I work with an organization that recently rolled out a learning management system (LMS) to its people. The LMS is the core of the organization’s training program, and it’s not that difficult to use once you’ve gone through some simple training – but most people find it non-intuitive.
Given that most peoples’ usage of the LMS is less frequent than once per month, this means they never get the opportunity to develop the “digital muscle memory” regarding its use. Without that digital muscle memory, this means that using it is frequently a struggle – and sometimes it just doesn’t get used at all. Since the training provided through the LMS is mission-critical for the organization, that means that the organization suffers as a result of the non-intuitive nature of the software.
There are three obvious ways to deal with this.
The first is to conform the software’s user interface to the user’s expectations. This is typically the first thing people think needs to be done, and it’s also one of the hardest to do. If the software is off-the-shelf, it likely can’t be customized directly. It will have to be replaced with a different piece of software, likely with different challenges. If the software is custom-coded, it can be changed – but that’s frequently also a fair bit of work as a redesign requires a new set of requirements based on the needs of all the users.
The second is to create a procedure, document it, and make it easy to find. For complex tasks that have to be done infrequently, this is a great option. For anything computer-based, having a video library can make this even easier as somebody can see the tasks being done and follow along. The obvious advantage to this is that documentating can start immediately. There’s no need to wait for a software redesign. The downside of this option is that if the software or procedure ever changes, the reference material all has to be re-done.
The third is to change the user’s mental model regarding the software. If the user is expecting something where they can just search for what they need and click “play” (like YouTube), they might be disappointed if they can’t do that. But “works like YouTube” likely isn’t part of the spec – it’s just one mental model. Sometimes re-framing a user’s expectations and giving them a different mental model is all that’s necessary to fix the problem. This can be challenging but, like documentation, has the advantage that it can be done immediately.
So what did we do? In the case of this LMS, we did a bit of everything above.
We signaled to corporate that there were significant challenges, and they began evaluating the possibility of a custom solution instead of an ill-fitting off-the-shelf product. In the interim, we’ve been working to switch the “like YouTube” mental model to “like enrolling in classes in high school or college.” There are steps of the process that are reasonable analogues to the course catalog, signing up for electives, starting a class, etc. And we created documentation around some of the common challenges, with video tutorials.
Are these perfect solutions? No. But the goal isn’t perfection – it’s improvement. The LMS adoption rate is increasing, and applying a variety of methods allows us to continually get closer to the usage we’re looking for.