Imagine Ruth, a seasoned and dedicated instructional designer working at a leading online learning platform organization for business professionals. She loves her job and is proud of her work. As she reviews feedback from the latest courses, she smiles at all the positive feedback; until she encounters a series of frustrated messages from busy learners: The content is good, but the format doesn't work for my schedule. I can't balance this course with my full-time job.
These comments hit hard because Ruth prides herself on creating engaging learning experiences, but, it seemed, she'd fallen into a common trap: designing for everyone meant truly serving no one.
One size doesn't fit all
This is just one of many situations that most L&D professionals have encountered. We often design using a one-size-fits-all approach that makes most learners happy enough. But what if we could focus our design efforts? What if we got to know our learners just a little bit better so that our training offerings made a difference in their lives?
Enter learner personas. Personas are fictional characters representing our typical learners. They help us gain valuable insights into our audience and effectively tailor our approach to meet our learners' preferences and needs. They often include demographic information, which helps us make them come to life. You might want to give them a name, add a profile picture, and think about what they like outside of work, their goals, and their aspirations.
Don't make assumptions
It is crucial that learner personas are always research-based. You might want to leverage HR or LMS/LXP data, employee surveys, or other usage data to get started. In addition, the best way to get to know your learners is to talk to them. Set up interviews during which you can ask questions, such as:
- Can you describe your typical day for me?
- What are some of the challenges you face every day? Why do you see them as challenges?
- What are some of the areas of your day-to-day work that delight you? Why?
- Does anything stand in the way of working to your full potential?
- What training opportunities have you had during your time with us?
- What else do you want to share?
You may notice that we don't ask many training-specific questions. We do this to get to know our learners as individuals and learn about their motivations, desires, and preferences in general.
In Ruth's case, she discovered unexpected patterns, such as the number of learners who did their best-focused work between 7 and 9 a.m. or the fact that they learned more from peer discussions than formal modules.
Create personas that come alive
Once you analyze the learner interviews, you can identify specific themes that align with your training programs and what learners expect from them. Next, create the learner persona in any format that works for your organization. It might be a PowerPoint slide with the demographic information, their picture, what they see, hear, do, think, and feel and from there you can synthesize their pain points and needs. You might adjust the persona based on what's important to your organization. There are also a number of persona-creation tools out there. Just be careful with these, because the output might be too generic for what you need.
Ruth focused on three personas: a senior manager, Alex, who learns best in the morning; Mark, a sales rep who prefers short bursts of learning between client meetings; and Ahmed, a technical specialist who enjoys intensive weekend study sessions.
Best practices when using personas
While learner personas aren't going to solve all of our learning problems, they can significantly contribute to learner-centric design. It's important that you represent everyone in your organization and, at the same time, keep stereotypes and biases out of your personas.
Personas are ideally created once for your organization, and then you can leverage them over and over. It's best to have a large-scale program, such as onboarding or compliance training, that can serve as the starting point for your persona research and creation.
On the asset level, you can tailor specific messages or examples to your learner personas. When you write for them, you want to ask yourself, "What would Ahmed think about this?"
Learner personas lead to improved experiences
Armed with her personas, Ruth redesigned her courses to include flexible schedules and microlessons, all ready to be consumed on a mobile device, as well as in-depth sessions, tailored to each persona's preferences. Another element she now focuses on is clear and concise writing that matches your personas' preferences.
The next time Ruth received course feedback, she saw the positive feedback and satisfaction scores and she knew it had been worth her time. Remember: good personas aren't built in a day, but they'll transform your training for years to come.
Now that you've got your personas ready, it's time to write content that resonates with them. In our next article, we'll reveal the S.U.R.E formula: Simple, Useful, Resonant, and Easy to skim. We'll also show you exactly how to pair it with your personas for maximum impact.
Image credit: Irina_Strelnikova