CHAPTER 14

Innovative Design: Uncovering the Art of the Possible

Brian Washburn

Reel-to-reel movies in theaters eventually turned into Beta tapes (briefly), then VHS tapes for home entertainment in the 1980s, which turned into DVDs in the 1990s, which eventually turned into streaming videos that we can watch on our TV, computer, or smartphone, or embed into a PowerPoint presentation.

This simplified chronology of innovation in the way we have experienced film. While the end result of innovation and innovative design can be cool and useful and lead to other changes, it also requires time, iteration, the willingness to fail, the ability to pick oneself up and dust off the failure, the desire to figure out what lessons can be learned, and then more iteration.

What Is “Innovative Design”?

Innovation can oftentimes be synonymous with cool products that we may not have known we needed, but we sure like when we’re exposed to them. (Think about the way Steve Jobs sold iPhones to us when our flip phones were perfectly adequate!) Sometimes we don’t even realize that it is happening right in front of us, but the end result of innovative design can make life better, more convenient, and perhaps lead to more innovations in different fields.

Before we go too far into the question of why and how you may want to bring innovation into your learning program, let’s first define the terms design and innovative design.

For the purposes of this chapter, the term design represents an intentional approach to a learning initiative that includes:

•  A sequence and flow of learning activities intended to meet the learning objectives

•  An appropriate delivery medium (such as in-person, virtual, self-directed, blended, a job aid, or a resource on a company-wide intranet)

Innovative design is using a new, unique, or unexpected approach in your design process.

When it comes to innovative design in the learning space, we’re not always referring to the latest technology. As you’ll see, innovative design can be the unexpected introduction of analog materials such as Play-Doh into a learning experience.

Can Anyone Be Innovative in Their Design?

“I don’t know what you want me to say. Quality assurance is a boring topic. At the end of the day, the lab techs just need to know the information. I don’t do ‘touchy feely’ with my training.”

I had just finished an initial conversation with our organization’s vice president of quality assurance (QA), who was preparing to deliver a new QA training program on inspecting and conducting a mock audit of our eye bank’s laboratory. He had his own idea of what had worked for him in the past and wasn’t very interested in my suggested changes or innovations on his program.

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard an objection from someone I had been asked to coach and help create a more engaging training program. Any time a new or different approach to a task is introduced, especially when people think they’ve been doing just fine with their traditional approach, questions will arise. Questions should arise.

One of those questions is, “Can anyone be innovative when it comes to putting together learning programs?” What about subject matter experts whose primary roles have nothing to do with training or instructional design? What about people who want to create something using a unique or unexpected design, but just don’t think they’re very creative?

The answer is an unqualified yes, although it can take some time to get used to a different way of doing things.

In the example above, I spent significant time talking with and coaching our QA VP to move away from his traditional PowerPoint-based lecture and toward a session in which QA trainees were up and doing something. Even though we’d need to conduct this training in a hotel ballroom, there were ways we could re-create the lab environment.

As we talked more about this idea and what could be possible, he realized we could bring lab materials into the ballroom and have trainees inspect them for any items that were beyond their expiration dates. We could take photos of things in the lab that were out of place or just a little off, make posters out of these photos, and hang them around the training environment to simulate (as best we could) a lab inspection and audit.

When we finally launched this training program and the VP saw the engagement of the participants, listened to the questions they asked, and observed the behaviors of the trainees in the simulated environment, he completely bought in to this more innovative design approach. He would go on to write a blog post reflecting on this experience, saying:

While anyone can grow more innovative in their learning design, another question that needs to be asked is, should anyone be innovative in their design?

The answer to this second question is a more qualified yes.

In some instances, time is of the essence and good enough will have to be good enough. In other situations, there is a very good reason to continue to do things the way they’ve always been done and innovation just for innovation’s sake won’t add value. In fact, it can lead to resentment from those who originally created a program and have seen evidence of its effectiveness.

If an innovative approach to design can boost learner engagement, increase the possibility of accomplishing learner objectives, and improve training outcomes, then innovative design should absolutely be applied to the initiative.

What Does Innovative Design Look Like?

Innovative design comes in many shapes and sizes, including slight tweaks or major updates to existing programs, quick and easy solutions applied to new content, or even unique approaches brought into multiweek or multimonth courses that are built from the ground up.

Let’s look at several real-world examples to help illustrate the range of innovative design approaches.

Example 1: A Minor Facelift With an Unexpected Material

A tire manufacturing company had been training sales representatives for years on how their tires were made and what made their tires unique by using a series of technical drawings that appeared on slides. Several experienced trainers and content experts agreed that the slides were critical because they very clearly explained the components of a tire. However, while the slides were conveying the technical tire information, even the trainers acknowledged that it was difficult to tell if the sales trainees were grasping or retaining it.

The information about how tires were constructed and what made them unique was only part of the multiday training program, but it seemed foundational to any practice sales conversations and role-play activities that took place later in the session. So the training team decided to try replacing the PowerPoint-based technical presentation with a shorter technical presentation and a hands-on activity in which participants were asked to use technical drawings to construct their own tires using Play-Doh (with different colors representing different layers in the tire). Participants were then asked to explain their models to the group.

This was initially met with skepticism by the tire manufacturing company. “Hold on a minute. You’re trying to tell me you’re going to ask a group of 50- and 60-year-old salespeople who have been in this industry for 30 and 40 years to play with Play-Doh during our training program?”

However, after taking part in a pilot version of this updated activity, skepticism gave way to an appreciation of the effectiveness of this approach. One member of the internal training team put it this way: “When I first heard that we were going to use Play-Doh, I was borderline offended. We’re not preschoolers. But when I experienced that activity, I don’t see how people wouldn’t learn the components of our tires. They had to re-create a tire, and then they had to explain what each layer of their Play-Doh model represented. This is clearly one of the most effective training activities in our entire program.”

Example 2: Circumstances Require Converting From In-Person to Virtual

A regional chain of skilled-care facilities used a popular leadership development program to bring executives and high-performing employees from across their locations together for a week-long series of courses and networking activities. Visiting the headquarters and engaging with peers and organizational leadership was a high point for the participants. When the COVID-19 pandemic eliminated the possibility of bringing cohorts together in person, the learning team realized they needed to innovate on their delivery medium—they needed to take it from in-person to virtual—while maintaining the quality and popularity of the established program.

The content needed to remain exactly the same, but the design, sequence, and flow could not. Nobody had the stomach to sit through several back-to-back-to-back days’ worth of online instruction, and it would be impractical given that situations would arise in their facility and they would likely need to respond. The first innovation in the design was to create a multiweek program in which leadership development sessions would take place in two-hour time blocks, several days each week. While the previous iteration of the program could be completed in just a few days, this new version required a commitment from participants and organizational leadership for up to two months.

The next area in which innovative design could be applied was in modifying activities for virtual delivery. Anchor activities were introduced at the beginning of each session to find ways for participants to quickly relate to the topic at hand, make connections with their peers, and limit the likelihood of participant boredom and multitasking. Virtual breakout rooms replaced small group table discussions. Some presentations from department heads were recorded and posted to the learning management system. Web-based game platforms (such as Kahoot and an online prize wheel) replaced traditional PowerPoint-based learning activities.

Of course, innovation doesn’t yield perfect results every time and not everyone appreciates the changes that it brings. There were times during the initial launch of this program when the breakout rooms did not work, and the program organizers did notice some drop-off from participants. On the other hand, scores of new leaders were exposed to key leadership concepts that were central to the organization’s intentional efforts at building a culture of leadership development, and post-training evaluation scores were on par with the in-person version of the program.

Example 3: A New Approach to a Conventional Handout Changed an Entire Training Program

An experienced group of salespeople was being asked to sell a service for the first time. While they were quite comfortable and had a lot of confidence in the products they were selling and had received a wealth of information about the new services, the salespeople were skeptical about whether selling a new service to their existing customers would ultimately be good for them.

To assess the needs of the learners, the program manager created a conventional checklist for trainees, asking questions such as, “Are you comfortable discussing services with your customers?” and “Do your customers like talking about their business?” The manager also compiled some information about the new service that could be used in the training program.

A team of instructional designers looked at the checklist and other existing materials and thought they could be useful. The real problem to be solved with this training program, however, was not increasing the team’s knowledge about the new service, but rather addressing members hesitancy to sell a new service in addition to their conventional products.

To address this problem, the instructional design team chose to put the whole idea of selling a service on trial. It converted the checklist that the program manager had developed into a jury summons, complete with a questionnaire for the “jurors” (training participants) to fill out when they entered the room (Figure 14-1).

Continuing the court theme from this initial handout, the half-day training session was designed to allow the participants to determine if this new service they were going to be asked to sell was innocent or guilty of helping them as salespeople. Actors were hired and filmed to play the role of the prosecutor and the defense attorney, and the trainer for the session played the role of judge, facilitating the experience and laying out the parameters for the juror participants to render their verdict.

While it can be a challenge to come up with new or original ways to present material, finding an appropriate theme (in this case, putting an idea on trial and using a court theme throughout) can help give structure to your ideas and guide the design of a learning program from start to finish.

Example 4: A Major Overhaul to Existing New Employee Orientation

A rapidly growing global health organization found itself needing to orient an increasing number of newly hired employees to its culture and to the other departments of the organization. Hiring managers began to raise concerns about the existing new employee orientation program. They questioned the value to their new employees and the impression they received by the familiar formula of parading one department representative after another in front of new employees to talk at them for two hours at a time, for three straight days.

A small team of instructional designers wondered if they could turn their new employee orientation program into an immersive learning experience. What they came up with was a two-day program inspired by the original Jumanji movie. The first day and a half was used to introduce new employees to each department across the organization through a series of short games representing the work of each department and then a short Q&A session with a department representative.

For example, the department that handles sensitive communication (which needs to be edited or redacted before it can be shared) was represented by a game that used an e-learning authoring tool to challenge new employees to identify and try their hand at redacting sensitive or personal information. The department responsible for quick medical procedures featured an activity using a modified version of the board game Operation to give new employees a sense for how steady one needs to keep their hands while rapidly conducting the procedure.

Each small group accumulated points through successfully completing the games and challenges representing each department. For the final half day of this program, all participants came together in a cooperative game inspired by Settlers of Catan, in which they could exchange their accumulated points for resources and work together in a simulation representing the global nature of the organization’s mission.

The revamped new employee orientation program was piloted, certain activities were adjusted, and then it was launched for all new hires. Hiring managers who had been reluctant to send their new employees to the previous version of new employee orientation were now not only sending their employees but also requesting that they themselves be their respective department’s representative during the brief Q&A portion.

The new design also reduced the duration of the new employee orientation from three to two days.

What Do These Examples Have in Common?

By their very nature, the things that make design innovative cannot be prescribed or formulaic. There is no simple structure or algorithm that will allow you to replicate innovative design over and over again (otherwise it would just turn into something routine and mass producible, which is the opposite of innovative). There are, however, some common threads among these four examples that can be studied and can help with future attempts at innovation:

•  Begin with a challenge or a problem. Innovative design is intended to find ways to boost the engagement and effectiveness of a learning solution.

•  Brainstorm possible solutions. Whether you call it brainstorming, ideation, or simply thinking, the more ideas and possible ways to address a challenge or problem that you’re able to generate, the more options you’ll have at your disposal. As Nordgren and Lucas (2021) point out, “Prior research has shown that people’s first ideas are rarely their most creative. Coming up with just one breakthrough idea typically requires a lengthy brainstorming process, in which you generate and iterate on a large pool of potential options before finally reaching your most creative idea.” If you’re stuck, it can be extremely helpful to talk with a colleague to help kick-start some new ideas. All the examples in this chapter involved more than one person coming up with ideas and possible solutions.

•  Pick one idea. Coming up with ideas is the fun part, but narrowing in on one idea and honing it to a workable solution can be a lot of work. This is also where doubts can creep in. Is using Play-Doh with extremely experienced professionals a good idea? What if the cool feature on the e-learning module breaks? What if we try a learning game in front of a group and it isn’t as well received as we’d hoped? When it comes to applying innovative design, you can’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and you can’t succumb to analysis paralysis. Choose a path, put it together as best as possible, then try it out. That’s the only way you’ll actually be able to answer any of these questions.

•  Test your idea (ideally in a low-stakes environment). Getting your idea out of your own head and putting it in front of other people to use, poke holes in, test, break, or otherwise play with is an important step, and it’s not for the faint of heart. You will get feedback, and that feedback may not always be positive. Ideally, you’ll be able to test your ideas with a small group in a low-pressure situation (such as bringing a few trusted colleagues into a conference room and doing a dry run with them). If you can focus on listening to feedback and avoid being defensive about your choices, the lessons you learn from this test will be invaluable in refining your innovative ideas.

•  Iterate. Don’t assume you’ll have everything right the first time. The reason you test is to find out what doesn’t work, not necessarily to prove that it does work. Having the mindset that changes, revisions, and iterations can make your ideas even better will be something you’ll want to embrace.

How Can You Develop Your Innovative Muscles?

Just like going to the gym regularly can help you to build, tone, and maintain strong muscles in your body, you’ll also need to work out your innovative design muscles on a regular basis if you want to be successful in this approach to learning program design. Be sure to check the handout on this handbook’s website (ATDHandbook3.org), which provides a guide for developing an innovative learning event. In addition, here are several practices you can adopt to help build your innovative design muscles.

Look Around, With Intention

There’s an old saying: There are no new ideas, just recycled ones. That rings particularly true for several of this chapter’s examples of innovative design, which were inspired by experiences that happen to people in the course of their regular day. Using Play-Doh, receiving a jury summons, or watching the movie Jumanji led to some unique training applications. The potential for everyday experiences to turn into inspiration for innovative design might be lost unless you begin to walk through the world with an instructional designer’s lens on.

For example, think about transferable design applications you can glean from any of the following routine activities:

•  Visit a museum. Pay attention to the way curators organize exhibits in a museum (particularly children’s museums or museums where there are more interactive exhibits).

•  Play a game. Whether you’re playing a card game, a board game, or a computer game, there are mechanics at play that keep players coming back time and again. Don’t just limit yourself to games like Jeopardy! or Trivial Pursuit. Find some new games and compare the mechanics and player experiences in competitive versus cooperative games. Visit a thrift shop and buy several kids’ games or pick games from your kids’ shelves. Pay attention to how easy or hard the game is to play. What makes you want to keep playing the game? Keep in mind that complex games with lots of rules may prove less inspiring for a training session.

•  Have coffee. Sometimes it’s fun to simply connect with someone over coffee. Ask them what they’re working on (regardless of their profession), and you may hear something that inspires a new solution to your latest training challenge.

•  Pay attention to signs and fliers. Perhaps your innovative training solution is a resource, not a course. You can find examples of job aids being used without needing to formally train anyone at grocery stores (think self-checkout aisles and information about how to insert your credit card properly in the payment machine), at restaurants (QR codes that bring up the menu on your smartphone), and even in public bathrooms (signage that shows how to properly wash your hands).

Inspiration for innovative design is all around us as long as we’re looking with intention.

Get Out of the Learning and Development Space

There are so many good resources within the learning and development community—this book certainly being one of them. Other resources include a membership with the national or local ATD chapter, attending conferences, reading industry publications, attending webinars, reading blogs, or listening to podcasts. If we rely solely on the learning and development community for our education and information, however, we’ll be missing out on a whole world of potential inspiration.

Here are several other industries from which we can draw inspiration and creativity for innovative design approaches:

•  Marketing and advertising. Experienced training professional Mike Taylor spends a lot of time advocating for L&D professionals to pay close attention to the world of marketing and advertising. Think of how difficult it is to motivate people to act based on what they see on a billboard as they drive 60 miles per hour in their car, or how difficult it is to persuade someone to buy your product in a 30-second message. Yet marketers and advertisers are extremely effective at doing this. Our slide design, our e-learning design, and the way in which we hook people into our content can stand to take a lesson or two from the world of marketing and advertising.

•  Art and fashion. Perhaps you don’t quite understand what a Jackson Pollock painting portrays or why someone would spend more than $3,000 on a Louis Vuitton petite malle souple (that’s a purse), but many famous artists and designers got where they are because they pushed boundaries and tapped into the emotions of their audience.

•  Brain science. This can be an intimidating area in which to stick your nose, but having a greater understanding for how people’s brains are wired and how they learn goes to the heart of innovating effectively. Making sure our learning programs adhere to what the science says works can limit our risk of creating something that’s simply a fad or rooted in ineffective pseudoscience.

•  Business. Learning and development doesn’t exist in a vacuum; we’re usually helping people do their jobs better and more effectively to improve business outcomes. Understanding more about the world of business in general is helpful, and understanding more about the industries in which we operate is essential. It’s very difficult to respond to skepticism about the use of Play-Doh in a training program if we can’t attach it to a business problem or goal. Learning theory can be important, but business leaders won’t respond if you can only use the language of adult learning theory in the same way as do your L&D peers.

Final Thoughts

Many people design their own training based on the way they themselves have been trained. This too often has a heavy emphasis on PowerPoint-based lectures. When we’re able to apply innovative design to training programs, we are not only finding unique and unexpected ways for our learners to discover new content and practice new skills, but we’re also opening their eyes to what’s possible when it comes to training design.

What’s possible may include shiny new technologies, but it doesn’t have to. You’ll notice that none of the examples cited in this chapter involved mobile learning, augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, or other cutting-edge technologies. To be sure, the appropriate integration of any of those would represent innovative design, but you shouldn’t feel that innovation is synonymous with technology.

I often design train-the-trainer and presentation skills training sessions that intentionally avoid the use of PowerPoint to demonstrate that it’s possible to conduct an effective and engaging training without the use of slides. A training program without slides? Now that’s innovative!

Sometimes a new approach to training design works well. Those times should be celebrated. Sometimes a new approach will flop. Those instances should be examined, questioned, treated as a learning experience, and, if you’re convinced that it’s still the correct approach, iterated.

Thomas Edison didn’t get the light bulb to work on his first attempt. Steve Jobs didn’t pull off the Mac overnight. We won’t get everything right the first time either, but when we apply innovative design (and iterate until we get it right), we unlock a whole new world of learning possibilities.

About the Author

Brian Washburn is co-founder and CEO of Endurance Learning, a boutique instructional design firm specializing in innovative solutions to all sorts of training challenges. He is also the co-creator of Soapbox, the first rapid design tool for instructor-led training. Prior to launching Endurance Learning, Brian spent most of his career in the nonprofit sector, finding ways to use engaging, effective learning to assist foster children in finding safe, permanent homes, to help youth achieve their GED credentials, and to eliminate corneal blindness around the world. Brian is the author of the book What’s Your Formula? Combine Learning Elements for Impactful Training and hosts a weekly podcast called Train Like You Listen. Brian can be reached at [email protected].

References

Nordgren, L., and B. Lucas. 2021. Your Best Ideas Are Often Your Last Ideas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review.

Recommended Resources

Duarte, N. 2010. Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Linker, J. 2021. Big Little Breakthroughs: How Small, Everyday Innovations Drive Oversized Results. Nashville, TN: Post Hill Press.

Washburn, B. 2021. What’s Your Formula? Combine Learning Elements for Impactful Training. Alexandria, VA: ATD Press.