Your Learners Are People. Start Treating Them Like It.

If you’re still designing for “learners”, you’ve already lost them.

Let’s be blunt. Most L&D teams aren’t designing for people.
They’re designing for a fictional character that doesn’t exist.

“The learner.”
“The employee.”
“The end user.”

None of those are real. They’re vague, lazy labels that let us stay comfortable and avoid the hard work of understanding who our audience actually is.

In this episode we focus on stopping that, and understanding our audiences once and for all. Not lip-service, not assumptions — the real, messy, human insight that actually makes learning work.

We dig into:

• Why research that only talks to “engaged learners” tells you nothing

• The difference between demographic data and psychographic insight, and why the latter actually matters

• How to ask questions that unlock real, emotional responses, not box-ticking surveys

• Why short answers = wrong questions

• And how to turn audience insight into personas that actually help, not just tick a process box

You can start with a few focus groups.
Or a few corridor convos.
Or maybe just a handful of meaningful questions.

And when that insight starts flowing? You’ll never go back to building blind.

So this episode is about stopping you building for a mythical “learner.”
And to get you to start designing for real people. With real motivations. And real pain points.

Because when you do? That’s when learning stops being ignored — and starts making an impact.