Here’s the process I use for designing high-quality performance solutions.

You can use this to solve a problem as opposed to doing what I like to call the McDonald’s conveyor belt of just taking orders and not doing anything that has a return on investment.

Let’s be hypothetical here.

Imagine someone has come to you with a performance or capability issue in their team. I like to look at the problem as a window and break it down into four sections.

The Four Performance Discovery Zones

1/ What are the key things users need to know about that topic?

How can you get them from A → B in a logical manner?

Consider the things which will move the needle.

2/ What do they know today?

It’s key to get an assessment of what is known today.

Without this, it’s like the blind leading the blind. You’re going to find it difficult to pitch your solution at the right level.

Consider:

• What do these people know today about this topic?
• Do they know its importance?
• How it supports them in their role, and how it supports them potentially in their future growth.

3/ What do they need to know that’s not been identified?

Your stakeholder’s view is only one side of the coin.

Think like a consultant (or detective) to uncover what might have been missed.

Reflect on things that they need to know to succeed in the modern era but have not been identified either by the team or the stakeholder. We can frame this as what they think they need versus what they actually need.

Quite often I find stakeholders will come to you and say, ‘This is what I think we need’.

Sometimes that might be 100% of the picture.

But I find that 9 times out of 10, there is more than meets the eye to what is shared in those conversations. It’s key that you take a consultant approach to dig down and find out what is it people think they need to know, but what is it they actually need to know?

This enables you to trim the fat.

→ You can add lots of value by taking things away.

4/ The not-known zone

The last bit is what I call the not-known zone.

This data will become apparent during the design process as you speak with both stakeholders and users in more detail.

At the beginning of the process, you don’t know about this. It’s something that reveals itself because it’s unknown to everyone during the process. It reveals itself through retros and continuous feedback.

This is a good thing. This is not something to worry about at all.

It’s part of the design process. It’s why I advocate looking at building solutions or products as minimal viable products where you can ship something that meets the basic user needs quickly.

This enables you to test and learn at speed and tweak your solutions for a final product.

Happy problem-solving!

---

Before you go… 👋

If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.

You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.

As I type these words, tens of thousands of humans have taken my online courses, read my work, and binged my videos.

I class each of these as a learning experience and, as such, design them for audiences living in this era and how we now experience the world.

For the most part, this is digital.

Now, I don’t class myself as a learning designer, LXD, or the other million labels for this type of role.

What I do understand is how to build products and experiences for the digital age we live in.

Most corporate L&D programmes aren’t designed for a digitally native mind. They continue the status quo of classroom-based delivery and convert that to digital platforms.

Note: Just because you have a resource or course on a digital platform, doesn’t mean it’s built for digitally native minds.

Other industries have learnt how to change their approach for the digitally native society.

Your mind has changed

Since everyone could start writing online in the early 00s, established Writers figured out they couldn’t structure words stuffed into long paragraphs as they had for so many years.

People just won’t read stuffy pages that overwhelm their eyes.

So, they adapted.

Digital writers brought about clear and compelling writing structures with 1/3/1 and 1/4/1 paragraph styles, and improved heading structure.

They evolved their practice to work for digital consumption.

Our friends in marketing did the same thing.

Ask most people under 25 about print marketing, and you’ll get an odd stare. The term ‘digital marketing’ was born to adapt to the digital age.

Marketers didn’t just take what worked in print and slap it online.

The style, structure and delivery had to evolve.

We see this with videos too.

For those old enough to remember the lynda.com tutorials (btw, LinkedIn bought them) that taught you how to use any piece of software in about 100 hours.

These have now morphed into 3-minute short videos that pollute our digital spaces.

My point is each of these industries adapted how they built experiences for their audiences.

So, why hasn’t that translated across our industry?

Seriously, I don’t know – I’m asking.

There are only so many full-day leadership workshops that could have been a 10-minute video that one guy can take before slamming his head off a printer.

Why You Need to Know Your Audience

Here’s an example of a classic mistake I see with digital courses.

Someone once asked why my AI Crash Course only takes around 3–4 hours to complete.

They wanted more.

It’s a crash course, FYI. It was designed for time-poor people who need actionable insights — aka my target audience.

This was my answer 👇

Having:

1. 300 lessons
2. 1,000 hours of video
3. 200 PDF documents

…doesn’t make your digital experience more valuable.

The goal is always to get a user to their outcome in the quickest time possible. The modern digital era created those rules — I didn’t make them up.

If there are two learning experiences with the same outcome, but one takes 2 hours and the other 40…

Guess which one I’m buying?

Good design means seeing through the eyes of your user.

We too often fall prey to the more must be better fallacy. In most cases, it’s not.

Think about your consumption habits.

How many times have you:

• Not finished that course
• Not finished that book
• Fallen asleep halfway through a bloated project update email

We tend to make things more complex than they need to be.

That’s been my experience after nearly 20 years in the industry (damn, I’m old).

I’ve been part of many experiences that would’ve been far more useful as a five-minute article, a short email, or even a single sentence sent via Slack.

This is why thoughtful design is such an important part of any kind of work.

It’s not exclusive to L&D.

Anyone building products will benefit from designing more intentionally. Design is everywhere and everything.

📔 The Learning Design Playbook For The Digital Age

Ok, you know my take.

So, how can we improve the way we design for digitally native audiences?

Of course, I’m not going to leave you hanging.

Here are four elements that will serve you well, regardless of the format you’re designing for:

1/ Understand the user’s goals, objectives and constraints

If you don’t know this, you’re in trouble.

Use research techniques to identify audience needs, pain points, and desired outcomes. You can’t build the best solution without truly understanding the problem.

This could be done through user interviews, surveys or just talking to people like a human.

Get as close to the problem as possible.

1. What do users already know about it today?
2. What are their motivations for solving it?
3. Do they even care about it?
4. What constraints are in their world? (e.g. time)

The more you know, the better you can help.

2/ Simplify complex concepts and information

Thoughtful design should simplify the complex, not make it feel heavier.

I always see any L&D operator’s role as a context guide.

You’re most effective when you can frame a complex subject and say: “Hey, this is what it means.” That’s your superpower.

Once again, speaking to your audience helps here.

Understanding their existing knowledge and motivations will inform your design. It has to. Otherwise, you’ll end up building something no one asked for.

This has killed many learning experiences where I’ve been a student.

Confusing your audience with big words and detailed technical explanations doesn’t make you look smart. It just makes it harder for them to reach their goals.

3/ Prioritise usability and ease of navigation

This is ‘THE’ crucial aspect of thoughtful design.

It doesn’t matter if you built the best solution our world has seen. If it’s drowned in a poor user interface and experience, it’s worthless. I know this sounds harsh.

Yet, I see this happen every day.

It literally happened an hour before I typed these words. I enjoy learning from smart people, but even they fall victim to poor design.

I stopped reading a newsletter this morning, even though I knew the content was fantastic.

It was horribly formatted.

My eyes were overwhelmed with huge blocks of text with never-ending paragraphs.

I kept scrolling and they kept coming.

It doesn’t matter how great the content is if I can’t clearly and easily consume it.

So, structure your content logically and intuitively.

Use clear labels and headings, and provide search and filtering options. Make it easy for users to unlock the value your work offers.

This applies to videos, emails, and live talks too.

The UI (interface) and UX (experience) of everything you create matters. Great structure amplifies great work. Don’t over-index on the latter and forget the former.

4/ Test and iterate based on feedback

Experiment, test and improve – always.

The best way to do this is through your users.

Build minimum viable products (MVPs) for your audience to play with. Then talk to them.

Discover what worked, what didn’t and you might even uncover things you never thought of before.

Build feedback reflections into your design process.

It’s a no-brainer if you want to solve real problems and deliver real value.

Again this applies to anything you design like:

• Emails
• Articles
• Reports
• Presentations
• Courses
• Videos
• Instructions for your AI assistant

Every one of these is a learning experience.

What L&D Can Learn from Social Media Creators

Ok, here’s some of that perhaps juicy, controversial stuff I was foreshadowing earlier.

I’ve (honestly) seen better experience design in a 5-minute YouTube video than a lot of 60-minute corpo L&D workshops.

Yes, I’m painting a wide canvas, and yes, you can throw your pitchforks and fire at me. Still, it exists.

Let’s be clear, I’m using YouTube as an example of modern social content.

You can insert whatever platform you like instead as they’re all designed the same way (sort of).

YouTube has been one of my best sources of great learning experience design, and I know a lot of people who’ve had better experiences with learning from social content than from pre-defined corporate learning initiatives.

There’s a reason why YouTube is one of the biggest streaming platforms in the world.

Side Note: I shared a playbook on what I learnt about experience design from my year-long experimentation with YouTube videos late last year. Since then, I’ve grown my channel from 1,000 to 3,000 subs in 6 months. I’ll write about that at some point if anyone’s interested.

I made a point a few months back on LinkedIn about audiences not caring what ‘L&D methodologies’ we might use to build products.

Those same methodologies are often what imprison us to poor experience design.

You don’t have to be married to them.

Some of the biggest social media creators have built valuable learning experiences not because they followed the industry-touted model, but because they understood how digitally native minds want to experience information.

Granted, creators have a tighter grasp on their specific audience than most corporate L&D teams do. We’re forced into grouping people by departments, roles etc.

But still, there’s a lot we can borrow from these creators to elevate corporate learning design for the modern digital audience:

1️⃣ Optimise format and consumption habits

Creators shape their content for how people actually consume: mobile-first, bite-sized, visually engaging, and emotionally compelling often within seconds.

They know their audience can swipe away at any moment. In fact, YouTube tracks engagement in the first 120 seconds as a critical performance metric.

If you don’t communicate the why, what and how to a user in that time, you’re doomed.

Of course, platform algorithms play a part here — but still.

Chew on this:

What might your experiences look like if designed with the assumption that a participant might disengage in under 10 seconds?

2️⃣ Immediate action vs. Delayed application

As capturing attention is what drives a creator’s work, it shouldn’t surprise you when they deliver immediate, practical value by showing audiences ‘How to do x’, not just talking about it.

I’m a huge fan of live demo videos.

Which, if you follow me on YouTube, is not hard to guess. There’s something beautiful about applying what you’ve just learned in real-time.

Sadly, much of corpo L&D doesn’t work this way.

We tend to flood people with theoretical models and frameworks, without a clear pathway to action.

What transpires is audiences have no momentum for action or forget everything before they ever get a chance to apply it.

A thought for you:

How can your learning experiences better integrate immediate, actionable outcomes?

We could chalk this down to ‘showing’ not just ‘telling’.

3️⃣ Connect like a human

The best creators know how to tap into curiosity, humour, storytelling, and credibility in their work.

Which is like a drug for our brains as we all want to be seen, heard and valued. It’s not rocket science. They call out a shared pain, sympathise with it and then show you how to solve it.

That’s a pretty solid learning experience, imo.

We need more of that in corpo L&D because it can be a little stale when it comes to storytelling and connecting on an emotional level.

Now, I’m not suggesting you show up like a fitness or beauty influencer. That might be career-ending in some environments.

But ask yourself this:

What practical ways can you introduce the type of connection that drives your audience to take action?

(Hint: I gave you the answer in the second paragraph)

Final Thoughts

We’ve covered a lot today.

From luscious hair on webinars to learning design lessons from YouTube.

But beneath the GIFs and sarcasm sits a serious point:

The world has changed, and how we design learning needs to catch up.

Today’s audiences are digitally native, time-poor, and overloaded. They don’t want to wade through 40-hour courses or decipher abstract frameworks.

They want clarity, relevance and momentum.

And who’s nailing that right now?

Not always corporate L&D, but creators, product designers, and marketers who’ve adapted their craft for modern consumption.

They lead with empathy, design with intention, and make learning feel like less of a chore and more of a choice.

That’s the energy we need to bring into L&D.

Not by copying TikTok trends, but by rethinking how we structure, deliver and humanise learning experiences. Whether it’s simplifying information, prioritising usability, or showing (not telling).

Design like a creator → Think like a product person → Deliver like a human.

That’s how we make learning work in the digital age.

→ If you’ve found this helpful, please consider sharing it wherever you hang out online, tag me in and share your thoughts.

---

Before you go… 👋

If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.

You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.