Learning Experience Design is coming.

Design learning experiences to enable future generation to learn effectively while having fun.

Learning Experience Design

In May 2007 the term LX Design was coined by Niels Floor, a Dutch LX Design pioneer.

Like User Experience Design (UX Design), the goal of Learning Experience Design (LX Design) is to create products and services that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users, but in that case simply during a learning process.

1- LX design & Instructional Design

We can think that LX Design is the same practice as Instructional Design, but in the reality LX Design draws a lot of others disciplines :

Concerning the process, Instructional Design currently use the 5 steps project called ADDIE and LX Design is using the design thinking method.

As we can see, both of the process define the problem who need to be solved, but not at the same step. With the Design Thinking process, we are more focus to discover only the users (learners) goals at the first step. Furthermore, the most important things to remember with Design Thinking it’s that user is always needed on each step and related projects are iterative.

If we compare the two definition, we can see that Instructional Design is more focus on the instructor and instructions, than on the learner and his learning process for LX Design. Nevertheless, Instructional Design have to learn about LX design. Because, today it’s important than the role of all Instructional Designers is to give the same weight to the instructor’s experience than the one of the students. But of course there is good instructional designer who are learner-centered at every step!

Monica Cragg, e-learning strategist & founder of learn by design school, says that UI is a real difference between LX Design and Instructional Design, because thanks to Design Thinking we can build applications from scratch, compare to existing software with Instructional Design (Learning Management Systems and educational technology).

2 - Interaction Design

Interaction design is the design of the interaction between users and products. Most of the time, when people talk about interaction design, the products tend to be software products like apps or websites. In question, it is true that today we can decode more easily learning models thanks to data. But the goal of interaction design is to create products or services that give the opportunity to the user to achieve their objective(s) in the best way possible. So it could be digital or not (a book, a meeting …)! We should not find the solution before we determine the learner’s problems.

Moreover, Education will forever be a local and sovereign issue. It is therefore impossible to determine a similar product or service to be implemented from one country to another without taking into account economic, social and cultural issues directly on the ground.

3 - Experiential learning

“Experiential learning is the process of learning through experience, and is more specifically defined as “learning through reflection on doing”.

Experiential learning is commonly defined as learning by doing. While learning by doing is a form of experiential learning. Experiential learning is about the process of learning through experience. For instance, reading a book is just as much an experience as fixing a car. An experience can basically be anything. What matters here are underlying fundamentals of how we, as humans, experience and how we learn from these experiences. These are vital insights that are at the core of LX design.

4 - Cognitive Science

Cognitive science is a scientific discipline whose purpose is to describe, explain and, where appropriate, simulate the mechanisms of human, animal or artificial thought, and more generally of any complex system of information processing capable of acquire, retain, use and impart knowledge.

Cognitive science is based on the study and modelling of phenomena as diverse as perception, intelligence, language, memory, attention, reasoning, emotions, mind or even consciousness.

The cognitive sciences jointly use data from the six sub-disciplines of which it is composed:

• Education, the study of how people learn,
• Philosophy, the study of knowledge, reality, and existence,
• Artificial intelligence, the study of thinking machines and systems,
• Psychology, the study of behavior and the mind,
• Neuroscience, the study of the nervous system,
• Linguistics, the study of language,
• Anthropology, the general study of the human society and culture.

(source : wikipedia)

In addition of collecting continuous feedback from users with LX design, cognitive science is a way to understand some brain pattern and create learner-centered product and service.

The future of LX Design

LX designers need to merge the principles of Design Thinking with new emerging technologies to help teachers adapt their content to the behaviors and preferences of their students. They must also know how to use ICT (Information and Communication Technologies for Education), adopt graphic design, multimedia production, standards based on research, social media, … . Hopefully, the LX designers will be the partners of the schools throughout the program and course development process. But also, within companies to promote lifelong learning for their employees and to be ever more agile.

Jessica Knott, a Learning Project Manager and an Applied Researcher for Michigan State University, began studying the difference between old and new schools of instructional design. According to her: “Research and design methods based on the user experience make it possible to move the intangibles of the student experience”. She also explains that in addition to the many data that can be harvested that can understand how students learn, the job of LX designer goes further. In fact, the latter must take care to integrate more willingly, in an iterative process, the voice of the students in the design of educational products or services..

With new technology, LX designers can now obtain new student data via digital fingerprints. It is therefore easier to understand how students interact with the course material and for how long. Then, for the first time, teachers have ideas about time spent before, during and after class. This new job in particular another asset: to be able to determine the difficulties of the students and then to develop specific sections in their schooling.

In addition to the fact that this new type of specialized designers allows students to have greater control over their learning path, LX designers can also use technology to foster links between teachers, students, and with management. In their research focused on the student, they can discover in particular that there are characteristics not related to the digital, which could improve learning and student life (administrative processes, the device, orientation, the framework working, …).

As you can see, LX designers have to meet a big challenge: to ensure that schools can offer a learning environment that captivates and resonates with every single student.