Taking Inspiration from Instructional Design for Research
Summary
UX research takes plenty of inspiration from anthropology and design principles, but what about our friends in Instructional Design (ID)? Contrary to popular belief, ID is way more than creating school curriculums and offers a whole new perspective on what it means to drive truly meaningful insights. ID’s time- and lab-tested principles all drive towards creating measurable change in students (or users), and its lessons are easy to adapt into the user research world. In this session, you’ll learn about basic ID process and learning theory, how to apply that to research projects, and finally how ID can help you rethink the classic UX heuristics evaluation. By diversifying the disciplines we pull from, we’ll become stronger and more flexible researchers who can tackle any kind of problem
Key Insights
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Instructional design principles are highly relevant and valuable to user research processes.
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Bloom's taxonomy provides a useful framework for defining research goals focused on specific user behaviors rather than vague understanding.
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Reframing research goals to specify cognitive behavior levels (apply, evaluate, create) leads to clearer methods and stronger insights.
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Analyzing findings through cognitive dimensions helps prevent misunderstandings and misaligned stakeholder conclusions.
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Learning does not always progress linearly through Bloom’s levels; reverse or mixed sequences can strengthen learning outcomes.
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Complex tools like low-code platforms demand higher cognitive skills, especially creation, which increases the need for well-mapped learning journeys.
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Mapping user journeys as learning journeys reveals cognitive gaps and highlights where users struggle and compensate.
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Common instructional design mistakes reframe as UX issues, such as missing learning levels, wrong sequence, or overloaded information.
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Users often perform higher cognitive tasks as workarounds for gaps in lower-level learning supports, causing frustration and inefficiency.
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Incorporating instructional designers on UX projects fosters deeper collaboration and enriches research methods and outcomes.
Notable Quotes
"As researchers, our job is to explore behaviors which are driven by knowledge and make insights that can alter what our users learn and do."
"Instructional design is definitely not just teaching classes; most of the ways I’ve applied ID have been straight into UX."
"Bloom's taxonomy forces us to focus on what we can do with information, not just repeating it."
"In ID, practitioners try to never use the word understand in project goals because it’s too vague for actionable behaviors."
"Using cognitive dimensions to analyze findings helps clarify which recommendations to make and keeps us in the real problem context."
"Learning journeys don’t have to move through Bloom’s stages in order; sometimes you start with creation and go backward."
"Productive failure leverages the brain’s strong memory of struggle to support deeper learning."
"When a cognitive level is missing, users adapt by performing higher-level tasks as workarounds, which is exhausting."
"Removing vague terms like understand from research plans and focusing on specific enabled behaviors improves goal clarity."
"Including instructional designers in research projects creates strong partnerships and enriches question framing and study design."
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