What is Learning Experience Design?
I have always been an advocate of design and applying its best practices to eLearning.
After 30 years of the internet the digital design community is in excellent health and has a formidable talent pool!
Learning experience design (LxD) is the process centred on people and precise objectives. A mix between perception and results to be delivered.
The whole idea of learning experience design is based on the creation of an optimum learning experience.
All eLearning content can and should be perfect:
Scenario
Expertise
Science and knowledge
Design
Brand
Experience
Learning experience design is a practice that optimizes the learner experience with the intention of increasing :
Performance,
Conversion,
And retention.
Learning experience design is a mindset that can be implemented in various ways by designers based on their unique project requirements and context.
In this post, we’ll cover what learning experience design is, its benefits, types of LED and its process - principles, tools and activities.
What is Learning Experience Design?
Learning Experience Design is relatively new term and yet an pivotal concept in the world of learning and development.
For the last several decades, much of the learning industry has relied on sound instructional design principles when creating learning content.
Niels Floor : “the process of creating learning experiences that enable the learner to achieve the desired learning outcome in a human centered and goal oriented way.” I love definitions! 😊
Let’s break down:
Design
Human-centered
Goal-oriented Learning Experience.
Got it?
Learning Experience Design is also and maybe must be connected to Learning science and User Experience Design. We could say Learning experience & User Experience Design.
Let’s resume:
Learning experiences are created using Learning Experience Design (LX design), a human-centered and goal-oriented method that allows the learner to achieve the desired learning outcome.
Why is LxD important?
The success of organisations’ learning and development initiatives is dependent on learners’ performance and retention.
If learners do not retain the knowledge and skills they need to perform well, they are less likely to be successful.
The success of any organization is dependent on their people. The success of organizations’ learning and development initiatives is dependent on learners’ performance and retention.
Performance is the desired result of training
How learners perform in their jobs after training.
Performance is also an indicator of retention.
Retention is the ability of learners to retain the knowledge and skills delivered through training.
Retention is the one area where organizations often fall short.
Retention is responsible for approximately 60% of the overall impact of training.
Improve the design of the learning experience
The first is to improve the design of the learning experience itself. That means creating a great user experience (UX) and optimizing the design to maximize the potential of any content or desired learning outcome.
This can include incorporating gamification and/or storyboarding.
Quality
At the end of the elearning course design process, testing will provide valuable information on what aspects of the course are or are not functioning as intended. You will need to reevaluate and redesign course elements and modules to improve the learning experience for learners.
User Experience
You can predict how learners will interact with the elearning course based on employee familiarity with multiple course delivery platforms.
Engaging
The most effective method of retaining new knowledge and developing new abilities is still learning through play:
Video-based learning,
Scenario based learning
Social Learning
and activities.
When designing your learning experience, you should include engaging and fun components that help learners :
Visualize,
And Remember,
Instructional Design & User Experience Design
Let’s pause to review two close concepts:
The purpose of Instructional Design is to design learning material that results in behaviour change.
A consistent and intuitive experience is created through User Experience Design.
Beyond the content, Learning Experience Design considers the complete learning experience, before, during, and after the lesson occurs.
Learning experience design & User Experience Design
The term LX Design comes from the terminology UX (User Experience), so there is a drift from application design to e-learning material design.
It's true that LXD and UXD focus on improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure of the user's experience with the product.
Create a conducive learning environment
The third is to create a conducive learning environment. That means designing a physical or virtual space where learners can interact with content, each other, and the content creator/teacher(s).
Getting lost? Ok we recep:
Learning Experience Design = creating human-centered and goal-oriented
Instructional Design = design learning material to change mind set
User Experience Design = intuitive experience
I know… we are getting to serious :D
Let’s be simple, there are 3 types of LED practices
Content design
The creation of content that is engaging, interesting, and captivates the attention of learners.
User experience (UX) design
The creation of a learning environment that is easy to navigate and provides learners with the information they need when they need it.
Instructional design
The creation of a learning experience that meets the needs of learners and the business.
You have the form, the body and the experience. It is like zooming in! Don’t be mad at me I try to explain a bit of a conceptual mess!
Process and workflow
Strategy
The needs of both the organization and the learners must be identified with this element. What are the goals?
Needs
When you know what the company wants and what learners need, you may start to consider what is to be learned, how the training programme will be structured, what structure the training programme will have, and what sort of activities it will include.
Map it and storyboard
Break down the needs to create scenarios and script.
Interaction
Don’t leave the user passive: You must consider which learning activities to use in order to provide the best learning experience.
During the process remember the two core concept:
Human-Centered Design
Goal-Oriented Design
Steps :
Analyse the needs, Ask questions and do survey needs
Plan the agenda and actions
Storyboard the needs and solutions
Test on a small audience: soft launch
Improve based on the feedbacks
Learning Experience Design
The goal of learning experience design is to create experiences that change behavior. To do so, it is important to design experiences that are engaging, interesting, and captivating.
There are three ways to optimize the learning experience for performance, conversion, and retention:
Improve the design of the learning experience,
Use the right medium for the right content,
And create a conducive learning environment.
To implement a learning experience design practice, content designers and instructional designers can use actions like content inventory,
content audit,
content mapping,
and content gap analysis.
Recap:
Designing activities : Create tutorials, challenges, and practice assignments to help your students apply the concepts you are teaching.
Real life : Use case studies and scenarios to enhance your learning material. This will help your students grasp how they can utilise their freshly gained knowledge in their day-to-day lives.