Learning Experience Design for Instructional Designers Training Course

Course overview

Instructional designers are increasingly expected to move beyond converting subject-matter content into slides, e-learning screens, or facilitator guides. They must diagnose performance problems, understand learner contexts, design coherent journeys across channels, and show how a learning intervention supports business outcomes. Without a disciplined learning experience design approach, teams risk producing content-heavy programmes that are difficult to use, inaccessible, poorly adopted, or disconnected from workplace performance.

This five-day Learning Experience Design for Instructional Designers course develops the practical methods used to design learner-centred, evidence-informed experiences. Participants practise learner research, persona creation, journey mapping, performance-based objective writing, experience architecture, storyboarding, interaction design, inclusive design, prototyping, and evaluation planning. The course connects established instructional design models with contemporary LXD practices, including design thinking, cognitive load management, social learning, practice design, and learning analytics.

Participants work through a realistic corporate learning brief from discovery to prototype. They use stakeholder interview data, build a learner persona and journey map, define a measurable design concept, create an experience blueprint, and develop selected prototype screens or activities. Each participant leaves with an LXD project pack containing a design brief, learner insight artefacts, learning architecture, storyboard, accessibility checklist, and evaluation plan that can be adapted for a live workplace project.

The course is best suited to practising instructional designers, digital learning designers, learning consultants, and L&D professionals who already create learning solutions and need a stronger method for designing experiences that learners can use, apply, and value.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Conduct learner and stakeholder discovery using interview guides, empathy maps, and performance-context analysis
• Create evidence-based learner personas that capture motivations, barriers, prior knowledge, and work constraints
• Map an end-to-end learner journey across pre-learning, formal learning, practice, social support, and workplace transfer
• Write measurable performance objectives using observable behaviours, conditions, and standards of performance
• Build a learning experience architecture that sequences content, practice, feedback, reinforcement, and support resources
• Produce interaction storyboards using scenario-based practice, branching decisions, feedback logic, and media specifications
• Apply WCAG-informed accessibility and inclusive-design checks to learning content, activities, and digital prototypes
• Design an evaluation plan linking learner evidence, transfer measures, and business performance indicators

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Instructional Designers — who need a repeatable method for designing learner-centred solutions rather than content-led courses
• Digital Learning Designers — who build e-learning and need stronger learner research, interaction, and experience-design capability
• Learning Experience Designers — who need practical artefacts for connecting journeys, platforms, practice, and workplace support
• Learning Consultants — who translate stakeholder requests into credible learning and performance interventions
• L&D Specialists — who commission or design development programmes and need to assess whether an experience will transfer to work
• Training Managers — who oversee design teams and need consistent standards for briefs, prototypes, accessibility, and evaluation

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience creating or supporting learning solutions, such as classroom workshops, e-learning modules, blended programmes, job aids, or facilitator materials. The course assumes familiarity with basic instructional design language, including learning objectives, assessment, audience analysis, and storyboards. Participants should be comfortable reviewing digital learning examples and discussing a workplace design brief. A laptop with web access is required for collaborative design work. Prior experience with Articulate tools, graphic design software, coding, user-experience design, or formal research methods is not required; templates and guided exercises are provided.

Training methodology

The course combines instructor-led demonstrations with structured design studios built around a corporate learning brief. Participants analyse stakeholder evidence, compare alternative experience patterns, and use Miro templates to create personas, journeys, and service blueprints. Small-group critiques test whether objectives, practice activities, and feedback mechanisms support real performance. Facilitated reviews use practical rubrics for cognitive load, accessibility, and transfer design. On the final day, participants refine their own LXD project pack, present key design decisions, and create an application plan for a current workplace initiative.

Course outline

Day 1: From training request to learner evidence

• Distinguishing content requests from performance and experience problems
• Learning experience design principles and the role of instructional design
• Stakeholder ecosystem mapping for sponsors, managers, subject experts, and learners
• Performance-context analysis using task, environment, consequence, and support factors
• Learner interview planning and semi-structured question design
• Empathy mapping from qualitative learner evidence
• Persona construction using needs, motivations, barriers, and behavioural patterns

Workshop: Participants analyse a client-style learning request and produce a stakeholder map, interview guide, empathy map, and draft learner persona.

Day 2: Designing the learning journey

• Journey mapping across awareness, preparation, participation, practice, and transfer
• Identifying moments that matter in a learner experience
• Writing performance objectives with behaviour, condition, and criterion components
• Aligning objectives, assessment evidence, and workplace outcomes
• Applying cognitive load principles to content selection and sequencing
• Designing for motivation, relevance, confidence, and autonomy
• Selecting blended learning channels for live, digital, social, and on-the-job support

Workshop: Participants create a current-state and future-state learner journey, identify friction points, and define measurable performance objectives.

Day 3: Architecting practice and interaction

• Learning experience blueprints and module-level design architecture
• Chunking and sequencing content through prerequisite and task analysis
• Scenario-based learning design for authentic decisions
• Branching logic, consequence design, and corrective feedback patterns
• Deliberate practice design using repetitions, variation, and increasing challenge
• Social learning activities including peer critique, discussion prompts, and manager conversations
• Storyboard specifications for screens, narration, media, interactions, and developer notes

Workshop: Participants develop an experience blueprint and storyboard a scenario-based practice activity with feedback and branching decisions.

Day 4: Prototyping inclusive digital experiences

• Low-fidelity prototyping for rapid testing of learning flows
• Articulate Storyline 360 interaction patterns and trigger-based branching
• Articulate Rise 360 lesson blocks for responsive microlearning
• WCAG-informed design for colour contrast, keyboard access, captions, and alternative text
• Plain-language writing and inclusive examples for diverse learner groups
• Usability testing protocols for learning prototypes
• Design critique methods using learner goals, evidence, and accessibility criteria

Workshop: Participants build or annotate a prototype learning sequence, conduct a peer usability review, and record prioritised design changes.

Day 5: Measuring impact and presenting the design

• Evaluation questions for reaction, learning, transfer, and organisational results
• Designing observable evidence of skill acquisition and workplace application
• xAPI concepts for recording learning activity and experience data
• Selecting leading and lagging indicators for learning interventions
• Transfer-support design through manager tools, performance aids, and reinforcement prompts
• Presenting design rationale to sponsors using learner evidence and decision criteria
• LXD project pack assembly and implementation planning

Workshop: Participants present their completed LXD project pack, receive structured feedback, and produce a 30-day workplace application plan.

Tools & standards covered

Articulate Storyline 360, Articulate Rise 360, Miro, Experience API (xAPI)

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions