Our first gathering, and it turned out half the group had read this one already : for product design, not learning design. That gap was the whole conversation: Norman's "seven stages of action" map disturbingly well onto why learners abandon a module at the exact same click, every cohort, and nobody flags it as a design defect.
"We call it 'learner drop-off' like it's a motivation issue. Norman would call it a mapping problem : the interface never told them what to do next, so of course they left."
: from the discussion, paraphrased by Andy
What stuck with the group
- 01"Signifiers, not affordances" reframed a long-running disagreement about button design in one designer's LMS : the button could be clicked, but nothing signified that it should be.
- 02The seven-stage action cycle (goal, plan, specify, perform, perceive, interpret, compare) is now a literal checklist someone in the group runs against every new scenario branch before it ships.
- 03Norman's "human-centered design" isn't about learner personas : it's about never blaming the user for a mapping failure you created. That distinction changed how a few of us write eval reports.
What it means for practice
The group's shared action item: audit one existing course for silent mapping failures : spots where the learner has to guess what's clickable, or what happens next : before writing a single new module. Several found at least one within the first ten minutes.
Marginalia™