You built the module. You got the approvals. You hit publish.
And then… nothing. No one mentions it. No one notices the extra hours you put into making it good. It just becomes one more thing sitting in the LMS. If that sounds familiar, you are not alone. I have been there.
OR
Have you ever gone back to courses you designed a few years before and are almost embarrassed at how they look? Yep, me too. That is because as we design, we evolve, we grow, technology changes, and your eye for design changes. I first want to say, it is okay and you are in good company.
Most L&D professionals I talk to assume that if their training isn’t landing, the fix is more content. A deeper module. More detail. Another section covering the edge cases nobody asked about. So, they add. And add. And the training gets longer, more thorough, more “complete,” and somehow still just as forgettable.
Here’s the thing… when you’re building training solo, or on a lean team, inside an organization with legacy systems and a budget that hasn’t moved in three years: forgettable and thorough are not opposites. You can have both at the same time. In fact, that’s usually exactly what’s happening.
So, what actually makes training memorable?
It’s rarely the depth of the content. It’s almost always one of three things:
How it looks. Not “is it branded correctly,” but does it look like it belongs to you, or does it look like it could belong to anyone? Generic templates, default fonts, and stock layouts all blend into the background of a learner’s day. They’ve seen a hundred versions of the same slide before they ever open yours.
How it feels. Static training sits there. Click, read, click, read. There’s no rhythm, no motion, nothing that signals “pay attention here.” Learners aren’t disengaged because they’re lazy. They’re disengaged because nothing in front of them is asking for their attention.
Whether it asks anything of the learner. If someone can complete your training by clicking “next” fifteen times without making a single decision, they will. And they’ll remember exactly nothing about it. Training that sticks makes people do something, choose something, respond to something.
I call this Look, Feel, and Respond, and it’s become the lens I use to evaluate every piece of training I build or review, for myself or for the L&D professionals I work with.
Here’s the part that’s good news: most training isn’t failing on all three of these at once. It’s usually one. Which means the fix isn’t a redesign. It’s much smaller, much more targeted change than you think.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to walk through exactly how to diagnose which one is holding your training back, and what to do once you know. If you’ve ever wondered whether your training is good, or just good enough to get by, this is where we start.