Consider these unfortunately all-too-likely trainingscenarios:
- Learners’ eyes glaze over, they start snoring …or, more likely, they quickly click through dull, text-heavy eLearning screenswithout reading them
- Learners struggle to figure out how to launch atraining module, fail to navigate through it in an order that makes sense tothem, or, after repeated attempts to learn the rules of a game, simply give up
- Learners complete required training, sailthrough assessments—and consistently fail to meet performance targets or showany change in results
What’s the common denominator? Poor design.
Design may be the problem in all of these cases, but thesolution is different for each. Why? In some cases poor design has to do withflaws in instructional design,while in others the problems can be solved with improved visual design. However,visual design cannot compensate for poor instructional design—and vice versa.
What’s the difference between visual and instructionaldesign, and why are both essential to creating successful eLearning?Those are great questions that this article will answer.
“Design is a gateway: it is the firstthing people notice, so if they have to work to get past your design to get tothe heart of the content, they are already tired and irritated by the time theyget there,” said Crystal Rose, The eLearning Guild’s manager of webdevelopment and design, in an email interview. “It could alsoprove to be less effective if you aren’t properly emphasizing the right partsof your message. Good design will help navigate people through your content asopposed to creating additional roadblocks.”
Instructional design is …
Instructional design is primarily about content, learninggoals, and performance. It is the development of training programs, includingspecific lessons or modules, in a way that transfers knowledge, teaches skills,or changes attitudes and behavior. Instructional designers (IDs) must consider:
- Learning needs and goals—In a corporateeLearning framework, these relate to specific business needs and goals
- Learners’ needs and environment—Thiscovers a range of factors, including learners’ familiarity with the technology wherethey will use the eLearning, and the environment and tasks where they willultimately apply what they’ve learned
- What success looks like—Defining successcriteria offers clues as to how to present information to learners, what typesof assessments are appropriate, and how learners should ultimately use thatinformation
- How competent learners must be—Competencyfalls on a continuum ranging from learners acquiring basic familiarity with atopic to becoming unconsciously fluent (able to perform the skill in theirsleep)
While the structure and format of lessons is a part ofinstructional design—including questions of whether to create learning games,simulations, asynchronous eLearning, job aids, or some other format—what thecontent looks like, and the nuts and bolts of how learners interact with it, isnot. That falls under visual design.
Visual design is …
Visual design is a broad field. Here’s a great descriptionfrom Skillcrush, an online community forcreative thinkers and doers: “Visual designers are the creative visionariesbehind everything from your favorite websites and apps to brand logos and eBookcovers. They are the graphic designers of the digital world we live in, andthey play a crucial role in designing the online experiences we interact withevery day.”
What your eLearning looks like—the color palette, thetypeface, the layout and navigation, the appearance of buttons and otherinteractive elements—is the result of visual design. When learners can’t readthe type or are distracted by too many decorative elements or don’t see crucialnavigation elements, that is a failure of visual design. On the other hand,when text and images dance together in a beautiful partnership that easeslearners through a course, mesmerized, that is a triumph of visual design—or asuccessful blend of great visual and instructional design. “People can get motivated whenan experience is aesthetically pleasing and unmotivated when it is not,” ConnieMalamed, a learning and visual design consultant and author, said in anemail interview.
Visual designers’ skills encompass elements of graphicdesign and user interface design. They have to understand the elements of gooddesign, like color theory and balance and consistency. They also need to understandhow elements work together and how learners interact with webpages. They mightcreate icons and infographics, pair typefaces, and select color palettes.
Great eLearning needs great design
“An effective design provides a positive experience, which ismotivating,” Malamed said. Great content presented poorly will not reachits audience because learners won’t or can’t get what they need from it.Beautiful eLearning that has irrelevant, inaccurate, or incomprehensiblecontent won’t accomplish its goals because learners won’t get what they needfrom it. That’s why instructional design and visual design are equallyessential to the success of your eLearning projects.
Where should you start?
- Instructional designers launch an eLearningproject by defining scope and content. They also determine a format: Will thisbe a game, a simulation, a mobile tool? Something else? The decision should bebased on the learning goals and business needs.
“Content should bedriving design, not the other way around,” Rose said. “When starting a project,you need to understand what your stakeholders’ expectations are—if they wantsomething that should take five minutes of your time, or a long-term projectthat may take weeks or months. For me, scope also includes budget, stakeholderexpectations, resources (team members, tools, and other assets).”
Malamed agrees.“The visualdesign has to be aligned with the audience, content, environment, andinstructional strategies so that in learning products, the visual designsupports the instructional design,” she said. “No matter how beautiful adesign and user interface, if a product is not aligned with human cognitivearchitecture, it can’t be successful.” - Then it’s the visual designers’ turn. “I think the first thing to do,once IDs have determined that a course is the solution (and perhaps the type ofcourse), is to take out a sketchbook and to sketch thumbnails,” Malamed said.“Thumbnails are small sketches that help people visualize ideas.”
“Poor visualdesign can impair the success of eLearning for several reasons,” Malamed added,including providing extraneous information or clutter that makes it hard forlearners to focus on what’s important. In addition: “When the design is random,unintentional, and messy, it can affect how a person perceives the credibilityof the information.” - Finally, feedback and teamwork polishand perfect the project. “Communicationbetween teams is key to producing a great product. Teams (design and content)should understand the strengths and weaknesses of each other,” Rose said. Critiquesof a visual design should be based on learning principles, not personalpreference, and sound instructional design principles should not be discarded toaccommodate an attractive visual element. “You don’t want yourdesign to cause a distraction and overpower the content; bad design can dothat,” Rose said.
Often, the design “team” is a single individual doing boththe visual and the instructional design, Malamed notes. This might make someaspects of the process easier, but it also underscores the importance of understandingboth instructional design and visual design principles—along with having a solidgrasp of the subject matter and knowledge of the learners’ needs and abilities.
“Knowingyour audience, understanding the topic matter, and researching the data oneffective design will help immensely,” Rose said. “If you don’t know the topicor audience, you can’t properly do your job.”
