Introduction
Effective learning experience design comes from blending what we know about how people learn with what we know about creating a good user experience. In this post, I’m sharing seven principles for learnability success through blending instructional design principles with user experience design (UX) principles. In case the term is new for you, learnability refers to how easily people can learn from our content.
I presented an overview of these principles recently at TLDC’s Visual Design for Learning conference, and I’ll update this post with a link to that recording when it’s available.
Principle #1: Solution Focus
Malcolm Knowles’s adult learning theory (andragogy) tells us that adult learners have a problem-centered approach to learning. We want information that helps us solve a problem or complete a task—and we want it now.
Our approach to learning experience design should always be on what task the learning experience will help learners accomplish. What will they be able to do when they finish? What business or organizational goal will be achieved? For more information about how to focus on solutions, see Cathy Moore’s action mapping approach to learning design and her book Map It.
A solution focus is also a key tenet of UX design. In addition, we can use visual design to help with problem solving through infographics, job aids, and illustrations that help learners understand a process.
Principle #2: User Control
Control is an important part of design as well as the learning experience. As adults, we like to be in control of our learning. (However, adults aren’t the only ones who like some control, as my three-year-old granddaughter frequently reminds me.)
In addition to giving learners some control over their learning experience, we need to give them a way to reverse critical errors. For example, what if they accidentally hit Submit on a test before they meant to? We can give them a little popup that says, “Are you sure you’re ready to submit?” Even providing a submit button on knowledge check questions, rather than providing feedback as soon as the learner selects an option, is is a way for the learner to confirm their selection.
Another example is providing a warning popup if the user selects the Next button before selecting all the interactive elements on a screen. This popup could remind learners that they missed some content and ask if they want to continue to the next page or stay and view that content first. That way, you’re not restricting user control by locking down Next, and learners aren’t accidentally missing information.
Principle #3: Clarity
People can’t learn from information if they can’t understand it. Even though clarity is principle #3 (because of where it falls in the acronym), I consider it to tied with solution focus as the most important of my principles for learnability success.
Using plain language is the easiest way to make your courses easy to understand. Choose simple words like “use” instead of “utilize” or “find out” instead of “ascertain.” Use short sentences and short paragraphs, providing lots of white space for legibility. Write in the active voice, and keep the subject and verb as close together as possible. In addition, use a visual hierarchy to help the learner understand how the information fits together.
I’ve written about plain language before and am offering a course soon to help folks get better at instructional writing. For more information, see the links at the end of this post.
Besides how content is written, effective design can also help make information clearer and easier to understand. Consider Mayer’s Spatial Contiguity Principle, which says that people learn better when words and corresponding pictures are near each other. And consider Mayer’s Temporal Contiguity, which says we should present words and corresponding pictures simultaneously.
Principle #4: Context
Context is critical for learning. When we acquire new information, we need to be able to connect it to what we already know. These connections are known as “schemas”—mental models in our long-term memory that help us make sense of new information. It’s like the new information is a hat, and we need a hook (schema) to hang it on.
When we teach information without showing how it applies to the learner’s life or job, then they don’t know what they’re supposed to do with the information. It won’t find a hook to hang on in the learner’s long-term memory.
The brain’s organizational system is highly efficient, filing away everything in its designated place. So, if our brain can’t find a place for the information, it decides the information is clutter, and it gets rid of it.
Visual design is one way to provide context for information. For example, if we’re presenting a scenario, then the imagery we show is important for establishing the setting. Are we in a factory? An office? On the street? If the setting is familiar to the learner, they’re more likely to be able to connect the information to their needs—essentially finding a hook to hang the information on.
Principle #5: Empathy
Good design starts with stepping into the shoes of our learners and considering their needs. Designing with empathy means we consider how and why people are using our content.
Here’s an example of the kind of problem that can be avoided by designing with empathy, considering how people will use our content.
When I was developing an instructor-led course related to chemistry, I kept getting superscripts and subscripts mixed up when creating the slides and facilitator guide. That’s because in PowerPoint, the superscript button is on the left and the subscript button is on the right. But in Word, they’re flipped in the opposite order.
If Microsoft had considered that people often use PowerPoint and Word together, they might have decided to put these buttons in the same place in both programs. Considering that consistency is one of the tenets of good UX design, it’s surprising that they missed this.
Designing with empathy means considering all learners! So we need to consider accessibility from the start, so users don’t run into barriers trying to access the information. After all, everyone deserves access to learning experiences, right?
Designing with empathy means thinking about accessibility not merely in terms of compliance requirements, but aso considering what our learners need and what their user experience is like. As an example, a compliance perspective might say, “I provided a transcript.” But a user-experience perspective says, “It takes 24 tabs for a keyboard user to get to the transcript. I should redesign that.”
Principle #6: Simplicity
Simplicity in learning experience design means that the course (or other learning experience) is easy to understand and navigate, and it doesn’t have a lot of unnecessary steps or visual clutter. This principle for learnability success is referenced as usability in UX design.
An easy way to simplify eLearning courses is to consider how many clicks each interaction requires. Back when I used to develop in Captivate (years ago), it frustrated me that proceeding from one knowledge check or quiz question to the next required an extra click—a “click anywhere to proceed” click before users could select the Next button. (I hope they’ve fixed that by now.)
An example of simplicity gone wrong is an eBook that I recently read—or, more accurately, that I started to read. It used a lot of highly technical language in bold print, indicating that they were defined in the glossary at the back. (No, they weren’t linked; that would have been too easy, wouldn’t it?) After a couple of times flipping back and forth, I gave up on reading the information. It was just too difficult to navigate.
Also consider how to simplify your designs by cleaning up visual clutter. If you’re building charts and graphs using PowerPoint and Excel, think about ways you can modify the default output to get rid of any unnecessary elements that just add cognitive load when a user is trying to understand the information. Examples include grid lines and 3D elements, as well as requiring the user to reference a legend at the bottom rather than including labels on the chart itself.
The images below show a before-and-after example of a bar chart I made comparing ratings of the two dystopian series, The Hunger Games and Divergent. The before example uses a 3D design and has grid lines at every half number from zero to five, both of which add visual clutter. The after example removes the grid lines and puts the numbers directly on the bars. I also changed the default colors to add more contrast, and I increased the text size and contrast of the title and labels.
And below is another chart of the same information, using a five-star rating format and the book cover art instead of text titles.
The stars make it clearer that we’re comparing books or movies, so the information makes sense right away. And this one is likely to be more memorable because the imagery is familiar to fans of those books, and it’s more unique than typical charts. However, for anyone not familiar with the cover art, text labels would be helpful.
(These ratings are made up and not based on anything other than my own opinion.)
Principle #7: Satisfaction
This principle for learnability success comes from the “S” in John Keller’s ARCS model of motivation. If you’re not familiar with this model, there’s a link at the end of the post with more information. For now, here’s what the acronym stands for:
- Attention
- Relevance
- Confidence
- Satisfaction
Satisfaction plays an important role in learner motivation, which, in turn, plays a part in how well they learn. Learners need to be able to feel proud of what they’ve accomplished from a learning experience.
Making the experience fun, such as through the use of engaging stories or learning games, can greatly increase learner satisfaction. One of the most overlooked ways of increasing satisfaction is by providing helpful feedback. Context-based feedback, such as showing the consequences of a decision, is generally more helpful than the more typical correct or incorrect feedback.
In addition, effective user experience design and beautiful visual design help make the user’s experience more enjoyable.
Wrap-Up
To wrap up, my seven principles for learnability success are Solution Focus, User Control, Clarity, Context, Empathy, Simplicity, and Satisfaction. An infographic appears at the end of the post.
Learn More
As of the time this post is being published, there are still a few days left to register for the free writing webinar I’m offering this Thursday at 2:00 pm Eastern, called Writing Secrets to Make Learning Stick.
I am also offering a comprehensive writing course starting at the end of June, called Smart Writing for Sticky Learning. Enrollment is now open, with a 10% discount for early registration. Find out more here.
Related Posts
Here are some related posts from this blog you may find useful:
Other Resources
Here are additional resources for learning more about the topics discussed in this post:
- The Adult Learning Theory – Andragogy – of Malcolm Knowles
- Action Mapping: A Visual Approach to Training Design
- Map It: The Hands-On Guide to Strategic Training Design
- Keller’s ARCS Model of Motivation
The above link to the book, Map It, is an Amazon affiliate link. I will earn a small amount if you choose to make a purchase from that link. This doesn’t affect your price and helps to support this blog.
Infographic
Feel free to save, print, and share the principles using the below infographic (with credit). You can download it as a PDF for better print quality.
