Twoor three recessions ago, it was boom times for eLearning. It was theearly 1990s and money was pouring into the field. All sorts ofproducts and services that promised a new era in learning filledeLearning conference expo halls.
Manyof those promises never materialized in the ways originally imagined,but in a time of endless possibilities, a number of success storiesare worth looking at again. One of these stories was an eLearningprogram that, for me, was the best eLearning demo I have ever seen.Let me tell you about it.
Itwas 1989 when luxury automobile maker Lexus debuted, and with it awhole new philosophy of car sales. Salesmen (and women) were out –automotive consultants were in. The customer was no longer someone totreat shabbily, but a person who was well informed and wanted asalesperson who was highly knowledgeable about the product and thecompetition. Buying a Lexus was not just a sale, but a long-termcustomer relationship.
Sohow do you train, or re-train, salespeople to act differently? How doyou create the new Lexus experience through your salespeople?
Ofcourse, Lexus relied on traditional training coupled with a moreadvanced selection process that the company hoped would weed outpotential salespeople who couldn’t make the change. But to do more,they wanted a dealership-based training system, one that salespeoplecould consult anytime and that was constantly up-to-date. They wantedsomething that was engaging and something that worked.
Alongcame “Lexus Labs,” created by a Los Angeles firm,Internal-External Communications (IEC). By marrying stronginstructional design, robust multimedia, simulations, Hollywoodproduction values, and the new idea of “performance support,”Lexus Labs was, at the time, one of the most original and excitingeLearning programs ever developed.
LexusLabs came before the Internet. The platform, located in thedealership’s back office, was essentially a jukebox of CDs coupledwith sophisticated programming that made the system work. But whatwas unique about it was its instructional design. The design took youon a journey into the fictional Lexus Labs, where you could travel todifferent floors and departments that focused on the cars,competitors, sales tips, industry reviews, etc. You could query thesystem for different types of information depending on your need, andyou could practice a variety of skills. There was also embeddedtraining that used the same information, so the system, in effect,was an instructional, informational, and performance support resourceall in one. There were no LMSs at the time, so the system itself alsotracked usage and performance data. On a regular basis, thedealership swapped new disks for old to keep the content up-to-date.
Bytoday’s standards, the technology was primitive. But its impact onthe field was spectacular. Few people had ever seen online training,simulation, information, and performance support integrated soseamlessly. Few people had ever seen such high-quality productionvalues in a training program. Few people had ever seen audio, video,and other media work so well. Even some video-game elements added tothe excitement.
Afterimplementation, IEC got permission to take Lexus Labs on the road, toshow it off at conferences across the country. And this is the mostamazing part. At each conference, when they presented Lexus Labs tooverflow concurrent sessions, they invited the audience to see moreat the booth on the show floor. Not unusual in and of itself, buteverywhere Lexus Labs was demonstrated, throngs of people, sometimesnearing fifty at a time, would gather at IEC’s booth to see whatthis was all about. Pity the other exhibitors all around them!Everyone wanted to know how it was done, how much it cost (a lot!)and what would come next. And, when they asked if it worked –instructionally – a real live instructional designer was there toanswer: Yes, it did work.
Thiswas no flash in the pan. Lexus Labs demos generated mob scenes attraining shows for a couple of years.
ELearningpractitioners wanted their executives to see it. This demo would be,they believed, the catalyst to get eLearning going big time insidetheir companies. I did too. I brought Lexus Labs to the attention ofthe executive team at the large corporation where I worked at thetime. They were impressed (do you know how hard it is toimpress an executive with a training program?). They didn’t moveforward on a project right away, as I had hoped, but they did starttalking about eLearning and how they should use it. That was thetipping point for eLearning at the firm.
LexusLabs is now history as is the company that built it. The technologyhas changed significantly, and it has become much easier,technically, to create similarly impressive programs (great design isnever really easy). There is very cool stuff out there, to be sure,but I have never seen such excitement around a single eLearningcourse since. Perhaps it’s because there are so many products outthere now, the atmosphere is more “been there, done that.” Or,perhaps it’s because for some, nothing seems to emerge asstrikingly new these days. Maybe it’s because increasedcompetitiveness keeps today’s best innovations under wraps. I’mjust not sure.
Butwhat makes this story so compelling is that there was a time when asingle, truly innovative program could excite an entire field. A timewhen a breakthrough product caused everyone to think about what waspossible. A time when people would stop what they were doing towatch, intensively, something they knew was changing the game. It wasthe most jaw-dropping eLearning demo I ever saw – because it gotpeople to grab their colleagues, their clients, and their bosses andsay, “You have got to see this.”
Whenwas the last time you saw something in our field that got you thisexcited?
