It's All in the Details

Recently, I decided that I wanted to turn one of the rooms in my house into a studio, so I purchased this nifty artist's desk at Jerry's Artarama. It was everything I wanted for my watercolor work and even better, I got a discount as a frequent shopper. The bad news was that my purchase came with a few major challenges. I learned a bunch about learning in this process, so let's see how this all fits together.

Hurdle #1 - Getting it home

Said desk came in a very large box that I couldn't pick up so the nice people at Jerry's wrestled it into my compact car, which in and of itself was no easy task. When I got home, the box was neatly wedged into the back seat of my car and wasn't budging when I tried to extract it, so I called my neighbor to see if he could help.

My neighbor Paul is a pretty smart guy so we managed to get it out of the car after a lot of pulling, pushing and shoving. He had a dolly to make it easy to get upstairs, which was a great idea until we got to the door. It didn't fit.

HURDLE #2 - Getting it to where I needed it

Being the smart guy that he is, Paul suggested we bring it upstairs in pieces, so we began dissecting the box and its contents. Who knew that this puppy would have a GAJILLION pieces! Kudos to the engineers in charge of packaging though. Between the masonite stablilizers, and lots of styrofoam, they'd sandwiched something that covered most of my walkway into a 36"x40"x6"box.

Hurdle #3 - Putting it all Together

Now the fun begins. Putting it together. Easier said than done! It came with 5 pages of illustrated directions. All of the pieces were numbered with little stickers, and the numbers matched the diagram in the directions. Easy peasy, right?

WRONG.

One of the biggest challenges for me, beyond the fact that I was never the default-putter-together person in my house, is that I am a big-picture thinker, and I'm also an N, for iNtutive in Myers-Briggs speak.  Here's what that is in a nutshell from the Myers-Briggs Foundation:

The following statements generally apply to Ns:
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• I remember events by what I read "between the lines" about their meaning.
• I solve problems by leaping between different ideas and possibilities.
• I am interested in doing things that are new and different.
• I like to see the big picture, then to find out the facts.
• I trust impressions, symbols, and metaphors more than what I actually experienced
• Sometimes I think so much about new possibilities that I never look at how to make them a reality.

What does that mean? Well, if you examined my thinking as I was trying to piece this together, there was a lot of, "Oh! This must go here. And this goes there. This is the side, this is the other side." The directions, however, expected the user to be highly detail focused, with a bunch of experience with this kind of thing. It neglected to put in notes about things like being sure to put the drawer stoppers in the back. Sure, if you look at the picture, those little stoppers are drawn in, but I was paying attention to the rails that the drawers slide on.  After putting on, taking off, turning around, then putting on 90% of the pieces, we come to the monster. The gold slider hinge thingy with the saw teeth, two arms and flippy ends. I fiddled for 45 minutes trying to figure out how this thing was supposed to go. There was no obvious answer since the pre-drilled holes matched both sides of the flippy things (Someone told me they are called flanges after the fact. Helpful. Now I know.). My first installation attempt wouldn't let the desk close flat, so that was clearly the wrong way. I tried and I tested other options and finally gave up. It was time for reinforcements. I went live on Facebook to ask for help. 

HURDLE #4 - When all else fails, ask for help

A couple of people jumped in to help, suggesting videos online, (thank you Jane Bozarth!) which turned out to be marketing videos on the table's features, rather than helpful directions, and making suggestions based on engineering theory (Kevin Thorn, you're still my hero). Finally one of my friends who regularly puts together furniture from directions like this pointed out something in the picture that I hadn't seen before.  If you zoom in on the picture, you can see the slider is at the bottom.  Problem solved. Thank you Janet!

Five hours later, the desk was together. I was most grateful for the AC in the room and company of the pooch, who was content to nap nearby. I'm really pleased with how it came out, but more so what I learned about in doing this.

SO What does this have to do with Learning?

A lot, actually.

I discovered several things about the way we develop training and elearning in this process. There were four phases in getting the desk into my studio:

1. Getting it home
2. Getting it where I needed it
3. Putting it all together
4. Asking for help

Each has a parallel to developing training.

1. GETTING THE LESSON TO THE LEARNER
When we build stand-alone elearning, it's generally for a specific need. Perhaps there's a compliance regulation or some new initiative rolling out. Maybe there's some new software that people need to be prepared for. We get it to them, like I got my table home, but can they get to it? I've worked with some pretty dreadful LMS systems over the years and finding a course was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

LESSON ONE: Make sure your learning is readily discoverable.

2. GETTING THE LESSON WHERE THE LEARNER NEEDS IT
The second phase was getting the desk to where I needed it. The default place for lots of corporate training is the LMS, but if I have to log in and click past seventeen screens to get to it when I need it, it's not very useful is it? Perhaps your amazingly wonderful microlearning lessons belong somewhere other than the LMS. 

LESSON TWO: Support the performance where the learner needs it.
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​3. KNOW WHAT IT TAKES FOR A BEGINNER 
The third phase was putting it all together. There were some clear assumptions made by the technical artist who rendered the drawings for the directions. If you have the desk together, the pieces fit together just as they were shown. If you've done this kind of a thing a zillion times, you have the common sense to avoid the pitfalls. If you are a beginner, working to assemble the desk for the only time you'll be doing this task, you don't have that kind of perspective. In our training, we need to guide our learners step by step, providing hints and resources to ensure success.

 But success is not reading the directions in putting the desk together. It's using the desk. Similarly, for us, when we write training, the goal is not the completion of the training. The goal is the application on the job. Be sure that you are creating things that transfer to the real world. While compliance training often has a check the box to ensure completion, that is not the goal. The goal is awareness to ensure that learners comply with the rules. They need to know so they can do what they need to do.

LESSON THREE: Remember your learners are beginners. Help them learn so they can apply to the real world.

4. ASK FOR HELP
My final phase was asking for help with the task. I needed someone to help me get it into my car, my neighbor to help get it out of the car and upstairs and my friends to help me figure out how that goofy saw tooth piece fit. Each brought skills and perspective I didn't have. There are times that do-it-yourself learning makes sense, and we can support it with a job-aid, but sometimes collaboration and group work makes more sense for a learning initiative. We learn from each other when we work together. In most companies, people will go to other team members for help figuring things out. That's why we have coworkers. Foster environments where it's safe for people to ask for help. Allow for clarification of confusion. Learning together strengthens relationships and helps to build a team. 

LESSON FOUR: Asking for help and getting it is a good thing.

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The moral of the story

Tackle hard things, and watch yourself learning. It's good to understand what our learners go though to help craft better experiences for them.  In UX (User Experience), designers begin with empathy with the user as the work to solve the problem at hand. We should too, in our world of instructional design. Know your learners, and keep the overarching goal in the forefront. 

It's not about the content. It's about the learner meeting the goal. In they end, what will they know and be able to do as a result of the lessons you've developed?