Ask a Learning Experience Designer (LXD)

Ask an LXD gives you the chance to send us questions about our team, design process, and the learning experience design profession.

In our first installment of Ask a LXD, Karen Vazquez, Learning Experience Designer, answers your most frequently asked questions.

How is a learning experience designer role different from a typical UX design role?

UX designers rely on user-centered design methodologies to identify user needs and design an effective experience for that user. As learning experience designers (LxD), we utilize the same methodologies as UX but we are not only responsible for designing a positive experience; we are responsible for designing the learning environments that will support the user to learn effectively, and we achieve that by conducting in-depth research and utilizing learning science principles.

I would recommend you to check out this blog “What is a Learning Experience Designer” to learn more details about this career.

What is your background and what led you to this role?

I have my bachelor’s degree in video game design where I had the opportunity to learn from different modalities like computer science, film, animation, psychology, and design. Through this exposure, I realized the power of technology on society; I really wanted to be part of a role that would allow me to make products that are part of a solution, specifically for marginalized or non-traditional users.

Eventually, I found the role with WGU Labs and immediately felt the connection to the role and the company. The role was aligned with my values and the type of work I truly saw myself doing, which is utilizing user and learner-centered design methodologies and conducting research to inform the design of a product that will benefit non-traditional populations.

What resources do you use to help you continue growing in the field?

There are several resources that have helped me grow in the field. But the two that have helped me the most have been:

• My peers and my design community give me feedback on my performance and the skills (eg., project management) I need to nurture.rom there I look for resources that will support me to get to my desired level.
• Peer-reviewed journals related to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to help me understand the current best practices and what works and doesn’t work in certain contexts.I bring those insights to my team and we discuss how that may or may not be applicable to our projects and/or goals.

What is your favorite project? What was your most challenging project?

This is a tough question to answer because I’ve had the opportunity to work on many projects that allow me to see the impact we bring to students across the nation.

So far “The Equity Initiative” has been my favorite and most challenging project. For context, this project was about analyzing the systems and processes that lead to graduation gaps for minority students. Traditionally, designers are taught to have empathy, however, what we aren’t taught is what inclusive cultural empathy is and how that looks in practice when talking about sensitive topics to users. I had to be very intentional about re-evaluating user-centered design practices, read books, and consult with experts before I put any interviews or emails in front of our student populations. At WGU Labs we see our students or users as our partners in creating and developing solutions so I had to make sure that was being respected. When conducting research, I had to make sure their voices were heard and understood throughout our deliveries and this really helped our stakeholders to know what the most appropriate next steps are to add to solutions. My team and I are proud to see the impact this work is having on our students and while the job is not done we take and learn from those projects and run with it to the next project and continue to iterate on our processes to make the next project successful.

How are diversity, equity, inclusion, and design related? Sometimes I have a hard time understanding how to apply that to my designs or even talk about it when I am presenting my portfolio case studies.

One of the most common frameworks is the user-centered design framework, which focuses on meeting user’s needs so when designers think about being inclusive they might think about creating one product or solution for users with the widest demographic range. The problem is that when we approach it from that angle the design loses its effectiveness even though we had the intention to be inclusive; the actual design might exclude certain populations.

Inclusive design takes into account personal identifiers (i.e., race, abilities, language, age, etc) to make design decisions. Inclusive design is often described as “solve for one, extend to many” because you solve for one type of user and the benefit to that solution can benefit many other types of users. In inclusive design, there is no average user or normal user we should design for.

Let’s define equity. Equity means providing different levels of opportunity and support for each person to achieve fair outcomes. Equitable design asks designers to focus on designing for groups that have been historically underrepresented or ignored when designing products or services. The goal of equity design is to uplift underrepresented groups.

How do you apply that concept? Start by looking at any product or your case scenario. Next, think about what groups have not been served by this type of product or service. Finally, you can redesign your identified underrepresented groups at the front of your design process. Remember, there is no easy answer to solving equity problems; the key is that we are trying.

It is important for designers of any field to understand the basics of accessibility, inclusive and equitable design as methods to consider when we are building anything.

Here is another blog post that I co-authored that talks in more depth about equity-centered design “Designing for Equity Means Rethinking Our Approach to Empathy.”

Thank you so much for your questions and for taking the time to read this piece :)

Consider following our WGU Labs design team blog for more learning experience design content. Do you have any questions you’d like to ask our designers? Feel free to drop them in the comment section.