Looking at websites of some of the biggest companies in the world (think Apple and Google), you’ll see they’ve come a long way regarding web and graphic design. From the days of cramming in as much content as possible, we’ve entered an era where every line, image, color, and call-to-action is well researched and tested to grab your attention, keep you engaged and make you take action.

Let's be real - as eLearning developers, we know that creating eLearning courses on topics like finance, safety training, ethics, and pharmaceutical compliance can be a real drag. The jargon-filled content can feel dry and uninspiring, and it's our responsibility to make it engaging and interesting for learners.

New year, new designs. 2017 has some interesting design trends that can bring your eLearning game to the next level if you know how to use them. In this post, we’ll take a walk through some of the things you’re going to be seeing this year and the best ways to use these styles in eLearning. It’s worth noting before we get started, that not all of these trends are great for every situation and trying to combine too many of them will make your courses look cluttered instead of fresh and exciting. Also, eLearning designers will serve themselves and their clients well by being able to describe the problem their design choices are intended to solve and why elements are in your course. Hint: “Because it looks cool” is not a good enough reason.

A good eLearning course is like a lip-smacking, mouth-watering, finger-licking meat pie. Every cook has a different recipe, but the essential ingredients are the same—a juicy, meaty filling; spicy seasonings; and two flaky crusts. There are no cookie-cutter ways to create memorable and effective eLearning courses; the needs vary across industries. But the essentials are the same. Time to go over these eLearning must haves:

Are workers dropping out your eLearning courses like the proverbial ‘hot potato?’ Are they finding them hard to finish? Giving them bad reviews? Telling everyone they know a crazed monkey designed them? If so, it’s likely your courses have one or more of the following issues that have driven your learners away:

“Are you feeling me?” Well, are you? Or, more importantly, is your audience feeling you? Understanding you? Connecting to what you’re putting out there? To get a resounding “yes!” to these questions you need to concern yourself with resonance which is, among other things, “a quality that makes something personally meaningful or important to someone.” Or in the words of Tony Schwartz in his book The Responsive Chord "Resonance takes place when the stimuli put into our communication evoke meaning in a listener or viewer." But why is resonance so necessary to eLearning course design? Another definition for this concept has to do with sound and “the reinforcement or prolongation of sound by reflection from a surface or by the synchronous vibration of a nearby object.” In simple words; this means one vibration causes another vibration or a ripple effect. For your audience, if you pluck just the right heartstring for them, their learning process gets easier because one piece of information will set off reminders of other knowledge, making it simpler to connect them all together, so they don’t feel like so many individual things to remember. And when things are easier they are more likely to continue with your course and retain information. Your lesson will resonate when your audience feels it, understands it and becomes mentally/emotionally invested in it. As an eLearning designer, you need to be in sync with your students, to harmonize with them, their goals and their experiences. This is the only way to fight your way through the content crush, or oversaturation of content and information that your audience is subjected to each day. To do this your eLearning course content should have these attributes:

Product designer William Newton wrote a compelling article some time ago on the tiers of good design and the pyramid they form. But this idea can be applied to more than physical product design; it can be used to create better eLearning courses, as well. Find the original article here: The Design Process: A Pyramid Using this same structure, we explore just how the pyramid can help you improve your eLearning design workflow.

Design resources never stop reminding us how important it is to be consistent when creating any graphic piece. We don’t argue. But as an eLearning designer, you know how challenging it is to walk the talk when it comes to maintaining a consistent look-and-feel throughout the course. After all, we are creative folks and artists at heart. Our brains get weary and scream for some zing by the time we get through a couple of slides.