Smart Design Isn’t What You Think It Is

We talk a lot about improving design in instructional work. It’s one of those things that sounds exciting and important—because it is, in theory. The problem is that somewhere along the way, we started equating “smart design” with technology and process.

That’s a mistake.

Smart design in instructional work has almost nothing to do with your authoring tool of choice, your shiny new instructional strategy, or that process diagram your team printed out and taped to the office wall. Those things might support good design, but they don’t create it.

Smart design happens when you give people what they need in a way that makes them say, “Well, that makes sense.”

That’s it. That’s the tweet.

Smart Design Starts with People

You can only hit that kind of clear, high-impact solution when you’re tuned into the people involved—learners, subject matter experts, stakeholders, reviewers, your own team. You’ve got to see how they think, what they expect, where they get confused, and what motivates them to care.

Miss that, and it doesn’t matter how advanced your tech stack is. You’re designing in the dark.

Smart design is giving someone a tool, a course, a job aid, or an experience that fits into their world so well they barely notice how it is stitched into their work. That requires human insight—not more features, more structure, or more steps.

It’s About Solving the Right Problem

Think about the last time you saw something and thought, “Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?” It probably wasn’t a flashy piece of tech. It was probably something simple, like a clearly labeled button, or an intuitive step-by-step guide, or a lesson that actually used your context instead of a generic example from 1998.

That’s what we’re aiming for in instructional design—not just new stuff, but smart stuff that makes sense to the people we’re designing for.

But We’re Often Too Busy Looking the Other Way

We chase templates. We chase tools. We chase frameworks and certifications and approval cycles. We follow models so closely that we forget to look at the humans right in front of us—the ones who will either benefit from our work or be completely confused by it.

And when someone says, “Well, that didn’t land,” we run back to the model, or the tech, or the buzzword that sold us on the last big thing.

It’s easier than asking real questions.

Here’s the Hard Part (That’s Also the Good Part)

Focusing on people means dealing with opinions, uncertainty, messy feedback, and shifting expectations. It means you have to talk to someone who doesn’t speak “ID,” and translate their scattered thoughts into something useful.

But that’s where smart design actually happens—in the messy middle, where you’re wrestling with what people need and discovering that the most effective solution is often the simplest one that works.

You Don’t Need Permission to Design Smarter

You don’t need a bigger budget, a new framework, or a new tool to do smart design. You just need to tune in to the people involved and pay close attention to what would actually help them do better work, learn faster, or feel more confident.

Then design that.

Instructional design doesn’t move forward because someone built a better slide deck. It moves forward when a learner says, “That actually helped.” Or when an SME finally understands why you’re asking that question. Or when a leader starts seeing change in the metrics that matter.

That’s smart design. And it’s refreshingly, surprisingly human.