Design (Part 2) - What is meant by "design"?

I believe one of the reason that ISDers get a black eye is because they are using their hammer (i.e. Instructional Design models, objectives, etc.) to drive in screws (that may or may not be solvable through formal instruction).

In fact, there are many influences that affect performance. Implementing formal instruction is only one of the possible solutions to performance problems. If it isn't the right solution, then a lot of time and resources will be wasted no matter how effective the Instructional Designer built the instruction. As an example, I've seen employees ignore (or at least marginalize) systems intended to help them conduct business. All the training in the world could be (and has been) built to try to teach employees the capabilities of the system; however, the fundamental problem lies with the system. It was not designed properly and actually creates significantly more work for the employees.

Tom Werner wrote an excellent post called "Design Shouldn't Always Mean Instructional Design" that describes the different types of design. He notes that there are several other learning situations where the field of Instructional Design may not apply. These situations include: Presentation Design, Design of Team-Building Experiences, Information Design, Game and Simulation Design, and the Design of User-Generated Content.

It is critical for Instructional Systems Designers to realize that 1) ISD is actually a subset of Learning Design, and 2) Learning Design is not unique to the field of ISD. ISDers must have, at least, a basic knowledge of these other forms of design to know which approach to use. This is where the field of Performance Improvement comes into play. This same warning also applies to Game Designers and Information Architects - who may not have a black eye yet, but can quickly get one by constantly telling C-level executives that all of the organizational problems can be solved by designing a game.

My intent for this post is not to reject or discredit these learning designs, but rather to point out that no one solution should be considered a panacea.