Design Thinking: What Actually Makes eLearning Work
Updated: Jul 10
Nearly every project starts the same way. A subject matter expert hands you everything they know...90 slides, six policy documents, and "all of it is critical."
It's not. It never is.
The real skill in eLearning development is figuring out what someone actually needs to do differently after they finish the course...and building only what supports that.
In high-stakes, regulated environments, this gets harder. The pressure to cover everything is enormous because the consequences of a knowledge gap are real. But a 90-minute click-through course doesn't eliminate risk. It creates the illusion of training.
What actually works: scenario-based interactions that force decision-making in context. Not "select the correct answer." More like "here's a realistic situation: what do you do, and what happens when you get it wrong?"
Whether I'm building branching scenarios in Storyline or rolling out rapid onboarding in Rise, the design question is the same: does this change what someone does on the job, or does it just check a compliance box?
The tool is the easy part. The thinking is the work.
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