10 good questions for any instructional designer

I’ve worked with instructional design more than usual over the past few weeks, and frequently, this meant being able to stop and ask lots of questions. Some of them ended up in e-mails to authors, instructional designers, and digital producers (if you’ve been affected, apologies!). Others I’ve started writing down for myself. They led to more questions, as is often the case.

Here, in no particular order (apart from No. 1), are ten good questions which any instructional designer can ask themselves – and ten reasons why I like asking them when working with ID projects. Feel free to adapt, riff, share, and question the questions!

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1. Why does this have to exist?

The initial “why” deserves to be big, Simon Sinek-style big. Don’t settle for “because my employer / publisher / client wants this.” Go bigger. What is the reason for building this course, this interaction, this question? Who needs it, and why do they need it?

2. / 3. Who is this for? / What are they like?

Any good needs analysis must include a version of this question. A really good analysis pairs Q2 and Q3 together, in my view. If you tell me to design something for young adult English exam takers in Brazil, I’m going to need more answers. What are they like? Can you tell me about their day, their ambitions, their activities, their energy levels?

4. How do you want them changed?

Paulo Freire’s vision of learning sums it up nicely:

Problem-posing education affirms (people) as beings in the process of becoming – as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality.

How do you want your work to shape this “becoming”? What change are you hoping for? And are the answers to this question in line with what you determined for Q1-Q3 above?

5. How will you know it is working?

For this one, get as surgical or as qualitative as you prefer. Some instructional design work will be tied to assessment, so your indicators are right there. For others, you may need to rely on more informal feedback. But please get an answer if you can, and share the answer with others so they know they’re not building in vain.

6. Who is left out by what you’re building?

There are nicer ways of approaching this question, and more positive stories you can tell yourself about diversity, inclusion and equity. But if you’re already working with learning, then the time for lofty debates might be over. In its current shape, who are you leaving behind? And with the time / effort you have left, how many of these groups can you get back on board?

7. How usable will this be in X years’ time?

Look, I know that 2020 made a fool of anyone trying to predict the future (not that we were ever any good at this). And I realise that your current project might only serve a specific, time-restricted need. But what if it’s really good? What if 10 years from now, your course on workplace safety is still 95% awesome and usable – except it can’t be prised away from a completely outdated platform?

8. Where are the outsiders who can help you out?

This one came to my mind as I watched a working relationship between my wife (who translated a book) and her editor (who sent thousands of queries and edits with the manuscript). Getting another perspective on something as intimate as teaching and learning is invaluable – just as it is with seeing someone else read a sentence closely. Since you can no longer “get out of the building” easily in lockdown – how will you get others to sense-check your work?

9. How can I make this more graceful?

There has been one occasion in recent times when I felt compelled to e-mail someone and praise them for the work they did on an instructional design project. The reason for this was hard to express back then, but now I think I can sum it up in one adjective: graceful. The work was done, that’s for sure. But it also got done in style; it used its medium well, and didn’t over-deliver for the sake of “being interactive”. This one is likely to take years to perfect…

10. If there’s only going to be one takeaway for the learners – what will it be?

This is where the lofty ideals of instructional design meet the cold, hard earth filled with tired people who are too distracted to pay attention to 9 out of 10 things you so gracefully present to them. Heck, the previous sentence is probably too long for many of us to read these days. So where’s your key stuff – the one thing without which the rest makes no sense? Where’s the bulletpoint that saves workers’ lives/toes/fingers? Where’s the difference between due dilligence and expensive lawsuits; between PASS and FAIL? And have you made yourself inescapably clear when delivering this?

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I hope these ten ideas got you thinking about your top ten list. If you’re curious why this post is structured in this way, feel free to check out what inspired it.