Stop Building for the LMS: Start Designing for Humans

Let’s say it out loud: your LMS is a tool. Not a strategy. Not a destination. Not your end user.

But no matter how many times we say it, L&D teams keeps building for the platform — not the employees on the other end of it. Slide decks get converted into 45-minute modules. Microlearning becomes a checkbox. Mandatory training becomes the punchline in a company meme thread.

We blame low engagement on attention spans, poor culture, or lack of accountability. But maybe — just maybe — people aren’t the problem. Maybe the experience is.

In this blog, we’re going to explore how you can start designing for humans, rather than your tech — and ultimately transform your engagement rates, once and for all.

IS ‘CLICK NEXT’ AN EXPERIENCE?

Most digital learning experiences don’t feel like experiences at all — they feel like transactions. The flow is painfully familiar: click “Next,” watch a video, pass a multiple-choice quiz, then move on. It’s less about learning and more about checking a box. These kinds of interventions might satisfy reporting requirements or give the illusion of progress, but they rarely lead to meaningful engagement or change. Learners complete them out of obligation, not curiosity. They’re not connecting new ideas to their daily work. They’re just trying to tick the box and get back to what matters.

The reason is simple: these experiences weren’t designed for people — they were designed for platforms. Built to match the limitations of an LMS rather than the needs of a human brain. And when you design to satisfy systems instead of solving problems, you end up with content that’s rigid, impersonal, and easy to ignore. It’s not that your people don’t want to learn — they just don’t want to waste their time. If the experience doesn’t feel useful, relevant or real, it’s not going to land.

When your LMS dictates the design, you lose more than just creative freedom — you lose flexibility, relevance, and flow. Instead of designing around how people learn, you start designing around what the system allows: what’s uploadable, scorable, reportable. And the result is learning that might be easy to distribute, but hard to absorb — and even harder to apply. Your audience ends up navigating a user experience that’s optimised for tracking, not transformation. You’re not designing for humans; you’re delivering to a database. And it shows.

HUMANS DON’T LEARN IN MODULES

Here’s the truth: your people aren’t sitting around waiting for learning. They’re juggling priorities, managing teams, solving customer problems, and navigating constant change. Their calendars are full, their attention is fragmented, and their tolerance for irrelevant content is low. So when a 30-minute module lands in their inbox — without context, without clear value — it’s no surprise it gets ignored. Time is too precious. Attention is too hard-earned. If learning doesn’t feel useful, immediate, or relevant to their goals, it simply won’t get a look-in.

To earn that attention, your learning has to meet employees where they are — not pull them away from what they care about. So that means you need to design differently. Instead of hour-long courses, they need short, sharp bursts of support that solve a specific problem or unlock a particular behaviour. It means embedding resources into the tools they already use: Slack, Teams, dashboards, or flow-of-work systems. And it means offering autonomy: letting employees choose how, when, and where they engage, based on what fits their reality. When learning is built for the real world — not the learning system — it becomes something people choose, not something they endure.

EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE DESIGN (THE PEOPLE IMPACT LOOP™ WAY)

The third phase of the People Impact Loop™ is Experience Design — and it’s where many organisations quietly stall. Even after putting in the work to gather meaningful insights (Phase 1) and align initiatives to real business priorities (Phase 2), delivery often becomes an afterthought. Teams fall back into old habits, defaulting to the LMS as the primary — or only — way to distribute learning. But insight without execution is just potential. And alignment without experience design is just strategy that never comes to life. If you stop at phase two, you’ve just diagnosed the problem without delivering the solution.

To move forward, you have to break the cycle. That means designing learning as an experience, not a one-time event. Start by mapping the full employee decision-making journey: what moments actually matter, and what comes before and after them? Build for personas — not permission levels — considering each learner’s context, motivation, and pressure points. Prototype early. Test often. Treat learning like a product, not a PDF. And most importantly, mix your methods. Combine digital, social, live, and experiential touch points. The LMS might play a role — but it should never be the whole show. Experience Design is where strategy becomes real. Get this right, and you’ll be well on your way to creating real impact for your organisation.

THE OUTCOME? LEARNING THAT FEELS HUMAN

Here’s the truth: when you stop building for platforms and start designing for people, everything shifts:

• Engagement becomes voluntary, not forced.

• Completion turns into conversation.

• Learning stops being an interruption and starts being an enabler.

And perhaps most importantly? Your people stop rolling their eyes when they hear the words “training module.” (And isn’t that what we all dream of?!)

READY TO DESIGN LEARNING THAT ACTUALLY LANDS?

The People Impact Loop™ helps you move beyond the LMS-first mindset and into a world where learning is designed to be experienced, not endured.

Want to see how you currently measure up? Take the People Impact Loop™ diagnostic and get clear on what needs fixing, in just three minutes.