I am having one of those rare days off with minimal things to get done. Of course the house could do with a clean and there are probably bills to pay.. but that can wait. I have a window of time before picking up kids, so am sitting in a cafe writing and having a treat. A good coffee and lemon tart. Yum!
Don’t tell my kids… or the cardiologist, GP, or that exercise physiologist I saw a few months back. I am determined to improve my health and weight without any of them! And with the odd cafe treat included! Don’t worry, pretty sure none of them lurk here 😉

As I sit here sipping coffee I ponder many experiences in the past as a learner and the impact on me as an individual.

Have you participated in a meeting, session, or workshop where the facilitator thinks you can all “just dive in”. No agenda in the invite or on the screen, and no idea how long each part would take, or when the break was… perhaps when the next caffeine hit would be available!
Then there can be that typical icebreaker type activity where they want you to share something personal about yourself, potentially with cameras on, in a breakout room with people you’ve never met. Or in person where you can really sense the discomfort from a group.

By the time the actual content starts you have spent most of your energy working out what was happening and how to get through it. For a number of things I’ve attended in the past, I don’t remember much of what was taught, but I definitely remember feeling slightly on edge the whole time.

I’m not a difficult person, just often find the design just isn’t built for someone like me.

And I’ve come to realise design isn’t really built for anyone. It’s often built for a person who doesn’t exist.

Meet the default learner

Most change and learning is quietly designed for one imagined person.

This imagined learner can process information easily, in whatever format it arrives. They feel safe when things change and can easily concentrate for an hour. They share the background, language and assumptions of whoever built the thing. And it is assumed they’ll speak up if something doesn’t work for them without hesitation or anxiety.

I’ve never met them, and I suspect you haven’t either.

Everyone else, which is everyone, absorbs the gap between that person and themselves. Some absorb it easily whereas others can spend all their energy on it, like I have on multiple occasions. And some just quietly opt out, which tends to get labelled as resistance.

Designing for the edges

There’s an idea often called the curb-cut effect. You might be aware that the ramps cut into footpath kerbs were fought for by disability advocates to help people using wheelchairs cross the road. It then turned out everyone used them. People with prams, suitcases, bikes, delivery trolleys, or even people with injuries found use in the design.

This is a great reminder that designing for the edges can be beneficial for the middle too.

I see three edges that matter most in change and learning.

Neurodivergent people
As someone with AuDHD and a strong need for structure, I can tell you that what helps us is rarely exotic. Help a person know what’s coming, and how long it takes. Extend this to also include having more than one way in. And don’t make the first five minutes a social performance. Urgh many hate that and for many sessions they are pointless… good for a team that requires ongoing bonding but not a once-off group… in my opinion.
Start with the map, a way to help people know the journey they are on. Give that comfort.

People for whom change feels unsafe
A trauma-informed lens reminds us that change, especially restructures, new systems or AI-and-your-job conversations, can land as a threat. Safety, trust, choice and a sense of control aren’t soft extras. They’re what makes it possible to learn at all. If people don’t feel safe there is not way they are in an optimal state to take in content, learn and reflect.

People whose ways of knowing aren’t the ones we designed for
Many cultures see learning as relational: built through connection, story and reciprocity, rather than delivered from the front. A few years ago I learnt about Australian First Nations ways of knowing and the role in learning programs. I still have a lot to learn here and am so curious. I also read recently that in Aotearoa, the Māori concept of ako describes teaching and learning as a two-way relationship, with the teacher learning too. I’m still learning about this myself, and I’d point you to Māori and First Nations educators for the depth. But it’s a useful challenge to how one-directional most of our training is.

A framework that already exists

The good news is we don’t need to invent this, there is so much existing advice, insight and content. It’s just that many of us are behind.
Universal Design for Learning, developed by CAST, has been around for a long time. In plain language it asks three things:

• More than one way to engage. Different reasons to care, different ways to take part, some choice in how.
• More than one way to take it in. Text and visuals and audio and doing. Not one format and hope.
• More than one way to show it. Not just a quiz at the end. A conversation, a real task, a reflection.

That’s it. It’s not a compliance checklist which can form a design habit. I can across it a few years ago and am building more and more into designing learning at work along with educating our broader team about it.

What it looks like in practice

Most of this costs nothing but a decision.

• Put the map up first. What we’ll cover, how long, when the break is.
• Make participation an invitation. Cameras optional. Chat or voice. Pairs before groups.
• Offer two formats for the core message. A short video and a one-page summary. A demo and a job aid.
• Give people a way to come back. A recording, a transcript, a place to ask questions later.
• Check whose examples you’re using. Whose names, whose roles, whose way of working is on the slides?
• Make it safe to not know. Say out loud that confusion is expected. Then mean it.

Back to my experiences

In many situations (meetings, sessions, workshops) I don’t think a facilitator is disrespecting people or out to make lives challenges and cause discomfort. They are designing for the person they imagined. Probably someone a lot like themselves and through this making a lot of assumptions about the participants.

That’s the whole problem with the default learner – they usually look a lot like whoever is doing the designing.

If they’d put an agenda on the screen and said “cameras optional, chat is fine”, I’d have spent that energy on the content instead. So would several others, I suspect, who’d never have said a word.

That’s what designing for the edges does. It doesn’t lower the bar, it just stops making people pay to reach it.