Lightweight Design Is the Best Design
March 13 • Written by Julie Dozier
We’re taking you behind the screens today to show you our lightweight design process — our method for ensuring learning solutions are just the right size, easy to deploy, and focused on getting results.
At Tangram, we aspire to something we call lightweight design.
As consultants, we have front-row seats to the challenges faced by learning teams: the unrealistic annual roadmaps with all the new learning solutions you need to create and the constant barrage of emergency requests that come in (regardless of the guardrails you put in place).
And then, we’ve all experienced what happens during the design process:
The eLearning module that was supposed to be 15 minutes but somehow doubled in length during the design process
The 6-week program that everyone was excited about initially but isn’t getting good enough results to justify the seat time
The costly off-the-shelf learning library that was supposed to be the answer to upskilling but is underutilized and difficult to rationalize
Given the pressures facing learning teams, we want to help you reduce the time, energy, and money wasted on overdesigned solutions. Lightweight design can be your new reality if you take a few key steps.
Start your design process with a learner workshop.
Before you can change things, it’s helpful to think about how you ended up here. The pervasive nature of inflated, ineffective training would suggest that overdesigning is a human tendency — most of us overthink, over-review, and overdo everything just to make sure it’s enough. We can’t miss anything! We need it all!
We need a different process that shakes things up.
When a training need is identified, we recommend ignoring [politely] any specific visions the requester shares about the format. We usually say, “A 45-minute webinar could be interesting. We’d like to test a few different options first.”
Then, we work with the requester to recruit 4-6 representative learners and schedule a learner workshop. This workshop is the key to opening your mind to new formats.
Our Process
WHEN WE SCHEDULE THE WORKSHOP
We share the source content with our learners. When we put the workshop on their calendar, we ask them to do a quick review of the training content in advance.
BEFORE THE WORKSHOP
We come up with some ideas for relevant lightweight training formats. These are solutions that would be relatively easy to design and develop. Here are a few ideas:
A podcast interview with the SME
A PDF guide
A simple Rise module
A lunch and learn
DURING THE WORKSHOP
Our workshop starts with our goal. We let learners know we are trying to create the simplest possible solution for them to learn this new content/skill.
We then emphasize our participants’ important role. Our learners know the reality of their day to day. We need their real opinions and reactions. We want them to challenge our thinking. We also want them to think outside of the box.
We introduce our lightweight format ideas. We share our initial ideas with the learners and ask these questions:
Having seen the new content, which of these formats would help you learn quickly and easily? Or what other format ideas come to mind?
What type of learning experience would pair well with your need to practice and apply this new information?
What will it actually take for you to adopt these new behaviors on the job?
How would I as an outsider know that you have learned and changed?
Learner workshops are the best possible way to start projects. Learners are highly practical, and they know themselves and their peers. They have fun ideas too — they want the experience to be enjoyable, but they share their reality and their perspective in a way that shapes the solution.
Choose one of the ideas and create a minimum viable product.
For those who go into the design process saying they want to create something simple, but then it somehow gets complicated anyway, this step is the key: you have to create a minimum viable product. Here are some characteristics of an MVP:
Just enough to be usable: This learning solution doesn’t need to be perfect. Challenge yourselves to create something low-fidelity. It doesn’t need to be glossy or high-production. Lo-fi can still be effective. The outcomes — the learner mindset shifts and new behaviors — are the most important part.
Developed quickly: Think of your process in agile terms. This is a sprint to create something quick to get it to your learners. Give yourselves an aggressive deadline to release the MVP as quick as possible. This is another artificial barrier to keep your team from accidentally overdesigning.
Costs as little as possible: Even if internal team members are creating this solution, their hours count. Have them give themselves a target number of hours that they will report against and not exceed. Avoid involving a graphic designer or other specialized services.
Minimal review: It’s important to get your SMEs on the same page. Tell them you are creating a lo-fi MVP, especially if they’ve worked with you previously to create more fully developed solutions. And because we’ve all seen SMEs derail our best laid plans in the past, give them one short review. That’s all they need.
You are probably thinking about how your team will react to working this way. Certain team members will struggle with the MVP idea and process more than others. You can probably imagine who those people are — they are the reason why you’ll want to establish "rules” that keep everyone from overdesigning. Others will feel liberated and really thrive in this new way of thinking and working. Over time they will all adapt and get better and better at the process.
Launch your MVP and start gathering data.
It’s time to go live. The real benefit of lightweight design is you can release your solution quickly and your learners can benefit much sooner. Don't be worried about its lo-fi nature — just use the quick release as a justification. “We wanted to create something quick and effective to get you learning about XYZ right away. Take our new course and share your feedback!”
Speaking of feedback, an MVP absolutely must be accompanied by a survey. Consider including the survey link inside the course with a direct message to your learners about the importance of their feedback in your process. Be sure to include an open response field in your survey to gather any detailed reactions and ideas. We also suggest sending a follow-up survey a month or so later to ask if they're getting better results.
You might be asking yourself, Wait, when do we create the “real” version? Well, you don’t necessarily need to. Just leave the MVP out there. See what happens, and get curious about the results. Does it get used? Is it effective? Are you seeing performance improvement? Review your survey results. Ping a couple of managers to ask what they are seeing. You can also pull together a fresh focus group to ask them about their experience.**
Now let’s talk maintenance. By launching an MVP, you are already designing for easy maintenance. Your edits should be quick and in keeping with your MVP approach. Get the new version out there as quickly as possible with some release notes for reference.
The kind of results we love to hear from clients:
“Our learners let us know all they wanted was a checklist.”
“We were pleased to discover we just needed to create a fun trivia game. No eLearning needed.”
“We ended up just asking the team’s senior leader to record a selfie video. It was a hit!”
"A 20-minute podcast conversation was the final solution — super quick to plan, record, and launch.”
Your turn
We already have so many pressures facing us as a learning function. Lightweight design is something we can work on as a team that will change our lives for the better. It’s an agile process, human-centered design, and rapid product development all rolled into one. We’ll create simple but effective solutions faster — solutions that are directly informed by our learners. And we’ll have results to show for it.
** If the MVP is really working well and getting good results, and you are itching to gloss it up a little bit and you can’t sleep at night until you do, you have our permission to create the MVPP (Minimum Viable Pretty Product).