The following is a guest post by Cherryl Pereira, Head of Content at Chisel Labs
User experience is a huge concern for many businesses. People are more demanding than ever before, meaning that they will only do business with companies that meet their high expectations of quality and design.
The instructional design carries the same weight in regards to user experience because it affects how people navigate through your website or app.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the relationship between user experience and instructional design.
But first, we need to understand what exactly is instructional design and user experience.
Introduction To User Experience (UX)
What Is Instructional Design?
Relation Between User Experience (UX) and Instructional Design (ID)
Difference Between User Experience and Instructional Design
Final Words
Introduction to user experience (UX)
User experience is a process of enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving usability, ease of use, and pleasure.
That is provided in the interaction between the user and the product. In other words, it is all about making sure that a person’s interaction with a system is both effective and satisfying.
UX design has become an important aspect of web design because it can make or break a website’s success.
User experience focuses on how users feel when they interact with your product. It considers everything from how easy it is to navigate your site to how pleasurable it is to use your buttons and icons.
The ultimate goal of good UX design is to create a positive emotional response in users, which will encourage them to come back again and again.
Read More: How Usability Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
UX Designers should be involved from the beginning stages of product development so they can consider how human factors will impact all aspects of its function. Also including other members on your team throughout each step ensures better coordination with others who have different roles within an organization or project.
Involving everybody leads to more successful outcomes. Because it makes sure that all potential issues get considered before you reach launch day. Having dedicated time together allows teams to build strong relationships which help everyone contribute efficiently towards shared goals at every stage.
Examples of user experience
One of the best examples of User Experience is Apple. You don’t need to know anything about computers, you just pick up an iPhone and use it without any problem.
Another company that provides an excellent user experience is Zappos. The company ensures great customer service with fast deliveries even for items ordered at midnight or on weekends.
What is instructional design?
Instructional design is the process of creating, writing, and developing any form of instruction for an audience including end-users or learners. Instructional Designers create learning materials that help people learn new skills and knowledge in their fields.
The instructional designer typically works with subject matter experts (SMEs) like doctors, teachers, engineers, and more to understand what kind of training they require along with the level at which they need this training.
Through research work done by them, instructional designers come up with appropriate methods of communicating information such as purposeful presentation style, use of visual aids among other things.
They also decide how best to assess how well learners have learned by introducing different assessment methods. The goal of instructional design is to create an effective and efficient learning experience for the end-user or learner.
Instructional design is the process of designing and developing instructional materials.
This includes everything from deciding what content to include, how it will be presented to learners, to how well they have learned once the material is complete. Instructional designers work with a variety of clients including businesses, schools, government organizations, and more.
The field of instructional design has exploded in recent years due to the growing need for eLearning solutions. eLearning refers to any learning that takes place outside of a traditional classroom setting.
It can include anything from online courses and tutorials to simulations and games. With so much information now available online, it is more important than ever for instructional designers to create engaging and effective eLearning experiences.
Examples of instructional design
Microlearning is one of the best examples of instructional design. It is a type of learning that delivers small and concise chunks of information, usually in the form of videos or articles.
This type of learning is perfect for modern-day learners who are always on the go and have little time to spare. Microlearning helps them learn new concepts quickly and efficiently without having to invest too much time or energy into it.
Interactivity is another example of instructional design. The most effective way to deliver information is by making it interactive and engaging for the learners, so they stay motivated throughout the learning process.
Today’s modern-day tools make it easy to create highly interactive courses that are based on an array of multimedia elements such as text, images, sound effects, or videos
Another example of instructional design is gamification. Gamification uses game mechanics such as points, levels, and badges to engage learners and motivate them to learn more.
It is particularly effective with younger audiences who are typically more interested in playing games than sitting through traditional lectures or lessons. Gamification can make learning fun and exciting while still providing valuable educational content.
Relation between user experience (UX) and instructional design (ID)
Though there are many differences between the two concepts, UX and ID are linked in a way that they both have the same objective of making products better for users.
To keep up with the fast-changing technology, UX and ID must work together as one team to find appropriate solutions for their client’s needs.
In the modern world, today time is money. Companies are looking out for speedy results from design projects so that they can focus on other aspects of business operations.
This makes it more important than ever before that there should be a clear understanding of what’s required by a client. Based on that, you can go ahead with designing an effective solution.
This will ultimately result in a positive user experience at minimal cost within the time frame using cutting-edge technologies available now or those expected soon enough to come around future-proof systems.
User experience is not just about making things look good, it’s about creating an environment where the user feels like they’re in control and that their needs are being considered at all times. Good user experience design takes into account a user’s feelings, emotions, and reactions to a product or service.
The goal is to make sure that users have a positive interaction with the product or service from start to finish. By understanding what makes users happy, companies can create designs that keep customers coming back for more.
The first link between UX and ID is in the name. While Instructional design deals with how to instruct people, User experience deals with improving a person’s feeling towards an item or service.
The second link between UX and ID is credibility. A good ID project is based on research, user testing, and feedback. UX designers also look at who their target audience will be, what they need the product or service to do for them, how it works in comparison with competitors’ products or services.
Both Instructional design professionals and User experience designers are responsible for creating engaging experiences that keep users coming back again and again.
The third link between UX and ID is when you come across a poorly designed system. Either instructional design has failed or the user-experience designer didn’t have enough time to create an optimal interface. Both professions work together closely to bring out great content within all systems no matter how complex they might seem initially.
Now that we learned about the two concepts in detail, it’s time to understand the relationship between them.
Difference between user experience and instructional design
The first major distinction is that instructional design focuses on designing interventions to teach or improve a specific skill, while user experience centers around understanding how people interact with a system to make it more effective and satisfying for them.
In other words, instructional designers focus on what users should do, while UX professionals focus on what users want.
Another difference between these two disciplines has to do with their goals. Instructional designers typically aim to achieve certain objectives or outcomes within a learning environment (e.g., increased comprehension, mastery of skills), whereas UX professionals strive to create positive emotions in users (e.g., pleasure, satisfaction) and to remove as many negative emotions from users’ experiences as possible.
The next distinction between the two concepts is that instructional design is a field of practice, whereas UX refers to an aspect that can be applied across multiple disciplines.
One more difference is that instructional design is often prescriptive, meaning that it includes a set of recommendations or guidelines for creating effective instructional materials. UX, on the other hand, is more descriptive and typically focuses on understanding users’ current experiences and designing solutions based on what has been learned.
The final distinction between instructional design and UX has to do with their respective target audiences. Instructional designers primarily focus on learners (or end-users).
UX professionals consider all stakeholders involved in a user’s experience, including developers, managers, executives, and so on.
Finally, instructional designers are often concerned with the functional level of users’ experiences (e.g., how efficiently do learners comprehend content?). While UX professionals focus on the emotional impact created by their work to make user lives better and more enjoyable.
Final words
In conclusion, user experience and instructional design have a lot in common but they also differ greatly from each other.
To create an effective learning environment for our learners, we need to understand the differences between these two disciplines very well.
Cherryl Pereira is the Head of Content at Chisel. Chisel Labs is a premiere agile product management software company that brings together roadmapping, team alignment, and customer connection.
