Sublime Media - Articles and client stories - Visual design and corporate training
Websites compete for seconds of our attention.
Pantone colors stealthily make over our closets.
Major brands are ready to adapt to the newest trend at a moment's notice.
While the rest of the world is embracing compelling visual design, corporate training is still known for being boring.
The good design
What issue has plagued most learning programs since the inception of corporate training? Lack of engagement. Visual design is not just about aesthetics; it's about creating engaging, meaningful, and user-friendly experiences that speak to learners' needs and curiosities, all while leading to behavior change.
A well-designed experience shows the learner that your message and their education matters to the greater organization, ultimately deepening employees’ connection to the workplace.
Here are a few signs of good design:
Increased retention and comprehension: Great design improves the ability of learners to absorb and recall information. Techniques such as chunking, spacing, and repetition, coupled with visual metaphors, can illustrate complex concepts and deepen understanding.
Improved motivation: A beautifully crafted learning experience is enjoyable and rewarding. We undervalue that benefit, but well-executed elements like storytelling, gamification, and personalization have proven to boost learner engagement. Furthermore, nuanced design can reflect company values and garner respect among learners through empathy, diversity, and accessibility.
Enhanced transfer and impact: Design connects learning goals to real-world situations. Elements such as scenarios, simulations, and case studies can make the content relatable and, therefore, more effective when well-represented.
The bad design
Odds are, you are already all too familiar with bad design. When you encounter an underdesigned web page or an outdated PDF, how does it make you feel? What do you do? You might question the credibility of the content and seek out a new source. This is a natural response.
According to a Standford study, 75% of individuals judge a company based on the design of its website. We have the same relationship with corporate training: if the content is poorly presented, learners are less engaged and take the information less seriously.
Here are some classic design pitfalls we see all the time:
Overdesigned: Bringing modern techniques and aesthetics to a module or handout is a good goal, but it shouldn’t consume the entire experience. When we make the design hard to use or understand, we’ve lost sight of our greater learning goals. Design should always be directed by intentional themes and storytelling to ensure a cohesive experience.
Underdesigned: Leaving your teams to slog through bullets and endless text to speech is not helping them retain information and likely won’t lead to changing their behavior. This is reflected in adult learning science, as using infographics and visual metaphors can offer more stimuli to the brain during the learning experience, which allows the learner to create more nuanced connections to the content. It boils down to the fact that underdesigned content forfeits opportunities for deeper learning.
Mismatched branding: A company’s culture is part of why employees were drawn to work there in the first place. Learners expect to see the creative identity carried through internal communications. Mismatched branding is off-putting to learners and makes the content feel out of date. When companies invest in branded experiences, the message feels elevated and personalized, connecting employees to more of what they care about.
The reality
Bad design is bad for the bottom line. Training hours are decreasing, and budgets are limited, making engagement essential to getting results from learners’ precious seat time. At Sublime Media, design is foundational to our collaborative process and allows us to create training experiences with deeper meaning and profound impact. That’s why we are a creative agency: to elevate the experience of training.
Let us show you how beautiful your training can be.