I design learning people can use at work

I came into instructional design through corporate software training. I saw how much it matters for training to be clear, relevant, and easy to use when people are learning complex systems, and I started building training and documentation around the tasks people actually do.

Customer education taught me to write for people who are busy. If a walkthrough isn't useful right away, they stop reading. That led me to write shorter, more specific material organized around the task instead of the product's feature list.

Nonprofit and community education taught me something else. When people have different reading levels, unpredictable schedules, and real consequences attached to the content, accessibility matters in a very practical way. Plain language, more than one way to present information, and a comfortable learning environment make the difference between a program people finish and one they leave.

Graduate study at the University of Memphis gave me the research behind what I had learned on the job. Adult learning, cognitive load, universal design for learning, evaluation, and performance improvement now inform the recommendations I make, including when I recommend building less than what was requested.

Today I can talk through a performance problem with a sponsor, facilitate a session, storyboard a scenario, build it in Rise or Storyline, set it up in an LMS, and gather feedback on whether it worked.