Brains or Beauty in eLearning

Do you ever get that feeling in a meeting with a potential client to just STOP, cut through the small talk and just focus on the important things? The “tell me what you want with this course questions?”. If yes, remember small talk is useful and polite, so don’t ignore it:). It is part of the journey.

Today I want to talk about brains vs beauty in eLearning content creation.

Off the bat, I do love beautiful courses and eye candy when pitching clients. Blame me! Much more often than not, a beautiful demo will land you that client. Why? Because “beauty” is a guaranteed top reason for winning projects. For this, I like to ask a simple question at meetings: “Who is most interested in this course getting created?” The answer will help you help them. 

Yes, Alex, but what about our purpose?

The danger with just *beautiful is to waste time in doing something trivial, an engagement puff balloon that moves away from our calling in eLearning, a gimmick to the detriment of actual utility. It might look awesome, but is it useful for the employees? The purpose of eLearning has always been learning. Many of us can relate to these thoughts, but trouble is, if anyone evaluating your demo considers it ugly, you won’t get a chance to create the useful heart of the course.

Now, clients for eLearning courses can be won for multiple reasons, but throughout the years, I found some that happen to be more popular and I will share:

1. The demo looks amazing!
2. Great content, it is really captivating.
3. Deadline is the most important. Match that and the project is yours.
4. Price is everything. Battle of the cheapest solutions. This is usually for those on a tight budget. 

As you might expect, no one project has just 1 of the 4 reasons above. Usually you get a dominant one and the others will be sprinkled around.

These are 3 key aspects that contribute to my find:

• On the client side, there are multiple stakeholders from multiple departments, including Marketing. 
•  “BEAUTIFUL” is much more easily observed than “useful”. Some of the key people that will evaluate your demos will form a first impression fast and stick with it no matter how easily assimilated your content really is. 
• Time will not be in your favor if your demo is labeled ugly in the first 2 seconds by a top executive.

Conclusion

Build with honorable intentions, but first impress to have a chance for greatness.