Design Thinking can offer Instructional Designers a structured framework to understand and pursue innovative ways that can contribute to the effectiveness of a human-centric learning solution. Original blog article here ~ https://www.ttro.com/blog/instructional-design/how_design_thinking_can_enhance_your_learning_experience_development/

1. How Design Thinking
Can Enhance Your
Learning Experience
Design…

2. According to the Interaction Design Foundation,
Design Thinking revolves around a deep interest in
developing an understanding of the people for whom
products, services, or solutions are being developed. It
helps people discover and develop empathy with their
target audience. Design Thinking assists with the
process of questioning the problems, the assumptions
and the implications. Design Thinking is an important
methodology used to grapple problems that are vague
or unknown, by recalibrating the problem in a human-
centric way, creating many potential solutions
in collaboration sessions, and fostering an immersive
approach to prototyping and testing.

3. One of the core principles Design Thinking advocates is
that design enables ideas to become tangible, which in
turn facilitates communication. When Design Thinking
methodology is applied to the context of creating e-
learning solutions, one can see how critical the
instructional design process is when it comes to aiding
measurable behavioural changes.
Design Thinking can offer Instructional Designers a
structured framework to understand and pursue
innovative ways that can contribute to the effectiveness
of a learning solution, and add real value to the
learners. Applying the Design Thinking cycle to the
Instructional Design process will help them design and
develop powerful people-centric solutions. When
applied, the Design Thinking cycle involves observation
to discover unmet learner needs, framing the learning
opportunity, scoping the innovation (whether from a
pedagogical or tech approach), generating creative
ideas that will resonate with the learner audience, and
then testing and refining the learning solution for
maximum efficacy, ultimately resulting in a positive
return of investment. (ROI).

4. E-learning is rapidly making the fundamental shift in its approach
to becoming more human-centric. To create more effective
learning solutions it is crucial that one understands
the learner they are designing for, taking into consideration their
values, motivations, and goals. Design Thinking is a powerful and
proven methodology that stems from the idea of Human-centred
Design (HCD), which involves a human perspective in every step
of the problem-solving process and in designing learning
experiences where the human learner is the customer. Design
Thinking methodology can be harmoniously applied to
Instructional Design practice through 5 phases.
For this example we’ve chosen d.school’s approach because
they’re at the forefront of applying and teaching Design Thinking:

6. ADDIE
DESIGN THINKING
Analysis
An analysis of the
organisation’s goals,
learner goals and the
problems the need to
be solved
Empathise
Conduct research to
understand your users
Design
A deep dive into the
course or training
structure
Define
Conduct research to
and clearly define
your user/learner’s
problems
Ideate
Brainstorm solutions
to solve their
problems
Development
Content creation
Prototype
Build a real solution to
test it with potential
users/learners
Implementation
Organise the start
date, location, launch,
upload etc.
Evaluation
A plan is executed to
evaluate all aspects,
including a pilot,
learner feedback etc.
Test/Iterate
Test, collect feedback
and make
improvements
Learning by Design

7. Traditionally, learners were grouped together as a ‘population’, labelled
with a vague range of age, gender, and location. We know there is a far
greater level of detail that is needed to give these learners ‘personas’,
and this is where empathy mapping plays a major role. Empathy
mapping is about experiencing the feelings of others and understanding
what it is like to have their challenges. Great ways for Instructional
Designers to do this when scoping a solution is to:
• Conduct some field research to understand the learner’s challenges
such as learning environment, technology constraints, learning
preferences or any other problems that might not seem obvious.
• Speak to both learners and managers around their challenges, and
the learning problems that need to be addressed.
• Establish Focus Groups with representation from across the target
learner audience to gain insight into their motivations and values.
You may be surprised at some of the fresh ideas you can generate
based on their feedback.

8. To design an effective learning solution, it is important to
accurately define the problem. With the information and
insights collected during the previous research phase, one
can look at the problem from different perspectives. This
helps define the problem and give Instructional Designers
a solid foundation on which they can start brainstorming
solutions.

9. This third phase is where all the brilliant and maybe not so brilliant ideas
get generated by the cross-disciplinary team based on the problem that
was defined during research – there are no restrictions or constraints. It
may even be beneficial to involve collaborating and co-developing with
your learner audience if feasible.
Some great ways of doing this include:
• Brainstorming, with sticky notes, flip charts, whiteboards etc. and
extracting all the ideas from the team until the well runs dry. At the
end of the session, the participants can arrange the ideas into logical
groups, and discuss and eliminate until the most powerful ones
remain.
• Mind-mapping is a great way to visualise the central learning
problem with potential solutions radiating outwards. This can help
visibly join the dots and spark new ideas.

10. In the Industrial Design world, this phase would entail 3D printed
prototypes, cardboard, CAD models etc., but for the learning solution
team it might entail the following:
• Mood-boarding visual design approaches and concepts which could
potentially include; colour pallets, illustration or imagery,
iconography, UI etc.,
• Mocking up the visual designs of how the screens, menu, and
navigation could look,
• Wire-framing either the flow of the content or the interactivity,
• Good old fashioned pen and paper/digital drawing tool,
storyboarding a scenario, animating and/or mapping out the design
hierarchy.

11. Develop a “thin slice” and conduct user acceptance testing with an
earmarked focus group that represent a cross spectrum of learners and
stakeholders, and see if it will work in the learning environment and for
the target learners. Getting this feedback will help refine the prototype
and optimise the final solution.

12. In conclusion, Design Thinking will
never replace Instructional Design,
but can act as a complimentary
methodology. It can be used to
keep the learner audience the
primary focus when designing
learning experiences, that will yield
faster and better results. Ultimately,
more effective design results in
more effective communication. This
increased communication within
learning solutions means that
learning will ‘stick,’ behaviours will
shift, and the learning objectives
are met.
Get Design
Thinking.
.

13. https://elearningindustry.com/design-thinking-process
https://www.td.org/insights/5-steps-to-using-design-thinking-in-learning-experience-design
http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning_design/design-thinking-for-instructional-design/
https://medium.com/@charbel/design-thinking-6e6fc7d0f9a0