effectively communicate the usage of the product to customers. Is this difficulty due to the inherent complexity of the product, or are there gaps in the training process that fail to address critical explanatory techniques?
3. Ideate: This phase is crucial as it's where creativity and innovation come into play to generate solutions. Using the example of employees struggling to explain product usage to customers, let’s explore how the ideation step would unfold. You might want to involve your team to brainstorm on what could be possible solutions. Involve product designers, trainers, sales representatives, and even some end-users if possible. This diversity brings multiple perspectives into the brainstorming process, enriching the pool of ideas. Do we have some quick ways to simplify tasks? What could be done by sales people to make customers feel that it is not so daunting?
4. Prototype: Select the most promising ideas and turn them into simple prototypes. For instance, a basic version of the AR app or a draft of the quick-reference guide could be developed to show a simulation of how a product works. Perhaps it would excite customers as well as make it easy for them to understand how to use the product.
5. Test: Test these prototypes with actual learners (employees in this case). Gather feedback on usability, effectiveness in improving communication, and the overall impact on their confidence and ability to explain the product.Analyze the feedback to determine which solutions are most effective at meeting the needs of the learners and the business objectives. Refine the prototypes iteratively, enhancing features based on user responses and removing elements that do not add value.

As a result of following these steps, you can create a learning intervention that has the capability to maximize potential of learners. The same approach can also be applied to an intervention launched on a Learning Managment System. By the looks of what you are doing, you are now ready to call your work Learning Experience Design.

If you found this article helpful, do share your comments and if you have any questions, do put the same in the comments and we can answer that.