Canons of Content Design

Created by Josh Ball, Modified on Mon, 14 Aug, 2023 at 4:19 PM by Josh Ball

Design Considerations

FLIP recommends using a TELL, SHOW, DO design methodology when developing content to engage the learner with the topic or information you're trying to relay.

Identify Your Goal

Identify the organizational, learning, or performance goal. Start with the end in mind.

What result are you hoping to achieve?
What do you want the user to do, accomplish, change, or learn as a result of using the Deck/Cards?

For Example:

As a result of using the Deck the user will be able to:

File an insurance claim
Ask open-ended questions
Coach an employee
Find and share safety data information

Know Your Audience

Who needs the learning, content, or information that you are creating?

Is it the Customer Service department? Operations, Sales, and Marketing?

Create an Architecture

Create a mini-curriculum for your content. Group information in a practical way.

Example:

Your overarching training needs may be improving employee communication skills, but there may be several different types of skills, tools, models, and components that comprise communication skills.

Therefore, communication skills could be organized into five decks:

Defining Communication
Behavioral Styles
Listening Skills
Questioning Skills
Confirming Understanding

Less is More

Micro-learning should be just that..." Micro". Remember clear, concise, and direct.

A good rule of thumb is that learners should be able to consume the content of an individual Card in 1 minute or less.

Card Front Best Practice: 140 characters.

Card Back Best Practice: 2000 characters including spaces.

Deck Objective

Create an objective for your Deck. Yes, just one objective! Remember this is micro-learning, so keep it simple.

By breaking up the information into more digestible portions, the brain can more effectively process the information.

And remember, be sure to share your Deck objective with the learner or user.

Every Deck needs a title. So, be sure to create a title that is clear, direct, and concise.

Deck Title Best Practice: 40-character limit.

Learners and users should have a pretty good idea of what they are going to learn or read by the title.

Use Multimedia

We believe the SHOW in the TELL, SHOW, DO design methodology should be a focus.

Identify visually rich multimedia resources to support the content and learning within your Deck. The sky is the limit: photos, graphics, video, audio, links, PDF files, etc.

Multimedia will help you add more information into your FLIP Cards and it's a nice way to "SHOW" or demonstrate a skill or point you're trying to make.

Prove Learning Occurred

Use the Question Card to create knowledge checks, and certification tests that prove learning has taken place.

These Knowledge Checks also allow you to insert interactivity into your deck and provide you with information about the quality of the training and information you are providing.

Use Your Resources

Don't waste time in your deck providing information to the learner that they can download or review on their own; they have something available to them called resources within each card. Be sure to use them to provide all the detail behind the point, skill, process, or information you are trying to transfer.

Resources can be pretty much anything; websites, PDF files, email, and telephone numbers.

Continuously Update

The only constant in business is change. FLIP allows you to communicate changes quickly and easily.

FLIP allows you to make changes at any time. Changes that are made to Cards and Decks are pushed out in real time.

This means if you have found a typo in your copy or there has been a change in a product specification, there is no reason to wait.

A best practice is to keep things fresh. Just like retail websites, if your content is not relevant or does not serve a purpose, meet a goal, or provide useful information, then people may tune out.

Tag It

Once you've inserted content into your Cards and Decks take advantage of the "Auto-tag" feature built into FLIP. FLIP's Auto-tag feature is powered by IBM Watson.

Watson is a question-answering (QA) computing system that IBM built to apply advanced natural language processing, information retrieval, knowledge representation, automated reasoning, and machine learning technology to the field of open-domain question answering.

Simply put, Tags are the key to your organization being able to search and find the data that is most important to them.