The experience economy, a term coined back in 1999 by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, is a specific approach that uses experiences to connect with customers and secure their loyalty. It is with the use of memorable and impactful experiences that brands are able to find their ways into their customers’ hearts and budgets. Experiences are what drives us as people. We want to understand new concepts and ideas from our own perspective. This is no different in learning and development. The idea of “learning by doing” has transformed and developed into an entire discipline of “experiential learning” and how it enables learners to see firsthand how their training applies to their work. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why any experiences are great in practical terms, or without reflecting on the emotions that are inherently tied to it. Why would an experience cause someone to associate certain emotions with it? Getting to the “why” of any learning experience is exactly what learning experience design focuses on.

A learning experience can be thought of as any interaction, course, program, or other places where learning occurs. In the traditional work environment, learning would occur during on-the-job training or through other onsite training courses offered by a company. Learning experience design (LXD) is a framework used to create unique learning experiences that help learners achieve the learning outcomes they desire. L&D managers are now focusing on LX Design because of their commitment to delivering the subject matter to learners in the best way possible. With LXD, you are helping transform the delivery of training programs, reimagining how, when, and where learning can be best consumed.

Many educators would tell you that instructional design is the true discipline when it comes to creating learning materials. While the two are very similar in their end-goal of producing learning material, there are some general differences. Instructional design uses a process called ADDIE, an acronym which stands for analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation. LXD utilizes the design thinking principles which puts more emphasis on empathizing with the user/learner while having a continuous iterative approach that requires testing. In summary, learning experience design combines aspects of instructional design, educational pedagogy, neuroscience, user psychology, design thinking, user experience design to develop tailored content to the target audience based on their behaviors and preferences.  

Now that you have the idea of the concept behind learning experience design, it’s time to put together a plan of action to start implementing LXD into your learning and training programs. As with many projects, it all starts with knowing the goals of both the project and the user. However, with LXD we need to thoroughly research our learners to empathize with their pain points, understand his or her needs, and finally, define and ideate in a cross-functional team to ensure that each step of the process is thoroughly researched and examined before implementing.  This is where we focus on details of the design aspect and how to incorporate it into the desired experience we want the learner to have.