I am always a bit baffled that I don’t hear more learning designers, specifically learning designers from major research institutions, practicing proven interaction design tactics in the design of their technology mediated learning. Interaction design is generally informed by user research with an emphasis on behavior, form, and evaluation of usability and emotional factors. Research is not a foreign concept in our world, in fact, it defines a large part of the mission of most large universities. Why is user research not a greater part of the design culture in higher education?

Simply employing better testing of our interfaces throughout our design and development process can greatly enhance the experience and engagement of learners utilizing our courses, simulations, games or other applications for learning. Testing can begin as early as the wireframe stage of development and doesn’t necessarily need to be a costly procedure.

I am a firm believer in making the best of the resources that you are working with. If this means that you occasionally gather 5-10 people from the offices next door to work through learning application prototypes then do it! User testing does not need to be comprised of massive groups of people. In fact, even a large software application will test no more than 20 people at any given point in development. Any more is a waste of money. See this Jakob Neilson page on quantitative testing. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/quantitative_testing.html

What is harder to test is learning effectiveness. This requires gathering a specific targeted group of learners that match the group to which you will deliver the learning. This isn’t always easy to gather. Still, some testing is still better than none so even a small group that might not match the targeted learner but can provide some data on the effectiveness of the learning design is better than none.

There are times I feel like the "design nut" going around campus preaching more interaction design to blank stares and comments like "not enough resources." It just seems so clear that we are far better off challenging our learners to meet all learning outcomes as opposed to wasting their time learning to use our interfaces.