Design Time - Design Journey

Evaluate your solution & design process. - Feedback mechanisms - Maintenance docs - Sunset meeting The goal is to learn from your experience and determine future needs.

Launch your solution. - Train-the-trainer - Communications - LMS hosting The goal is to launch the solution as smoothly as possible.

Create and present assets. - vILTs - eLearning - Video - Job aids The goal is to create the solution within the proposed timeframe and budget.

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Deliverables exist at every stage of the design process. Reflect this truth in your portfolio.

EVALUATE

IMPLIMENT

DEVELOP

Create and present the plan. - Proposed solution - Estimated timeline - Learning objectives - Pacing, structure & tools The goal is to get approval before investing time and energy into development.

DESIGN

Determine needs. - Business problem - Defining success - Learner needs - Stakeholder expectations - Project constraints The goal is to build a solid foundation for the project.

Analysis

The addie process

Regardless if you're excluded from the analysis, you must orient your stakeholders and Subject-Matter Experts (SMEs) to the design process. Building these relationship(s) will be vital to your builds. Do not skip this step.

Sometimes IDs are given a topic and told to build. Hopefully, someone analyzed the problem before handing it off. But there's still some analysis all IDs need to do:

Sometimes a designer is left out of the Analysis process.

• Who's the learner? What's their background?
• Why should they care about this content?
• What do we need the learner to do? What are the most critical components of that behavior?
• What resources do we already have to support those behaviors?

• Establish working norms & communication channels
• Set up a meeting cadence to have regular check-ins
• Have SMEs block time on their calendar to review assets

If you're new to the design process, this step can feel like a waste of development time. Stakeholders may rush to approve the plans without identifying gaps or problems. Resist this quick approval.The time you invest at the beginning will pay off later. Projects that rush this step risk being derailed by unidentified gaps, misaligned expectations, etc. You are still orienting your stakeholders and Subject-Matter Experts (SMEs) to the design process and building the relationship.

Sometimes Stakeholders (and Rookie Designers) rush this step.

Sometimes stakeholders and SMEs ghost. Have a plan for when this happens. Remember thesse relationships are vital.

• Create storyboards, outlines, scripts (and other development assets) and get approval before starting on the final deliverable. It's harder to go back if there's a change needed.
• Direct stakeholders to provide content-specific feedback first. In the next round, they can wordsmith and give visual feedback.
• If you have multiple SMEs and Stakeholders reviewing, batch them so you're not overwhelmed with feedback.

Some designers start building the assets and share with the reviewers in cycles. And some create detailed designs or storyboards to get approved before building out the asset. I highly recommend being the latter.

This phase is iterative with several review stages.

• Record TTT sessions for future reference.
• Consider who needs to be made aware of the launch and what they need to know.
• Determine the best UX for learners and other stakeholders to access the experience

Some designers create the Train-the-Trainer materials and present them. Some designers just create them. It truly depends on the organization. Sometimes IDs are included in the learning campaign and other times the learning campaign is handed off to the stakeholder or another team. Either way make sure you...

You may or may not be a part of this phase.

• Advocate for immediate iterations without tracking data
• Share maintenance needs in chat, email, and in other spaces that are not the maintenance document.
• Prioritize nice-to-have updates over correcting incorrect information and fixing experience-blocking bugs
• Focus feedback entirely on what others could do to solve process friction

Remember that you're developing a relationship with your stakeholders, which means you must debrief with them on what did or did not go well. Reflect on your experience and ask them to reflect on theirs. Bring solutions to this sunset meeting. Stakeholders may...

Resist the urge to skip this stage!