Designs courses, workshops, training, tutorials, and job aids that change behavior — gap diagnosis, practice, feedback, motivation, transfer. Use when people need to learn a skill or adopt a process. Product onboarding → user-onboarding/feature-discoverability; managing reports → people-management. Triggers: training, course, workshop, curriculum, practice, feedback, job aid.
Designs courses, workshops, training, tutorials, and job aids that change behavior — gap diagnosis, practice, feedback, motivation, transfer. Use when people need to learn a skill or adopt a process. Product onboarding → user-onboarding/feature-discoverability; managing reports → people-management. Triggers: training, course, workshop, curriculum, practice, feedback, job aid.
A learning request is usually misdiagnosed as a content request. Dirksen's frame: "The end of the journey isn't just knowing more, it's doing more." Before making slides, name the performance gap:
Knowledge gap — they lack information, concepts, examples, or a mental model.
Skill gap — they cannot perform yet. Test it with: "Is it reasonable to think that someone can be proficient without practice?" If yes, it is not a skill; if no, design practice.
Motivation/attitude gap — they know what to do but do not choose it: "If somebody knows what to do, but chooses not to do it, that's a motivation gap."
Environment gap — the process, tools, incentives, time, references, or job aids do not support the behavior.
Communication gap — the directions are vague, conflicting, or unsupported by leadership; this may not be a learning problem.
If the answer is "they need all five," sequence them. Do not use a suspension bridge to fix a pothole: a two-day course cannot repair a process, a missing manager, or a bad interface by itself.
Know The Learner In Context
Avoid learner personas that are only demographics. You need motivation, current skill, context, and the learner's model of the world.
Follow learners around. Dirksen maps this to UX contextual inquiry: "follow your learners around in their actual environment." If you can do only one audience-analysis method, observe the work where the learning will be used.
Use current learners, not only experts. Recent learners remember where it hurt; experts often skip steps because the work is automatic.
Prototype the learning. Reviews are weak because "everyone fills in the gaps with their own understanding." "Nothing will show up gaps like trying stuff out." Pilot an activity, role-play, e-learning branch, job aid, or practice prompt with a small audience.
Reject learning-styles theater. Evidence for adapting to VARK-style categories is weak; use varied approaches for attention, memory triggers, and inclusion, not because each person has one fixed style.
Set Goals That Match Transfer
Write goals as actions in context, not content coverage. "Understand project management" is not enough; "provide appropriate feedback to a chronically late employee" gives you a target scenario, practice shape, and assessment method.
Use "Why, why, no really, why?" and "What bad thing will happen if they don't know?" to find the real reason for learning.
Decide how far the experience can take someone: familiarity, conscious effort, conscious action, proficiency, or transfer across messy contexts.
Be honest about time. "You absolutely cannot get past Conscious Action without a significant amount of practice distributed over time."
Skip objective slides. Start with a challenge, scenario, mission, or concrete problem that focuses attention and sets direction.
Use advance organizers when the path is linear. For a course, workshop, or guided tutorial, orient before detail with an abstract frame that presents the "big picture" prior to the details (Lidwell/Holden/Butler, Universal Principles of Design, "Advance Organizer"). Use expository organizers for genuinely new domains and comparative organizers when learners already know a nearby system. Do not force this into nonlinear exploration; even the book notes the technique is hard to validate and fits defined-entry learning best.
Design Knowledge
Give less content than your expertise wants to provide: "What's the right amount of content for your learners? Probably less than you think it should be."
Make content usable, not complete. Cache secondary information as references, checklists, examples, or searchable resources.
Use examples and counterexamples before definitions when learners need concepts.
Match retrieval to final use. If they will need recall, practice recall. If recognition is enough, do not overtrain recall.
Use CCAF for active learning: Context (conditions), Challenge (stimulus to act), Activity (learner response), Feedback (reflection of action effectiveness).
Whenever possible, show, do, and compare instead of explaining in the abstract.
Design Skills
Skills are built through practice and feedback. Dirksen's blunt summary: "Teaching skills requires two main elements—practice and feedback."
Practice like the real task. "The practice needs to match the eventual use." Role-play, simulation, shadowing, project work, or real artifacts beat multiple-choice unless the task is taking multiple-choice tests.
Space practice over time. For long-term retention, "you want to distribute your learning over time if possible." One dense class mostly creates familiarity.
Keep challenge near ability. Too easy is boring; too hard is shame or frustration. Scaffold by reducing environment complexity, using walkthroughs, and then fading supports.
Give frequent, varied feedback. Learners need to know how they are doing while there is still time to adjust. Use consequences, criteria, examples, coaching, visual cues, peer critique, and self-assessment; avoid generic "Good Job!" popups.
Assess the actual task. "When assessing learner performance, have them perform the actual task whenever possible."
Design Motivation And Environment
Motivation to learn is not the same as motivation to do. Required training often has extrinsic motivation; awaken intrinsic motivation with real pain points, relevant challenges, autonomy, social proof, and early wins.
Change is not an event. "Change is a process, not an event." Expect backsliding; reinforce over time.
Let learners work on their own problems. The best scenarios are often "the learner's actual problems or challenges."
Build self-efficacy. Let learners see the behavior modeled, try smaller versions, succeed early, and receive coaching before the high-stakes moment.
Put knowledge into the world. "Proximity matters—try to get the knowledge as close to the behavior as possible." Job aids, checklists, templates, decision trees, interface prompts, and environmental cues can be better than memorization.
Prefer recognition for performance support. In assessment, recall may prove knowledge; in the environment, "recognizing the right option is easier than recalling it."
Fix the process. Do not just teach people a process; simplify the process, interface, incentives, timing, or support system when that is the real barrier.
Checklist
Desired behavior named: what should learners do differently afterward?
Gap diagnosed: knowledge, skill, motivation, environment, communication?
Learners observed in the real context, not only surveyed or interviewed?
Goal framed as a contextual action, not a topic list?
Content cut to the minimum needed for action, with references/job aids for the rest?
Practice matches final use and is spaced over time?
Feedback is frequent, varied, criteria-based, and available before stakes are high?
Motivation addressed with relevance, autonomy, early wins, self-efficacy, and social proof?
Environment changed where possible: job aids, prompts, process simplification, manager reinforcement?
Assessment asks learners to perform the real task whenever possible?
Relationship to other skills
user-onboarding — product first-run journeys, empty states, signup flow, and quick wins. Use this skill when the work is a course, workshop, curriculum, training program, or job aid.
feature-discoverability — in-app feature teaching, tips, gestures, first-launch cues. Use this skill when the teaching object is broader than the app surface or requires practice/feedback outside the UI.
people-management — manager/report relationships and feedback delivery. Use this skill for designing manager training, coaching curricula, or practice systems.
personal-growth — self-directed reflection, goals, sustainable practice, recovery, and course correction. Use this skill when designing a course, workshop, curriculum, or job aid for other learners.
working-with-ai (ai-enablement) — rolling AI tooling out across an org: shared context, internal agents, social proof, and adoption programs. Use this skill to design the learning mechanics inside that rollout.
user-research — study methods for learning about learners; this skill translates those findings into practice, feedback, and performance support.
design-prototyping — prototype and test the learning artifact there when it is a product/session artifact; diagnose the learning design here.
Staleness note: the cognitive principles and practice/feedback method are durable. The e-learning tool examples and references to then-current technology are dated; verify current platform mechanics before implementation.
