Imagine a neighborhood learning center a few minutes before closing.
A staff member is putting chairs back around a table. Someone is checking that the shared computers have been signed out. A handwritten reminder near the front desk asks visitors to return borrowed materials before they leave.
A woman arrives in her work clothes and stops at the entrance.
“Could this place ever stay open later?”
The staff member explains the hours. The woman nods. She has seen the hours before. Her shift ends across town, and this is about the earliest she can get here.
Inside, the person closing the building checks the time. They have a bus to catch and responsibilities waiting at home. Keeping the center open longer would mean changing somebody’s working day.
The coordinator has heard similar requests. She also knows that some morning visitors depend on the center being available when it opens. There is no additional staffing money in the current budget.
A question about opening hours has become a question about access, work, resources, and responsibility.
There is a curriculum inside that situation.
There are numbers to interpret, assumptions to examine, people to consult, costs to calculate, and messages to write. There may be questions about fairness, service design, organizational policy, and the limits of what current evidence can establish.
But the people at the door begin somewhere more immediate.
Someone wants to use a place they can rarely reach while it is open. Someone else needs to finish work on time. A coordinator needs to decide whether a change is possible and what that change would ask of others.
That is a useful place to begin designing a learning experience.
Begin with something people care about.
Care gives knowledge somewhere to go.
It gives a calculation a purpose, a conversation a reason, and a decision consequences that someone can describe. It helps a learner understand why a distinction matters before we ask them to remember the distinction.
In Enter the Possible, I argued for giving people supported opportunities to rehearse judgment. This book takes up the work of designing those opportunities.
Our starting material is a human situation: someone is trying to accomplish something, the circumstances make it difficult, and a response is needed.
The designer’s first task is to notice what matters within that situation.
Often, it is already there.
A customer wants an accurate delivery estimate. A team needs to divide work fairly. A student organization wants to hold an event that people can attend. A community group needs to decide how to use a limited space. A new employee needs to respond to a request without promising something the organization cannot deliver.
Each situation contains knowledge that people may need. Each also contains a reason to use it.
The work begins when we connect the two.
A course might require learners to interpret descriptive statistics. That is a legitimate and important objective. We still have to decide what interpreting those statistics will enable someone to do.
At the learning center, attendance records might show that the busiest hours are in the afternoon. A proposal to extend evening access would give those records a purpose. Learners could examine when people currently visit, how long they stay, and which services they use.
Then another question appears.
What can attendance records tell us about people who cannot attend?
The records describe the visitors the center currently serves. Understanding unmet demand would require additional evidence.
That distinction now has a practical consequence. A recommendation based only on current attendance could overlook the very people an evening opening is intended to reach.
The subject has become necessary to the work.
A learner who understands the limits of the data can explain why the coordinator should seek more information. A learner who can calculate staffing requirements can show what a proposed schedule would require. A learner who writes clearly can help visitors understand whether a change is a temporary trial or a permanent commitment.
The disciplinary learning remains central. The situation gives it a job.1
This is one of the most useful questions an experience designer can ask:
What would understanding this help someone notice, explain, decide, or do?
The answer should be specific enough to shape an activity.
“Understand data” leaves a great deal of design work unfinished.
“Explain what the attendance records do and do not establish about demand for evening access” gives the learner a more definite responsibility.
“Improve communication” is similarly broad.
“Write an announcement that clearly describes a six-week trial without implying that evening hours will continue afterward” provides a situation in which communication can be examined.
Specificity helps us see the relationship between the knowledge and the human need it serves.
It also helps us choose what to leave out.
A world worth entering can begin with a room, a request, a small set of records, and a decision. The details earn their place through the work they make possible.
Before we build that world, however, we need to be careful about the word care.
People care in different ways.
A learner may care because the situation resembles something they have experienced. Another may care because it raises an interesting question. Someone else may feel a professional obligation to handle a request accurately, even when the subject has little personal appeal.
Care can take the form of curiosity, responsibility, fairness, pride in careful work, concern for another person, or the desire to understand why a system behaves as it does.
We can offer several ways into an experience.
Consider the learning center again. One learner may be drawn to the question of who gets access. Another may want to solve the scheduling problem. A third may notice how little the coordinator knows about potential evening visitors. Another may become interested in how to explain a trial without creating expectations the center cannot meet.
They can participate in the same situation through different concerns.
That variety is useful design material.
We do not need every learner to feel the same thing. We need enough shared purpose for their contributions to meet.
This asks us to treat relevance as something we investigate.
An instructor may find a situation compelling because it reflects years of professional experience. Learners may see an unfamiliar organization, a set of unexplained terms, or a decision whose consequences remain obscure.
A workplace manager may assume a process matters because it appears in the organization’s priorities. Employees may care more immediately about the extra work the process creates or the problems it leaves unresolved.
Our enthusiasm gives us a starting point. Other people’s responses help us understand whether we have made the situation accessible.
A simple early conversation can reveal a great deal.
Describe the situation briefly. Ask someone what they think the people involved are trying to accomplish. Ask what seems difficult. Ask what they would want to know before responding.
Listen to the explanation they give.
If they can repeat the topic but cannot explain why anyone needs a decision, the situation may need a clearer purpose.
If they immediately identify a concern you had not considered, the design has gained something valuable.
If they interpret the problem very differently from you, investigate the difference. You may have left out a necessary fact. You may also have found a perspective the experience should make room for.
These conversations can happen before you create a website, write a detailed scenario, or prepare a set of character materials.
A paragraph is enough to begin.
The conversation also helps protect us from designing around an assumed audience.
“Students care about technology” tells us very little about a particular group of students or the circumstances in which they will participate.
“Employees want realistic training” leaves unanswered what realism means to them.
A learner might find an experience recognizable because the equipment is accurate. Another might recognize the pressure of having to respond before all the information is available. Someone else might recognize the difficulty of disagreeing with a colleague whose cooperation they still need.
Ask what makes the situation recognizable.
Then decide which of those features serves the learning purpose.
The emotional weight of the experience also deserves attention.
A designer can make almost any scenario feel urgent by adding a threat, a countdown, or a severe consequence. Those additions change what participation asks of people. They should have a clear educational purpose.
Ordinary responsibilities often provide enough material.
Giving an accurate answer can matter. Allocating a shared resource can matter. Deciding when to seek more information can matter. Explaining an error can matter.
These situations allow us to examine judgment at a scale where people have room to think.
They also make it easier to offer several ways to participate. A learner might speak, write, sketch, observe, or take time before responding. Someone may choose to analyze a character’s situation without connecting it publicly to their own life.
Personal disclosure should remain a choice.
A fictional visitor can help a group discuss access without requiring a learner to explain their own difficulties getting to a service. A fictional employee can make a scheduling conflict available for examination without asking anyone to defend their family responsibilities.
The design can respect the seriousness of a concern while preserving distance for the people learning through it.
That distance is part of the opportunity to rehearse.
Care also becomes more productive when it has more than one voice.
At the learning center, the request for later opening deserves attention. So does the closing employee’s working day. So do the needs of people who use the center in the morning.
An experience designer can make each concern understandable.
The employee who questions longer hours may know what closing the building requires. The morning visitor may rely on a service that would be reduced if staff hours moved into the evening. The coordinator may support broader access while remaining responsible for a budget that cannot absorb every reasonable request.
These people give the situation depth because they have reasons.
Their reasons help learners see what a proposal would change.
Suppose a group recommends shifting two morning sessions into the evening. That could make the center more accessible to some visitors. It could also remove access that others already use.
The group now has something to investigate and explain.
Who would benefit? Who would lose an existing opportunity? What information would help the coordinator judge the tradeoff? Could a limited trial reveal something useful? What would the center need to observe during that trial?
A proposal becomes more thoughtful when the people affected remain visible within it.
This is why I would begin designing the learning center experience by writing down what each person is trying to protect.
The visitor wants a realistic opportunity to use the service.
The employee wants a workable schedule and a clear understanding of what their job requires.
The morning user wants continued access.
The coordinator wants to respond to community needs while making commitments the center can sustain.
Those concerns give us a foundation for later decisions about roles, information, and consequences.
We will develop those elements in the chapters ahead. For now, we need enough understanding to identify a worthwhile beginning.
The same approach works at smaller scales.
In a classroom, a student organization might need to choose a meeting time. The obvious task is to compare availability. The human situation includes people whose jobs, travel, or other responsibilities shape when they can attend. A careful recommendation would need to distinguish a convenient time for the current committee from an accessible time for the people the organization hopes to include.
In a workplace, a team might need to update a customer about a delayed delivery. The human situation includes a customer making plans, employees waiting for reliable information, and someone responsible for deciding what can be communicated now. Knowledge about the process matters because the message may influence what another person does next.
In a community setting, the learning center’s hours create a similar relationship between information and responsibility.
The scale changes. The design question remains useful: what are people trying to accomplish, and how could better understanding help them act?
Try that question with something you teach.
Choose one concept, method, or skill that learners need to use. Keep it manageable. Then complete these four sentences:
- Someone is trying to __________.
- This matters to them because __________.
- The difficulty is __________.
- Understanding __________ would help them __________.
Read the result aloud.
Look for a person with a purpose. Look for a difficulty that creates a genuine need to think. Look for a clear role for the subject you teach.
For the learning center, an early version might read:
The coordinator is trying to decide whether to trial evening opening. This matters because some residents struggle to reach the center during its current hours. The difficulty is that staffing is limited, current users depend on existing sessions, and attendance records do not establish how many additional people would come. Understanding how to interpret evidence and compare resource requirements would help the coordinator design and explain a responsible trial.
That paragraph does not yet contain a complete experience.
It gives us a reason to build one.
The next step is to turn that reason into an invitation.
We might write:
The coordinator of a neighborhood learning center is considering opening until eight o’clock on two evenings each week for a six-week trial. Several residents have asked for later access. The center has no additional staffing budget, and some current visitors depend on its morning sessions. You have been asked to recommend whether a trial should proceed, what information is needed before it begins, and what the center should learn from it. Prepare an initial recommendation that identifies whose needs it serves and what tradeoffs it would create.
That invitation gives learners something to enter.
They can see who needs help. They can see why a response matters. They can begin to identify what they would need to know.
As designers, we can now make purposeful choices about the materials.
A staffing schedule belongs if learners need to understand available hours. Attendance records belong if they can support a useful interpretation. A visitor’s account belongs if it reveals something the records cannot show. A message from an employee belongs if it helps learners understand the work their proposal would require.
We can test each addition against the purpose of the experience.
Does it help someone notice a relevant feature, consider another perspective, explain a tradeoff, or make a more responsible recommendation?
This question keeps a small experience coherent. It will remain useful when the world grows.
Before expanding the design, give the invitation to two or three people.
Ask them to explain what they believe they have been asked to do. Ask whose concerns they notice. Ask what information they would seek first.
Their answers are early evidence about the experience you are designing.
A useful trial may reveal that the task is too broad, that one concern dominates the wording, or that an important term needs explanation. It may show that people find a different part of the situation more compelling than you expected.
Revise while the design is still small.
Keep a record of what changed and why. Those notes will help you distinguish your original intentions from what participants actually encountered.2
They may also reveal the most promising part of the experience.
Perhaps the difficult question is how to measure demand that current records cannot capture. Perhaps it is how to communicate a temporary arrangement. Perhaps it is how to include people whose interests are easily overlooked.
Follow the learning that the situation makes possible.
The woman at the learning center’s entrance asked a short question.
“Could this place ever stay open later?”
A worthwhile response would require more than enthusiasm. Someone would need to understand the request, consider the people affected, examine the available evidence, and decide what could responsibly happen next.
That is the beginning of a world worth entering.
The first thing we build is a reason to care about what happens there.