What projects have transformed you as a designer?

Mar 08, 2016

One of the things that sometimes gets lost in the noise is the fact that training/e-learning can deliver a potentially life-saving or life-changing experience to our audience. Everyday, people like you are designing courses that explore rich, serious, and important topics such as suicide prevention, weapons safety, or how to address workplace violence.

So many of the conversations we have are focused on the mechanics of how we dissect and transform content, but what about those times when the content is so important or personally significant that we are transformed through our work? What projects have you worked on that had a big impact on your audience and you? What projects have you created that gave you a sense of accomplishment or fulfillment? And what did you learn from that experience that changed the way you approach learning?

Thanks for sharing your stories!

28 Replies

Marissa Carterud

8 years ago04/04/16 at 8:25 pm (UTC)

Great thread - I work full time for a hospital as an eLearning Developer and most often my designs are geared toward software simulations (I KNOW...snore and bore, right??).

Every once and a while I get the chance to work on other projects and I recently created a course regarding Safety Habits: using codewords like "stop the line, I need clarity" if staff are working in a patient room and they are not clear on a workflow that can be life threatening to a patient. They use this codeword and it's a gentle way of alerting staff you're working with that there is a potential serious safety event that may happen without alerting the patient.

I added a couple videos to the course about the potential downside and worst-case scenario if this workflow doesn't happen...and one was "Josie's story" told by Josie's mom who was a toddler that passed away after not getting the correct medication and dosage. I still get goosebumps when I watch that video and understand that at times, the content that I create has massive impacts and potential life-threatening impacts. It's humbling to know this and something that I don't take for granted.