Author: Hazel Dale – Senior Learning Manager, Embed

What human-centered learning design actually means – and why it changes outcomes

“Human-centered design” gets used a lot in learning. It sounds right but often ends up meaning very different things in practice.

So, it’s worth being clear about what it means to us at Embed – and what it doesn’t.

Firstly, it shouldn’t be about aesthetics – human-centered design shouldn’t be about making learning look good or feel friendly. It’s about designing everything – the format, content, pace, language, and assessment – around the person experiencing it.

Their context.

Their beliefs.

The environment they work in.

What will make them engage – and what will make them switch off.

Content-centered design starts with the subject.

Human-centered design starts with the learner and asks: whats needs to change for this person – and what will actually help that happen?

What this looks like in discovery

This is most visible in discovery – we don’t just gather information about the topic. We build a picture of the learner and the reality they’re operating in.

• Who are they?
• What they already believe – and where might they resist?
• What does their working week actually allow?
• What has made previous learning feel like a waste of time?

Those answers shape decisions most briefs never reach – the examples, the tone, the level, the design and whether we focus on knowledge, skill, or judgement.

What it produces

A good example of this is our work with UK Coaching. They came to us with deep subject expertise and a clear ambition to improve the impact of what they were creating.

Our role was to help translate that expertise into learning that would land with their audience.

That meant grounding the design in coaches’ real contexts — how they learn, what pressures they’re under, and what would actually help them apply new ideas.

We spoke to those delivering the courses, those attending the courses, those selling the courses, and those behind the scenes administrating the course to fully understand the product, what works and where the challenges were.

This shifts the focus from “How do we cover this content?” to “What does this person need to do differently – and what will help them get there?”

The result is learning that feels more relevant and usable – because it connects to the learner’s world, not just the subject. Their team said it helped them “stretch their thinking” and improve the quality of what they were doing.

That’s the impact of human-centred design. It doesn’t just change what you build – it changes how you define the problem.

Three questions worth sitting with

If you’re designing or commissioning learning:

• Do you understand your learner’s starting point — not just what they know, but what they believe?
• Is the format shaped around how they work — or how the content is structured?
• What in their environment will support or undermine change?

These don’t require a big process, just genuine curiosity about the person on the other side of the learning.

That curiosity is what human-centered design really means.

 Enjoyed this article? Here’s something else:
‘What Your Learners Wished You’d Asked Before You Built That Course’, By our Chief Learning Office, Sarah Baker.

Author: Sarah Baker – Chief Learning Officer & Co-founder, Embed

What Your Learners Wished You’d Asked Before You Built That Course

Great learning design starts with curiosity, not content. When we’re brought into a project, our first instinct isn’t to open the brief — it’s to question it.
To listen harder, dig deeper, and challenge the assumptions that are so often baked into a commission before we’ve even been introduced.

What Our Clients Tell Us – and What We Find

When we’re brought in to work on a new project, we often hear some version of the same things:

“We’ve got the content and the SMEs – you have everything you need.”
“We know our learners well.”
“We can’t change anything – let’s just work with what we’ve got.”

These aren’t unreasonable things to say.

They come from genuine time pressures, organisational constraints, and real confidence in existing knowledge.
But when we dig a little deeper, a more complex picture almost always emerges.

• We find passionate SMEs who know their subject inside out, but who are often surprisingly disconnected from the day-to-day reality of the people they’re trying to reach.
• We find learners who have plenty of opinions about what they need, but who have long since stopped sharing them because their feedback never seemed to go anywhere.
• We find trainers sitting on brilliant ideas, quietly frustrated that nobody has thought to ask.
• We find project leads focused on deadlines, and senior leaders who need real impact but aren’t sure how to define or measure it.
• And we find training that has been built to a brief, but that somehow doesn’t feel like it belongs to the organisation it was made for.

None of this is anyone’s fault. It’s what happens when a project starts with content and requirements rather than curiosity and conversation.

The Real Cost of Skipping Discovery

In our experience, Discovery is the thing most likely to be cut when a client is working to a tight timeline or budget.
From the outside, it can look like a slow start, a delay before the real work begins, and handing over the content and a list of requirements is enough, isn’t it?

But here’s what years of delivering learning projects has taught us: a poor discovery means a poor learning product at end of it. Every time. 

Effective Discovery does something that no amount of great instructional design can compensate for if it’s missing. It challenges assumptions before they get baked into the design. It surfaces potential problems early, when they’re cheap to solve rather than expensive to unpick. It identifies quick wins alongside longer-term opportunities. And perhaps most importantly, it shifts the focus from temporarily patching symptoms to understanding the systemic issues underneath them.

It also connects the learning we design to something that is too often left out of the brief entirely: the evolving, real-world needs of the people it’s meant to serve.

From Requirements List to Human-Centred Understanding

What Discovery actually does is shift the starting point of a project. Instead of beginning with “here is what we need to build”, it begins with “here is what we need to understand.”

That shift from a list of requirements to a genuinely human-centred picture of need is what makes the difference between learning that ticks a box and learning that changes behaviour.

And it doesn’t have to be daunting. Using a structured approach takes the uncertainty out of the process.

We use our Discovery Diagnostic to collect evidence across five key areas:

1. The organisational context
2. The project parameters
3. Stakeholder needs
4. The technology landscape
5. Learning content

Each area generates insight that feeds directly into design decisions; nothing is gathered for its own sake.

The Best Insights Come from Talking to People

Desk research has its place. But the richest, most useful Discovery data almost always comes from direct conversation; with stakeholders, with learners, with the people closest to the problem.

When we’re brought into a project, we use a range of methods to gather that insight: workshops, stakeholder interviews, observations, pilots, feedback analysis, and more. The goal is always the same; to build a picture that no single perspective, however expert, could provide on its own.

And the things we hear when we do this properly? They change projects.

Police officers telling us they didn’t need more training, they needed short, accessible videos they could pull up in the moment, just when a situation called for it. Learners explaining that they never voluntarily accessed their LMS, not because they weren’t motivated, but because the number of steps it took to find anything had simply ground them down. Product owners who understood exactly what their customers needed from the training, but who hadn’t been able to bring their SMEs along with them.

None of these insights were in the brief. None of them would have emerged from a content review or a requirements meeting.
They came from asking; genuinely, curiously, and without assumption.

So, What Did Your Learners Wish You’d Asked?

Probably something like:

What do you actually need?
What gets in your way?
What would make this feel worth your time?

Discovery doesn’t just make learning better. It makes it relevant, sustainable, and genuinely fit for the people it’s designed for. It isn’t the part of the project you do before the real work starts.

It is the real work.

WEBINAR: ‘Elevating Your Rise Courses’

Some of the Embed team recently joined a fantastic training session with Emma Berry on “Elevating Your Rise Courses” — and we really learnt a lot!

If you’ve ever felt stuck in a design rut in Rise, or struggled to get your head around block sizing, this session will be great for you.

Emma took us through how to:

• Elevate your Rise content using smart graphic design choices
• Adapt visuals to fit seamlessly across devices
• Master block sizing for a cleaner, more cohesive layout
• Make the most of the Mighty plugin
• Discover handy sites and resources to supercharge your creativity

We picked up some brilliant hints and tips that have already transformed how we design and build — and we think you’ll find them just as valuable.

You can watch the full training recording here:

We’ll be sharing more resources and insights soon – keep checking back.

Learning only works when it connects with people in a way that feels meaningful and actionable.

Download our Diagnostic Toolkit

Design is what turns a spark into an experience people actually remember

Thoughtful Leadership in a Fast-Moving World: Insights from Nicole Horsman

With the Institute of Leadership’s latest report, Leading into the Future, now published, there’s a fresh look at what successful leadership looks like in today’s fast-moving world. Nicole Horsman, co-founder of Embed Learning, is featured in the report, sharing her perspective on how leaders can navigate rapid change with purpose. 

The report provides a snapshot of leadership in a fast-changing environment, exploring the behaviours, habits, and mindsets that help leaders succeed. One insight stood out to Nicole — something Embed has long believed: self-reflection is essential for effective leadership. 

Why Self-Reflection Matters 

“Reflection isn’t what slows us down, it’s what helps us move forward with purpose. The best leaders don’t just keep pace with change — they create the pause that makes transformation possible.” 

The research shows that reflection is not just a “nice to have” — it has a real impact on decisions. 

• 79% of leaders surveyed said self-reflection and continuous improvement have the biggest impact on how they make decisions. 

Yet, while leaders recognise the value of reflection, many struggle to find the time. As Nicole notes, in her work with senior teams, the same challenge comes up repeatedly: 

“I’m flat out. There’s no time to stop and think.” 

Leaders are pulled in multiple directions — responding to change, firefighting cultural shifts, and trying to keep pace with technology that moves faster than their teams can absorb. Without deliberate space for reflection, digital transformation risks becoming surface-level, with new tools introduced but underlying challenges persisting. 

Transformation Checkpoints: Practical Reflection in Action 

So how can leaders make reflection practical in a busy environment? Nicole highlights ‘transformation checkpoints’ — small, intentional pauses designed to ask: 

• What’s working? 

• What’s not? 

• What are we learning? 

These checkpoints aren’t big strategic reviews. They are brief, honest moments to reflect with the team, ensuring that change sticks and that teams can adapt, grow, and learn rather than just react. 

Embedding reflection into leadership culture also levels the playing field. It gives people at all levels permission to ask questions, explore new ideas, and develop confidence with new technologies. When reflection becomes part of the culture, leaders are better able to guide digital transformation meaningfully and sustainably. 

Leading with Purpose, Not Just Pace 

The pace of change is relentless, particularly in digital transformation. But, as Nicole emphasises, reflection is not what slows leaders down — it is what allows them to move forward with purpose. Leaders who build space for reflection create stronger, more resilient teams, and enable real transformation that lasts. 

Reflection isn’t a luxury. It’s the engine that allows leaders and their teams to navigate change with intention, not just speed. 

For the full Institute of Leadership’s report, you can download it here.

Are workplace learning programmes sufficiently business focused? A new consultancy thinks not and aims to help.

When faced with countless options, L&D professionals may feel compelled to create elaborate learning experiences. These often include gamification, interactivity, microlearning, and multi-modal content. While these innovations have their place, overcomplicating the learning process can lead to fatigue—for both creators and learners.
 
A new learning services consultancy launched last week. Why is this news, there are a great many learning consultancies?
 
The market is changing. Developing fabulous, engaging experiences is a given these days. Top of mind for L&D pros are also communications and marketing, wider digital transformation and business alignment, and for vendors: commercialisation, market positioning and sales enablement.
 
Fulfilling these business needs is likely to determine the success of new workplace learning products and programmes.
 
Nicole Horsman, who until recently was part of the senior team at Netex, thinks she’s identified the key issues and has set up Embed Learning to deliver on the business needs of both L&D teams and vendors. Nicole explains all on Learning News.
 
A news feature in association with the LPI