With multitudes of educational apps, corporate e-learning and online degree programs to choose from, it is critical to maintain focus on designing experiences for how people actually learn.

At Studion, we're not just creating digital learning experiences to optimize short term usage metrics. Instead, our primary goal is for the learner to come away from the learning experience with new capabilities that are both retained and useful. In other words: digital learning should lead to real-world outcomes. Research shows that user experience (UX) directly impacts how well users learn, but it’s not enough to bring only standard UX practices to the table. You need a learning-centered user experience.

Over the past two decades, our UX discipline has evolved to encompass education theory, pedagogy, psychology and instructional design. This area, the intersection of user experience and learning design is called Learner Experience Design or "LXD."

Here are our top 10 LXD best practices for designing engaging digital learning experiences that scale.

1. People learn better from a combination of text and visuals. No rocket science needed here, but testing shows that people learn better when text is complemented with visuals which could be illustrations, diagrams, video, audio, pictures, charts and animation.

2. Avoid distractions and cluttered interfaces. Research has shown that users tend to get lost when tangential or extraneous information is added. An example could be background or ambient music that’s playing behind the content.

3. Connect learning to the learner's prior knowledge or lived experiences. Learning in the context of a futuristic sci-fi world or game-like application would make it that much harder for users to connect to a real-world application. Select scenarios and settings natural to the learner.

4. Create space within the interface for feedback. It’s important to incorporate space for answers and feedback in proximity to the questions they're referring to.

5. Provide learners with control. It’s important to let learners control their pace, control video and audio levels, and allow them to review prior content. Studies show that advanced students can even be allowed to control the sequence of the curriculum.

6. Provide tools based on the type of activity. Different types of learning activities warrant different types of tools. Activities or interactions that take place over time or require research might benefit from group forums or boards whereas activities such as group interactions or social presence might utilize chat or live classroom sessions.

7. Don’t separate related content. Research has shown that users respond better when related text and image are in proximity to one another. This sounds obvious, but many designers find this aesthetically challenging.

8. Graphics should be relevant, not just fancy decorations. Designers naturally want to compliment content with relevant graphics and imagery. Tests have shown that too many graphics leads to cognitive overload which eats into the user's processing energy. Better to keep things minimalistic.

9. Use animation to teach physical procedures and static imagery to teach processes. From an early age, humans have been taught to learn motor skills from observation. In contrast, understanding processes requires most to go at their own pace, thus a series of static images is more successful.

10. Humanize the instructional content. Research has shown that humans like learning from other humans . Real people–live or on video–or even human-like characters and chatbots can help people learn.

While these are our top 10 recommended LXD best practices, there’s more to designing a digital learning experience that achieves both engagement and scale simultaneously while also ensuring real-world impact. Learn about our 5-part framework for achieving High Engagement at ScaleⓇ in digital learning.

This blog post was originally published on April 15, 2014. It was last updated on November 1, 2024.