Design Thinking in Instructional Design - The Rocketship to Success
Learning is constantly changing, and the future promises to be much more dynamic. Both Instructional Design and Design Thinking have important roles to play in this future. In this article we examine the how and why of this reality.
As a learning specialist, you may be acquainted with asynchronous (i.e., pre-created, learn whenever) and synchronous (in a physical or a virtual space, with other learners and often a facilitator) forms of learning. You almost certainly know what Instructional Design is, what Instructional Designers do and why their work is pivotal to learning. But for those who are unaware, Instructional Design (ID) is the art of designing instruction or learning so it is effective. Instructional Designers (IDs), are specialised practitioners who follow industry approved processes and models to design accurate, easily accessible, and performance-focused learning solutions.
While the Instructional Design function has been around since the inception of structured learning and has witnessed the evolution of learning design and delivery methodologies through various formats — both synchronous and asynchronous, it is right now at an evolutionary tipping point where the changes taking place to learning as a whole and ID as a practice are not just rapid, but also disruptive.
Yes, we are pointing towards the arrival on scene of Human Centred Design, also known as Design Thinking (relatively new when it comes to learning design). In isolation, Design Thinking has proved to be an extremely effective design methodology in a number of disparate areas. From manufacturing, to marketing, to FMCG product designs, people involved have always rated Design Thinking very high on its capability of delivering excellent results. It’s been flagged as the way forward for design as a whole. Which begs the question, why shouldn’t it work the same magic for learning and Instructional Design?
Well, some of us have attempted to combine the powers of Design Thinking and Instructional Design for our learning solutions, and even though the work done can only be called “baby steps,” we are confident that the combination of Design Thinking and Instructional Design is about to redefine the face of learning.
FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS WHILE WE TELL YOU WHY!
Combining the powers of Instructional Design with Design Thinking begins by starting with an open mind, devoid of any preconceived notions about the best way to design. A tabula rasa if you will. Because the first thing you will need to do is flip your perspective.
In the traditional approach to Instructional Design, work begins when the designer is presented with a challenge to address for a pre-defined audience. The designer analyses the audience profile - demography, general persona, proficiency with language/technology etc. and proceeds to create an ID strategy that they believe would best address the challenge for that set of audience. It is essentially a top-down approach to design.
Now, flip it and make it bottom-up. THAT’s the Design Thinking approach to Instructional Design. How does this flip work? It works by discarding all predefined challenges (often shared by stakeholder in a learning initiative) and instead of going from challenge definition to audience analysis, we go audience analysis to challenge definition.
THE DESIGN THINKING ITERATIVE CYCLE
What does this mean?
It means that a sizable percentage of traditionally designed learning solutions are not as effective as we want them to be because we get the fundamentals wrong - very often that translates to: “We didn’t understand the challenge correctly” OR “There were BIGGER challenges that needed to be addressed to get the desired results.” With the flipped model in Design Thinking, IDs do not just take the business’s problem statement at face value. Instead, they engage with their audience (essentially by making them part of the design process) using the five iterative steps of the Design Thinking to understand and arrive at outputs that are key to more effective learning solutions. These outputs being:
1.Problem statements
These problem statements tend to paint a far more accurate picture of business challenges than what leaders can articulate because they are arrived at by including the learners in the design process, empathising with them and looking at the problems and hurdles from their perspectives. Learners are much closer to these problems than their leaders are. As a result, problem statements derived from these activities tend to be much more accurate and precise.
When an Instructional Designer addresses this precise problem statement, his or her solution too is bound to be a lot more effective.
2. Empathy maps
Empathy maps are design tools that an ID can use to better understand their audience. The inputs in this tool are derived from the ID’s interactions with their audience during the Empathise phase of design thinking and is used to sum up the audience’s four key traits witnessed during their interactions with the ID in the design process. The traits are distributed in four quadrants, representing what the audience members SAID, DID, THOUGHT and FELT.
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Empathy maps don’t just help IDs synthesise the needs of the audience (using Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs), but also assemble insights on the audience based on such synthesis. These maps are great for constructing learner personas that are much more in-depth and on-point than standard demographic analysis that IDs carry out while using traditional methods of instructional design.
3. Learning experience maps
An experience map in instructional design is essentially an Instructional Design approach that puts the learner in the front and centre, and therefore works better. In this map, the ID utilises the insights gained from problem statements and empathy maps to design an end-to-end learner experience that’s optimised not just to achieve best business results but also to champion the learners.
A learning solution that champions the learners and their experience is bound to have higher adoption, be more effective and lead to better performance and positive change.
NOW, SINCE LEARNING DESIGN DOESN’T JUST END WITH LEARNING DESIGN…
Let’s consider the other ways in which a combination of Instructional Design and Design Thinking can produce powerhouse results for learning designers, teams and stakeholders. We’re referring to the final two steps in the Design Thinking iteration loop — Prototype and Testing.
According to traditional waterfall Instructional Design models (ADDIE, etc.), design is followed by development and implementation. In larger projects, this often includes a pilot that acts as a proof of concept. This is expensive. There is a lot of time and effort involved in waiting until a solution is fully developed before testing it. And because organisations tend to spend quite a lot by the time a pilot is rolled out, they tend to be reluctant to make adjustments to design, which would imply going back to the start of the waterfall once again.
In contrast, the testing methodology afforded by Design Thinking begins sooner, when it is more cost-effective to make changes and adjustments. Before moving forward with a complete buildout, the objective of Design Thinking is to construct quick, inexpensive prototypes and test them with the audience for acceptability. ID methodologies, when infused with Design Thinking, might gain significantly from incorporating these early testing cycles that lead to iterations before things get expensive.
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND DESIGN THINKING: THE ROCKETSHIP TO SUCCESS
The Instructional Design development process aims to make the learners’ lives easier. And Design Thinking is all about creating great user experiences. A symbiotic relationship between the two is a win-win.
The first WIN is the use of empathy. Empathy is the most significant winning aspect of Design Thinking. Most instructional designers aim to create a good —no— a WOW learner experience with their designs. They can only achieve this by understanding their learners, their motivation and their desired learning journey. They drill out the “WOW” of the experience from the learner's pains, gains and motivations. It is only possible by leading learning design with EMPATHY.
This use of EMPATHY to adapt a bottom-up process to instructional design along with the second WIN… efficiencies of the iterative testing process of the Design Thinking methodology have the power to completely transform what Instructional Design means to learning and how significantly IDs can contribute to its future.
Instructional Design and Design Thinking… it’s not just a powerhouse combination. It’s the rocketship to success!
LET’S UNDERSCORE THAT STATEMENT WITH SOME NUMBERS!
In a five-year study of 300 firms done by Fortune.com, the top 25% of those companies that emphasised design and incorporated Design Thinking ideas into their organisations outperformed those that did not. As a result, they doubled their revenue and increased shareholder returns 70% quicker than their peer firms in the research.
You know what that means! It means organisations are already reaping the benefits of merging Design Thinking with ID to create better, smarter learning experiences.
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Do you think your organisation could benefit from Design Thinking based learning experiences? Or would you like to get a jump start on Design Thinking methodology for your organisation? If yes, DelphianLogic’s learning experts can help! Let’s talk and get started with integrating Design Thinking at your organisation.