Design for How People Learn

Why do some classes inspire you to change how you think and act, while others fade from memory the moment you leave? In Design for How People Learn, Julie Dirksen argues that the difference isn’t found in better PowerPoints or fancier e-learning tools—it’s in understanding how people actually learn. Dirksen contends that learning design should mirror human cognitive and emotional processes, not just pour information into passive listeners. Instruction, she reminds us, is a journey from knowing to doing.

This book functions as both a manual and a manifesto for anyone creating educational experiences—teachers, trainers, managers, UX designers, or instructional specialists. Instead of focusing solely on content delivery or presentation style, Dirksen emphasizes creating learning environments and experiences that change what people actually do afterwards. She shows that most ineffective learning programs make one fatal assumption: that if people know the right information, they’ll automatically act on it. They won’t.

Understanding the Learner’s Journey

Dirksen invites you to imagine learning as a journey from novice to competent performer. Learners begin with gaps—spaces between where they are and where they need to be. These gaps might involve missing knowledge, but they could just as easily involve motivation, environmental obstacles, or even organizational culture. As she memorably says, “Don’t build a suspension bridge to fix a pothole.” Before designing a learning experience, you must discover what the real gap is.

Borrowing examples from professional training, corporate learning, and education, Dirksen shows how good learning design begins with diagnosis, not dumping information. For example, when a company wants to reduce staff turnover, it rarely helps to produce modules on company history; instead, learning designers must uncover whether the real problem is poor management skills, low motivation, or structural barriers. Once you pinpoint the gap, you can design the right bridge to close it.

Brains, Behavior, and Context

The book bridges cognitive psychology and practical design. We learn why memory is “messy,” why attention is fragile, and why emotion—and not logic—so often drives learning outcomes. Like Daniel Kahneman’s concept of “System 1 and System 2” thinking, Dirksen’s metaphor of “the rider and the elephant” (adapted from Jonathan Haidt) captures the cognitive tug-of-war between our rational and emotional minds. To design effectively, you must talk to both—the rider needs clear reasoning, but the elephant must care enough to move.

Learning design, then, becomes a multidimensional craft: you manage attention, structure memory, elicit emotion, and help learners translate knowledge into action. Dirksen’s toolkit includes principles like chunking information to reduce cognitive load, crafting scenarios that add friction to make learners think, and using feedback loops to turn knowledge into skill. She also calls for “environmental design”—putting knowledge into the learner’s workspace or system, so they don’t have to memorize what can be made visible and actionable.

From Knowledge to Skill to Motivation

Dirksen structures her framework around several essential lenses: designing for knowledge (what learners must remember), for skills (what they must practice), for motivation (why they choose to act), and for environment (where the learning must live). Through vivid examples—like Marianna, the struggling new manager, or Todd, the overwhelmed restaurant trainee—she shows how each layer of design either accelerates or hinders meaningful learning. A perfectly written training manual is useless if it fails to engage the learner’s motivation or ignores the realities of the work environment.

Ultimately, Design for How People Learn is less about instructional theory and more about human-centered empathy. Good design begins with curiosity about the learner’s world—their frustrations, their context, their emotional landscape. Only then can you design experiences that are sticky, accessible, and transformative. As Dirksen writes, the goal is not just understanding but doing—because true learning only happens when someone uses what they know to create change.

Dirksen begins the journey with an essential truth: most training fails because it addresses the wrong problem. She argues that designers must become learning detectives, asking not just what people don’t know but what prevents them from doing what’s needed. In her opening example, she dismantles the myth that knowledge alone changes behavior—smokers know smoking is bad, managers know how to give feedback, yet the gap remains. Real learning design starts with diagnosis.

Five Kinds of Gaps

Dirksen identifies five key types of gaps: knowledge, skills, motivation, environment, and communication. Each requires a different strategy:

• Knowledge gaps occur when learners genuinely lack information—easy to fix with clear content and resources.
• Skill gaps arise when knowing isn’t enough; only practice builds proficiency.
• Motivation gaps appear when learners know what to do but lack the will or incentive to act—“I know, but…” moments.
• Environment gaps occur when workplace systems, tools, or structures make the right behavior hard to perform.
• Communication gaps happen when goals and instructions are unclear or inconsistent.

In series of case studies, Dirksen shows how misdiagnosed problems waste resources. A company that built a training course to fix employee turnover discovered the issue wasn’t ignorance of company history—it was poor management and low morale. A university class in project management failed because students needed hands-on experience, not readings. The lesson is clear: identify the true gap before building the bridge.

Ask Better Questions

To reveal the real obstacles, Dirksen offers diagnostic questions: What do people actually need to do with this knowledge? Is it reasonable to expect them to do it without practice? Is the environment supporting the change? If they already know what to do but still don’t, what’s stopping them? Each question peels back a layer of assumption to uncover the learner’s reality.

Why It Matters

By analyzing gaps, you save time and increase impact. As Dirksen quips, training people about corporate mission statements won’t fix a lack of autonomy or motivation. Learning design that starts from curiosity, observation, and field research—shadowing experts, interviewing learners, mapping processes—leads to interventions that stick. When learners see relevance, they engage; when the wrong gap is addressed, they disengage.

Your learners don’t think like you do—and that’s exactly why your first design duty is empathy. Dirksen urges designers to step into their learners’ shoes, not just collect demographic data. True understanding comes from observing, listening, and identifying what motivates, frustrates, and delights your audience.

Know What They Want

People participate in learning for very different reasons. Some are driven by curiosity or mastery (intrinsic motivation), others by external rewards or job requirements (extrinsic motivators). Dirksen illustrates this contrast through hypothetical learners “Pat,” who codes because she loves solving puzzles, and “Chris,” who learns Java only to secure a raise. Intrinsically motivated learners need space to explore and experiment, while extrinsic ones need quick wins, relevance, and visible payoffs.

To reach both, Dirksen suggests linking lessons to real-world problems and giving learners control. Even small successes make people feel capable, a crucial step toward confidence and retention. Her rule: learners want to feel smart, not stupid.

Match the Skill Level

A novice and an expert processing the same material live in different worlds. A single course trying to serve both often frustrates everyone: beginners drown, experts yawn. Dirksen compares teaching novices, intermediates, and experts to coaching a jogger, a runner, and a marathoner—each needs a different level of guidance, feedback, and autonomy.

To handle varied skill levels, she recommends “scaffolding”—providing supports early and gradually removing them as learners grow confident. Examples include guided walkthroughs, built-in hints, and progressive challenge levels. For experts, she suggests giving them fast-forward lanes, optional deep dives, or opportunities to coach others. (This mirrors Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development,” which emphasizes guided growth within reach.)

Bridge the Experience Gap

Dirksen uses vivid metaphors: an expert’s mind is a well-organized closet, while a novice’s mind is a messy pile on the floor. Your job is to help learners build shelves—frameworks that organize new information into meaningful categories. Techniques like visual maps, stories, and analogies help novices sort content effectively. The better their “shelves,” the more easily they can retrieve and apply knowledge.

To achieve this, Dirksen advocates observing learners at work, not just asking their managers. Watching how they interact with real tasks reveals gaps that surveys can’t. The more you know about their environment and habits, the better you can craft learning that fits their world.

Once you understand your learners, the next step is defining where they need to go. Dirksen insists on clarity—if you can’t describe exactly what success looks like, you can’t design the path to reach it. Goals must describe observable action, not vague understanding. “Learners will understand Java” isn’t a goal; “Learners will create a functioning database interface” is.

Define the Why, Then the What

Every learning design should start with the problem to be solved. Ask, “What bad thing happens if they don’t know this?” and “What will they do differently after this training?” As Dirksen notes, many programs jump straight to solutions without knowing what’s broken. Clarifying purpose prevents wasted effort and aligns learning goals with real-world performance.

Choose the Right Depth

Dirksen uses Bloom’s revised taxonomy—Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create—to gauge complexity. She pairs this with Gloria Gery’s proficiency scale, from Familiarization up to Unconscious Competence. These frameworks help decide how deeply learners must go. Not everyone needs to become an expert; sometimes basic competence is enough.

Design for the Pace of Learning

Borrowing from Stewart Brand’s concept of “pace layering,” Dirksen explains that some learning—like adjusting to new software—can happen fast, while deeper skills develop slowly. Quick, repeatable tasks fit into short bursts; complex skills require extended practice over time. Rather than trying to teach slow skills in a single workshop, she advises planning long-term reinforcement and feedback systems.

Her takeaway? Big goals are achieved through carefully layered steps. Good design recognizes how far learners can realistically travel in one learning journey.

Memory is the foundation of learning—but it’s a tricky, imperfect system. Dirksen devotes a full chapter to demystifying how the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves information. Her key message: don’t fight the limitations of memory, design for them.

How Memory Works

Memory moves from sensory input to short-term “working memory” and then, hopefully, into long-term storage. Each stage has bottlenecks. Working memory is small and quickly overloaded, so information must be chunked logically. The brain retains best when data connect to existing mental frameworks or personal relevance. This is why vivid examples, storytelling, and real-world context outperform abstract lectures.

Make It Stick

Dirksen borrows from psychology to show that repetition alone isn’t enough—rote memorization builds “thick walls,” not strong understanding. Instead, designers should space practice over time, use multi-sensory cues, and add emotional resonance. She also notes that emotion enhances encoding: learners remember what makes them feel something. This is why stressful situations, powerful stories, or “aha” moments lodge deep in memory.

Teach for Retrieval

The difference between recognition and recall is crucial. Multiple-choice quizzes test recognition—you see the right answer—but real performance requires recall: producing the right response unaided. Effective designs build recall through active practice, not passive review. Instructors should create cues similar to those learners will face on the job, reinforcing context-dependent memory. As Dirksen quips, if you’ll take the test in the classroom, study in the classroom—but if you’ll use the skill at work, practice at work.

Even the best content fails if learners tune out. Attention, Dirksen explains, is a scarce currency in the modern world of “Ooh, shiny!” distractions. To hold it, you must appeal not just to the rational mind but to the emotional one—what she calls “talking to the elephant.”

Talking to the Rider and the Elephant

Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor (also popularized by Chip and Dan Heath in Switch) describes the brain as a rational rider trying to steer an emotional elephant. The rider plans, but the elephant decides where to go. Designers who aim only at the rider end up dragging an unwilling beast through an exhausting lesson. To engage fully, you must delight, surprise, and emotionally connect with the elephant.

Engage with Emotion and Story

Humans are wired for stories. A narrative featuring relatable characters and suspense captures attention faster than lists of bullet points. Emotional engagement multiplies retention: when learners care about an outcome, they remember it. For instance, instead of listing traffic rules, Dirksen tells the story of “Karen,” a woman who can’t tell left from right and navigates stop signs by gluing a toy lighthouse to her dashboard—humor and empathy make the point memorable.

Leverage Surprise and Curiosity

Unexpected moments—like a quiz twist or a relatable dilemma—jolt the brain out of autopilot. Dirksen references the cognitive effect of surprise: when our expectations are violated, we pay closer attention. Likewise, curiosity acts like a mental magnet; questions such as “Which option would you choose?” or mystery-based scenarios pull learners forward.

But she cautions against “clicky-clicky bling-bling” (a phrase coined by e-learning designer Cammy Bean). Flash without meaning distracts rather than engages. Every flashy element must serve learning goals, not entertainment value alone.

Real change happens when learners practice doing the thing they’re learning. Dirksen argues that skills can’t develop without repeated, feedback-driven practice—no matter how clear the explanation. You can’t get good at tying knots, counseling clients, or writing code by reading about it. You have to try, fail, and refine.

Design Practice That Builds Flow

Drawing on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, Dirksen explains that practice must balance challenge and skill level. Too hard, and learners become frustrated; too easy, and they disengage. Alternating difficulty keeps motivation high. The mind, like a cyclist on a hill, can’t pedal uphill forever—it needs stretches to coast and recover before tackling new challenges.

Create Feedback Loops

Effective practice includes immediate, meaningful feedback. Borrowing from video game design, Dirksen recommends frequent feedback through multiple channels—visual cues, progress indicators, and real consequences rather than bland “correct/incorrect” messages. Feedback should be specific, descriptive, and tied to real performance criteria. Without it, learners simply practice mistakes.

Space Learning Over Time

One of Dirksen’s most actionable principles is distributed practice—spacing learning out instead of cramming. Repetition over days and weeks cements skill far more effectively than intense one-day marathons. She shows how timing practice to match real-world intervals—such as training recycling workers once a month if they collect recyclables monthly—improves long-term retention dramatically.

Ultimately, as Dirksen notes, learners will practice one way or another—either deliberately through guided design or randomly on the job. Better that they practice under supervision, with feedback and reflection, than develop poor habits by chance.

Dirksen’s later chapters explore one of learning’s hardest challenges: getting people to actually change what they do. As she demonstrates, most failures stem from a disconnect between “knowing” and “doing.” We know we shouldn’t text while driving, eat junk, or ignore feedback, but we do anyway. Why? Because behavior is driven not by logic, but by habits, experience, and context.

The Elephant’s Habits

Once a behavior becomes routine, the elephant (our emotional brain) takes over. Changing it requires disrupting automatic responses and reinforcing new patterns. Dirksen borrows from BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model, emphasizing that change happens when motivation, ability, and triggers align. People act when they want to, can, and are reminded at the right moment. Designers can therefore strengthen one or more of these levers—make the task easier, the benefits clearer, or the prompts unavoidable.

Why “Useful and Easy” Beats “Mandatory”

Using the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) and Everett Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovations, Dirksen shows that people adopt new behaviors when they perceive them as both useful and easy. If a new process makes life harder or conflicts with existing culture, resistance is inevitable. Trainers should demonstrate value through stories, models, or peer examples, and reduce friction through clear steps or job aids. Nothing motivates like visible success.

Self-Efficacy and Social Proof

Belief drives behavior. Borrowing from psychologist Albert Bandura and Carol Dweck’s growth mindset research, Dirksen emphasizes building self-efficacy—learners believing “I can do this.” Practice, small wins, modeling success, and peer encouragement all build confidence. Meanwhile, social proof—seeing colleagues or respected peers use a new method—normalizes change. If “all the other elephants are doing it,” learners join in.

Change as a Process

Most crucially, Dirksen insists that change is ongoing. Reinforcement, coaching, and environmental prompts transform new behaviors into habits. Treat change not as a one-off event but as a supported process. It’s patience, persistence, and design foresight—not wishful thinking—that make transformation possible.

Even the best training can’t fix a bad system. In her final chapters, Dirksen focuses on designing environments that support learning and performance. Inspired by Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, she argues that we should embed “knowledge in the world” so people don’t need to memorize what can be made visible. If your system is a maze, no training can save you.

Fix the Environment, Not the Learner

Dirksen shares the story of her early career training call-center employees. Despite intensive programs, it still took six months to master the job—exactly as long as employees stayed before transferring out. The problem wasn’t their learning capacity; it was poor system design. Complex interfaces and inconsistent workflows made success nearly impossible. The real fix lay in redesigning processes, not retraining people.

Proximity and Job Aids

Knowledge is most useful when it’s close to the task. Dirksen calls this “proximity.” Job aids, checklists, and tools placed directly in the work environment reduce errors and cognitive load. Her favorite example is the simple instruction tag on jumper cables—indispensable because it lives where it matters. Similarly, interface cues like keyboard shortcuts or contextual help boxes turn memory into immediate recognition.

Triggers and Prompts

To sustain behavior, provide environmental cues—sticky notes, workflow alerts, or visual reminders. Peter Gollwitzer’s concept of implementation intentions (If X happens, do Y) shows that preplanned triggers greatly increase follow-through. Dirksen suggests building prompts into tools or routines—like handwashing signs or layout guides for tasks—to keep learners on track.

Clear the Path

Ultimately, design for environment means clearing away obstacles. Sometimes, system changes—simplifying interfaces, automating steps, redesigning workflows—achieve far more than more courses ever could. As Dirksen asks, “What else besides training could help learners succeed?” By shifting focus from memorization to environmental support, you make learning a natural, sustainable part of work.