Past the screen
Instructional design is about the content. Learning Experience design is about everything around the content — the moment the learner arrives, the device they hold, what happens between sessions, what they take back to their job. LX widens the lens.
By the end of this unit- Build a working learner persona that is useful, not decorative.
- Map a learner journey across before, during, and after the course.
- Apply a five-step LX design framework to your next project.
The shift
Asks: what does the learner need to know, and how do we sequence the content?
Outputs: storyboards, screens, assessments.
Asks: what is the learner's whole experience, from the email that announces the course to the conversation with their manager three months later?
Outputs: personas, journeys, touchpoints, content — and the bits in between.
Personas
A persona is a working description of one kind of learner. It is not a job title or a demographic. It is a person who could walk into the room. If you cannot picture them, the persona is not done.
What goes in a working persona
Name and one-line summary
"Sara, secondary teacher, five years in, just had her first paid CPD day."
Context and constraints
Where she does the course. When. With what bandwidth, what device, what time pressure.
What she already knows
Specific. Not "some experience". What can she already do, what tools has she already used?
What she wants from this
In her own words, not the project brief's. "I want one new thing I can use in Monday's lesson."
What would make her quit
The friction. Long log-ins, the wrong tone, content that assumes she has a desktop.
Build two personas, not seven. Two forces you to choose. Seven turns into wallpaper that nobody reads.
Persona traps
The stock-photo persona
The wishlist persona
The "all our learners" persona
The learner journey
The screen is one of many touchpoints. The journey covers everything before, during and after. Map it and you will see where the course actually breaks — and it is rarely on the screens.
Three phases, one map
Before
How does the learner find out? What expectations do they arrive with? How do they sign in? What is the cost in time and attention before the first piece of learning?
During
Inside the course: the screens, the practice, the feedback, the people they encounter, the platform's quirks. Most of ID lives here. Most failures do not.
After
What does the learner do with this back in their job? Who reinforces it? What does the manager ask about? What changes a month later?
Touchpoints worth mapping
- The email or message that announces the course.
- The first 60 seconds after they log in.
- The point where most learners drop off.
- The moment they finish the last screen.
- Anything from you that arrives in the following month.
Pick a course you have shipped. Where in the journey is the experience weakest? It is unlikely to be on a screen.
The LX design framework
Five steps, applied in order. None of them are optional. They are not stages — they are loops you can revisit when something downstream changes.
Discover
Talk to learners and to the people who set the brief. Find out what they think the problem is. Then find out what the problem actually is.
Define
Write the persona. Write the journey. Write the outcomes you will be measured on. Push back on the brief here, not later.
Design
Storyboard the experience, not just the screens. Plan the touchpoints. Spec the assets. This is where the LX widens past traditional ID.
Develop
Build. Test on a real learner from your persona. Cut whatever the test shows is in the way.
Deliver and learn
Launch, watch what happens, talk to the learners afterwards. Feed the lessons into the next project. The work does not end at launch.
This framework is a cousin of ADDIE (Analyse, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate). The two big shifts in LX are widening "analyse" into "discover" and treating the post-launch phase as design work rather than reporting.
Which framework step is the one most often skipped under deadline pressure — and the one that costs most when skipped?
End of Unit 4
You should now be able to:
- Write a working persona that has constraints, context and a real ask.
- Map a learner journey across before, during and after the course.
- Apply Discover-Define-Design-Develop-Deliver as a working framework.
Unit review
What is the main shift from ID to LX?
A persona that says "managers in mid-sized organisations" is:
Where is the journey most often weak?
Which step in the LX framework is treated as design work, not just reporting?
End of course
You have completed the four-course Foundations pack. The microlearning units, skills and prompts in this folder turn what you have learned into daily working tools.