Context, they say, is everything. Very true in many areas of life, especially true of instructional design. And just as significant when it comes to performance support. Without carefully considering context (and its close relative integration) you are likely to come unstuck.

I was reminded of this just recently when I re-discovered a wonderful example from Allison Rossett. Her example was written in the 90s, meaning the original tech references are out of date now. Below, you’ll find my (minor) re-working of the example to include current tech references.

But before recounting the example, I want to add a bit of context of my own.

Why context matters 

Ever since the arrival of cognitive learning theories, we’ve recognised the importance of context in learning. Viewed through a purely instructional design lens, understanding how learners actually apply their learning in the workplace, will avoid teaching knowledge and skills in the abstract. A clear understanding of the specific ways in which knowledge and skills are being applied, helps you craft a tailored learning experience that closely reflects the workplace reality of the learners.

When thinking about supporting learners after a learning event, understanding that aspect of context is equally important. After all, the content of the support materials will need to be equally well contextualised and tailored.

But you will also want to focus on actual physical surroundings. Literally, where are they when they need that support. At a desk? At the top of an electricity pylon? In a noisy, crowded space?

That’s a much narrower and much more specific aspect of context. But it’s vital because it helps determine what a usable performance support tool needs to look like. 

A job-aid printed on a piece of paper won’t be very effective at the top of a pylon. Audio support won’t be much help in a noisy, crowded workspace. Granted, these are obvious, simplified examples. But you get the idea.

Consider integration for EVEN greater effectiveness

Within that aspect of context, you also need to consider integration. What do I mean by that? Essentially, it’s about how embedded the support is within the task. Making sure that learners can get to the support they need as quickly and easily as possible, while still taking into account the type of performance support tool that will make most sense in that context.

In some cases, you only need to think about these questions for a minute or two. The answer will stare you in the face. Other times, it’s a bit more nuanced and you might need to work through a few options and possibilities before you reach the best result. Other times, you may end up having to compromise a little bit.

And this is why I like Rossett’s example, so much. It takes an example that everyone understands and readily walks us through many of the considerations connected to context and integration. So, here’s my slightly updated version of her example…

Context and integration example

Imagine that you have to drive to an event on the other side of the town where you live. Your brother works on that side of town and knows it well; but you rarely have cause to go there and only a very limited experience of driving around there.

How might you go about finding your way there?

Look at the city map you keep in your home office. 
Not very integrated and only tailored in the sense that it’s a map of the place you need to drive in.

Go to Google Maps and have it map out the route. Print out the results to have with you in the car.
There is significant tailoring here. You get the exact route that you need. The support is integrated. But dangerously so. Glancing at the print out of the directions while driving is not recommended!

Ask your brother for directions
Tailored. And depending on your memory and the accuracy of his directions, this could work quite well. But not hugely integrated.

Pull out a city map that you keep in your glove box. Look at this before your journey and keep consulting it as you drive.
As with the map in the home office, not very tailored. As with the printed directions, integrated but dangerously so.

Use your sat nav
Lots of tailoring (and adapting). Deeply integrated into the task.

Of course, in this example most people will see immediately the benefits of the sat nav over all other options. This is one of those ‘staring you in the face’ decisions. 

However, just to be a little bit contrarian, I continue to be a sat nav refusenik. I could share multiple examples where I have sat as a passenger and watched people make the dumbest of navigation decisions because they have switched off their navigation brain and rely slavishly on a sat nav master. Another post for another day, I think!

But in conclusion, whatever decisions you make regarding context and integration, the important point to remember is that the more embedded, intuitive and tailored you can make that support solution, the more your learners are likely to see value in it and engage with over and over.

You can read a more personal view of my journey to create an AI-driven performance support tool in my weekly PerformaGo Diary.

If you are an end user of AI it all feels pretty simple. Ask your question or make your request. Get an answer or response. Keep going until you are done.

But what about if you need to start engaging with AI at a slightly more strategic/technical level. “It’s all a bit too complicated for me,” is not an untypical (or unreasonable) response. After all, once you start talking about APIs, prompts, Python or LLMs you can understand why someone’s eyes might glaze over and their brain might shut down.

To the uninitiated, it does start to sound like a bunch of tech gobbledygook dreamt up by a fairly unfriendly bunch of Martians!

(By the way if you are interested in dipping your toe into the more technical aspects of AI, my goal is to unpack the jargon and concepts in an L&D-friendly manner in my PerformaGo Diary and the associated Making Learning Stick blog)

But the good news in all this is that you don’t need to become a part-time programmer to get more than end-user value from AI. Because a lot of what’s going on behind the curtain with AI is as much about design logic as it is about programming. And design logic is something that most people in L&D are already very familiar and comfortable with.

It’s About Design, Not Code

So, what do I mean by design logic and how is it different from something like coding? Well, coding is about telling a system how to execute something, step-by-step. The detailed ‘how to’ instructions that run under the hood. Whereas design logic is about the why and the what.

So, viewed from a strategic or purpose-driven perspective, what makes AI really useful is the ability of those deploying it in a work-based environment to clearly define its intent (the why) and the outcomes you want from it (the what).

Which, of course, is not that different from thinking purposefully about a piece of work-based training.

What This Means for L&D

So, if we move beyond the anxiety many people feel about coding and tech speak, what we actually discover is that AI design and learning design share the same DNA.

Both are about:

• Creating flows and structures so things make sense.
• Filtering out unnecessary complexity.
• Anticipating what people will need, when they’ll need it, and how they’ll best engage with it.

In reality, you are already thinking in systems, flows, and interactions — exactly the same kind of mental models that you need to use when thinking about deploying AI.

So, working more strategically and purposefully with AI isn’t about shifting from instructional designer to techie expert. It’s about applying your existing learning design skills into a slightly different arena.

You don’t need to learn a single line of Python code to work effectively with AI. But thinking like a learning designer will definitely help you get better results from it.

AI Doesn’t Replace Design Thinking — It Rewards It

So, AI isn’t something L&D needs to fear or surrender to. It’s something we can shape using our existing design skills and thinking. Because when you strip away the code, AI’s power depends on the same things that make great learning work: clear purpose, sound structure, and empathy for the learner

That’s why the future of L&D doesn’t belong to the coders — it belongs to the designers.  People who can take what they already know about how people learn and apply it to how intelligent systems perform.

Because design thinking isn’t just part of L&D’s DNA. It’s also our bridge to the future.

Curious how this post took shape?
This post was inspired by a story I shared in my Diary blog — “From Rodeo Drive to AI: The Three Languages Every Custom GPT Needs.”

Spoiler alert. It is a bit more technical in content. But it’s the tale of a California trip that unexpectedly helped me understand how several bits of tech work together to make AI more effective.

You can read that story here

Ask anyone outside of L&D what comes to mind when they think of “learning,” and the answer is almost always the same: classrooms, courses, qualifications.

That’s not surprising. From the time we’re four or five years old, we spend hours of our lives in an education system where the ultimate prize is being good at school. Success is measured in grades, certificates, and diplomas. Society reinforces the message: the more successful you are at completing formal learning, the more valuable you are.

So, it’s no wonder that when business leaders run into a performance problem, their first instinct is to ask L&D for training. Courses feel like the answer because courses are what we’ve all been conditioned to believe in.


The Blind Spot This Creates
The problem is, formal learning isn’t always the lever that moves performance. In fact, often it’s not even close.

Sometimes what’s needed isn’t weeks of training. Sometimes it’s something as simple as a single page of A4 paper — a job aid, a checklist, a quick reference — that gives people exactly what they need, when they need it.

But here’s the counterintuitive part: because these solutions look so simple, they often get dismissed. People inevitably think, “How could something that small make a real difference?”

This bias towards formal learning is a big blind spot in how we approach workplace learning. It’s why L&D so often gets trapped in the order-taking cycle — asked to churn out courses because they’re seen as the “serious” answer, even when simpler, leaner performance support would have more impact.


Why Simplicity Works
The irony is that simplicity is exactly what makes performance support powerful:

•    A well-designed checklist can significantly reduces errors.
•    A short job aid can save hours of wasted time.
•    A contextual nudge can shift behaviour more effectively than any course module.

None of these examples look like the formal learning solutions we’ve been trained to overvalue. But they work; and often, they work better.


Shifting Our Mindset in L&D
If we  want to increase learning impact, we need to challenge the cultural over-perception of formal learning. That doesn’t mean courses don’t matter. It means we stop treating them as the default solution.

It means educating our stakeholders that effectiveness isn’t about how long or formal a learning solution is, but about how well it supports performance. Sometimes that’s a course. Sometimes it’s workplace support. And sometimes it’s a combination of both.


A Closing Thought...
The world has taught us to equate learning with classrooms, exams, and certificates. But in the workplace, those aren’t always what move the needle.

Performance improves when people have the right support at the right time. And sometimes, that support looks a lot less like school — and a lot more like a single sheet of paper.

We’ve all been there. “We need a course on…” or “Can you put together a workshop about…” And before you know it, you’re scoping out slides, activities, and maybe even booking rooms.

It’s the classic “training order-taking” scenario. The problem is, fulfilling training orders doesn’t always lead to better performance. Sometimes it just leads to more training.

The Limits of the Order-Taker Role

When we accept training requests at face value, we miss the bigger question: what’s the real problem we’re trying to solve?

Is performance lagging because people don’t know how to do something? Or is it because the process is broken, the tools are clunky, or expectations are unclear? In many cases, training isn’t the answer at all.

That’s the trap of being an order-taker. It turns us into a busy L&D function, but it doesn’t necessarily make us impactful.

The Shift: From Training to Performance

To increase impact, L&D needs to move from being an order-taker to becoming a performance enabler.

Sometimes, that means asking harder questions up front:

• What’s really getting in the way of performance?
• Is this a skills gap, a motivation gap, or an environmental issue?
• If training is part of the answer, what else needs to be in place for it to work?

It also means widening our toolkit. A course might sometimes be the right solution — but often it’s just one piece of a broader picture.

What Performance Enablement Looks Like

Performance enablement is about making it easier for people to succeed in their work. That might look like:

• A job aid that reduces reliance on memory.
• A checklist that ensures key steps aren’t missed.
• A guided conversation that helps managers coach effectively.
• A performance support tool that provides answers in the flow of work.

These may not look as impressive as a full-blown course, but their impact can be huge. They get used in the moment of need. They reduce errors. They increase confidence. And they show the business that L&D is directly connected to performance outcomes.

Why This Matters Now

People don’t always have time to attend courses, however well designed. They need solutions that fit into their flow of work, not outside it.

That’s why the order-taker mindset feels increasingly out of step. The future belongs to L&D teams who can enable performance: diagnosing real needs, designing for usability, and delivering support that works in the moment.

How This Shapes PerformaGo

This shift is also shaping the design of the AI-powered tool I’m currently working on, called PerformaGo. From the ground up, it’s being built around the principle of performance enablement.

Instead of just asking, “What training can we deliver?”, it encourages us to consider, “What support will make performance easier?”

The goal isn’t to replace courses. It’s to give those of us in L&D a way to extend learning into performance — so the business gets the impact it needs, and learners get the support they want.

A Closing Thought

The order-taker model has kept many in L&D busy for many decades. But if we want to stay relevant, we can’t just take orders. We need to enable performance, too.

That’s the shift PerformaGo is designed to support. If you would like to stay connected and receive regular updates about what we are doing, you can register your interest.

If you prefer a more personal, behind-the-scenes take on all this, check out The PerformaGo Diary.

Looking into the L&D world from the outside, it’s tempting to think that more is better. More slides, more content, more detail. After all, if learners have all the information, they’ll surely be more successful, won’t they?

But anyone who’s worked in L&D knows that is rarely true. It's information or content overwhelm that can discourage learners from implement learning successfully; too much information rather than not enough of it.

Typically, they don’t need more information, but they could surely benefit from more relevant and better-structured information. And that’s where a simple but immensely powerful design principle comes in. The principle of chunking with relevance.

My Early Introduction: Information Mapping

I was first introduced to the principle of chunking with relevance through a methodology called Information Mapping. It’s a structured way of presenting information that relies heavily on breaking content down into smaller, clearly defined units.

With good reason. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that we all (not just learners) process and understand information much more easily when it’s organised into meaningful, focused “chunks.”

Even outside of the framework of a formal methodology like Information Mapping, chunking with relevance is something all of us in L&D should be aiming to apply.

Fundamentally, chunking with relevance helps shift us from a mindset of, ‘what do I need to tell them’, to a more learner-focused approach that considers two things: ‘what do they need to know’ and ‘what will be manageable for them to process’.

 Why Chunking Works: The Cognitive View

The roots of chunking with relevance lie in cognitive psychology. We don’t have unlimited working memory. So, when information is presented in large, unstructured blocks, our brains struggle to process it.

Chunking with relevance reduces that cognitive load by grouping information into smaller, meaningful units. This makes it easier for learners to:

• Understand new material as it’s introduced.
• See the relationships between pieces of content.
• Retain and recall knowledge more successfully.

Chunking with relevance doesn’t guarantee perfect recall, but it does make initial comprehension much, much easier.

A Principle Shared with AI

Interestingly, chunking isn’t just good for us. It’s also vital for AI systems like GPTs.

For example, when you create a knowledge base for a custom GPT, dumping in a 100-page PDF won’t produce great results.

The GPT will work better when the information is broken down into smaller chunks. Each chunk gives the AI clearer context, helping it generate more accurate and relevant responses.

In other words: both humans and machines process information better when it’s structured thoughtfully. It’s a reminder that chunking is a universal design principle, not just a quirk of instructional theory.

 Why This Matters for L&D Now

Learners often face information overload at every turn — in their jobs, in their inboxes, and even in the learning materials we create. If we want our learning interventions to be effective, we can’t add to that overload.

Applying chunking with relevance is one of the simplest ways to reduce the cognitive burden. It helps learners see the signal in the noise. It makes content usable rather than intimidating. And crucially, it demonstrates the value that L&D brings: not by producing more information, but by structuring it in a way that is meaningful and relevant.

And if you’re curious to find out a bit more about the importance of chunking for AI, take a look at this week’s diary post 

Indulge me for a second and let’s try a little thought experiment.

Imagine your colleagues outside of L&D — managers, frontline staff, sales reps, new hires etc — each had their own always-available, always-supportive AI performance coach. No set-up time, no searching for materials, just instant, intelligent support in the moment they need it.

What would you want that coach to do for each of those colleagues?

• Offer reminders on key tasks?

• Help them prepare for or reflect on a difficult conversation or meeting?

• Serve up step-by-step guidance during their first few weeks in a new role?

This isn’t the stuff of fantasy anymore. AI is becoming sophisticated enough to do all of that — and more. But let's not get carried away.

Your answers to the 'learner need' question matter more than any tech solution. Because performance support is about learner need first and tech delivery second — not the other way around.

That's why the PerformaGo AI tool that we are developing, starts with performer needs, not content or clever tech. It help's you to think through: What do learners struggle with most, post-training? What’s hard for them to remember? What gets skipped when things get busy? What barriers exist in the workplace that might be holding them back or discouraging them from applying their new skills?

Then we make it super-easy for you to design lightweight, AI-powered assistants that:

• Provide authentic and accurate help, advice and reminders

• Reference the specific skill sets and content that an individual learner needs to complete a specific task 

• Prompt the learner to plan, complete or reflect, based on real-world application and challenges

This is about providing real-time learning and support that lives in the workplace — not inside the LMS.

So, what would you want an AI coach to help your learners do? 

Interested in finding out more about how PerformaGo could help your learners achieve more successful workplace application? Register your interest at pacificblue.ai -  help us shape the tool and get early access.

Many of us in L&D still hesitate about AI. The reasons vary enormously. For example:

• “It’s not good enough yet.”
• “It’s going to steal my job.”
• “I’m not technical enough.”

Last week’s post explored the flaw in that last reason. We saw that most of us in L&D already hold a hidden set of technical skills — more than most of us give ourselves credit for.

This week, I want to dig into that idea a bit more, with a personal story and a reminder of another skill that many of us underestimate.

You Don’t Need to Know the Detail to Benefit

I’ve never been particularly strong in or had much of an interest in maths. Yet here I am, building a software tool. Even more surprising, as part of deepening my understanding of how AI works, I became quite fascinated by the elegant mathematics that sits behind GPTs.

Luckily, I don’t need to do the maths to be in awe of it — or to benefit from what it enables. I can use GPTs without knowing the detail of semantic maps, tokens, or probability models. I simply need to know how to make the best use of what that ‘behind the scenes’ math can produce.

And I think that highlights an interesting and important parallel for us in L&D. We don’t have to understand every last underlying detail of the subject matter we turn into courses for our learners.

Instead, we need to filter out irrelevant complexity and translate what remains into a learning experience that is relevant, authentic, and usable. This is the hidden L&D skill that I'd like to focus on here.

The Hidden Skill: Turning Complexity Into Clarity

Plenty of SMEs know their subject in depth. A few are even instinctively good instructional designers. But a key understanding that separates a good instructional designer from many an SME is perspective. We design for the learner, not for the content. We can take a step back in order to

• see it from the learner’s point of view
• strip away the content clutter
• sequence ideas clearly and logically, and
• build authentic practice out of all that.

This, I believe, is one of our greatest professional assets.

From Learning Design to Performance Support

Not everyone reading this will have designed performance support materials or content before. If you haven’t, the good news is that the skills you use to design an effective course are very similar to the ones you’ll need to design useful performance support in the workplace.

And here’s the even better news: performance support is the perfect way to combine those existing skills with the power of AI.

Just as we filter complexity into clarity for learners during the course design process, we can use AI to help us produce, usable workplace performance support scaffolding.

Put those two forces together — L&D’s eye for learner relevance and AI’s knack for simplification — and you have a winning formula for extending learning into the flow of work.

Harnessing AI without Being a Techie

You don’t need to be a techie to make AI work in L&D. What you need is a recognition of the skills you have already — and a willingness to apply them in new contexts.

The maths that underpins GPTs may remain out of reach for me, but the elegance of what it makes possible is not. The same is true for L&D. Our job isn’t to master the inner workings of AI, but to harness its power in ways that help people learn, perform, and succeed at work.

If you’d like to see the personal story that sparked this reflection, take a look at this week’s post from my PerformaGo diary: In Awe of the Math I’ll Never Do 

As a customer, it’s a generally a pleasant experience going to a restaurant.

We order the food we want. It arrives as specified and we get to enjoy it. And if anything is not quite as we’d like it, we can always have a word with the staff.

But what about if you are the chef and his team. Always busy. Always harassed. Always churning out the same predictable product. Frequently dealing with picky customers who don’t like this or that about what you produce.

In theory, the chef should be very much in control of his or her universe. In practice it may not be like that.

Does that chef’s kitchen sound like your L&D function? If not, I’m delighted to hear it. No need to read on.

If yes, then you are currently facing a very unattractive future. Because the orders are only going to increase in volume and the ‘customers’ are only going to get pickier and more demanding.

If your ‘customers’ are telling you what they want and how they want it, fundamentally they don’t value you. In their heads, you don't know anything much about the best approach to learning for their particular need. So they formulate their own plans and just present them to you for implementation.

There could be various reasons for finding yourself in a situation like this.

Perhaps you've inherited it from a predecessor. Perhaps this is all you've ever known and you just assume this is the way it's done. Perhaps you'd love to do things differently but can't see a way to turn things around.

Whatever the causes, this is a terrible situation to find yourself in as part of a learning and development function. And it doesn't have to be this way. The ship can be turned around.

If you are serious about turning your L&D department into the trusted and respected part of your organisation it deserves to be, take a look at our on-demand webinar on this topic: How to amplify learning: the journey from order-taker to trusted expert.

It’s easy to feel uncomfortable or distracted when yet another new technology comes along.

Fresh concepts, unfamiliar vocabulary, and endless hype can leave us feeling overwhelmed or even anxious. Neuroscientists call this an amygdala response — the part of our brain that processes threats quickly kicks in, making us want to shut down or avoid the source of discomfort.

That reaction is natural. But here’s the problem: it just reinforces a sense of inadequacy. A sense that we’re “behind” or “not technical enough” to keep up. And in the new world of AI unfolding before us that feeling can become overwhelming.

I went to a fairly tech-focused, hands-on event run by Amazon Web Services in Manchester last week. And trust me I had a couple of my own, amygdala-induced, 'shall I just cut and run, now?" moments. But I stuck it out. And I'm glad that I did because the more I persevered, the more I realised something really important

Most of us in L&D are far more tech-savvy than we give ourselves credit for.

Take a step back for a minute and think about all the different tech tools in your orbit and the different ways you might use them:

• Instructional tools → You’ve already learned to use Articulate Storyline, Rise, Captivate, or similar platforms. That’s logic, sequencing, and (if you really get into Storyline in particular) using variables.

• LMS administration → Uploading SCORM files, managing enrolments, troubleshooting access. That’s systems thinking and workflow design.

• Digital collaboration tools → Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Slack, Miro. That’s user experience awareness and adoption strategy.

• Content authoring → Video editing, podcasting, slide design. That’s multimedia fluency and interface design.

These aren’t minor skills. They are the very foundations of working with any new software, regardless of its unfamiliar associated concepts or jargon.

Now granted, not everyone is going to be expert in every one of those areas or those tools. But joining the dots between what you know already and what's emerging is probably not as difficult as you think. The “new” world of AI doesn’t replace what you already know — it connects to it.

As well as my recent experiences last week, I’ve been reminded of this in my wider journey. If you've been reading any of my recent posts on this blog or over on my  new diary blog, you'll know that I'm on a journey to build a performance support app, specifically for L&D.

Moving into software development felt like jumping in at the deep end. But as I began exploring no-code tools and AI, I kept noticing familiar patterns: workflows that echoed the decision-making aspects of Storyline variables and interfaces that weren’t so different from the tools I’ve used for years.

We’re already carrying around a whole bunch of tech-related skills around with us. It's almost like discovering a hidden skillset that we never realised we had.

If you’d like to find out about how I worked through the excitement (and the fear) of stepping into a more tech-focused space, I share some of the behind-the-scenes story in this week’s Diary post.

One of the things that we cover in the e-learning modules in our impact and instructional design training is the difference between user interface design (UID) and learner interface design. I first came across this distinction courtesy of all-round e-learning genius Michael Allen.

Without getting into the weeds, it’s the difference between what you might call the basic high-level global interface settings you provide to your learners – navigation being the most obvious and probably the best example.

As with all things UID, the aim is to make this as simple, consistent and intuitive as possible. However, Allen makes the point that within that global UID it’s likely you’ll have an entirely separate set of design principles that relate specifically to the task-focused practice activities that you are building into your e-learning.

The interesting point here, is that your learner interface design (LID) might not be consistent with your user interface design. In fact, in extreme cases, it might effectively ‘go against’ your UID.

In other words, for the purposes of making your practice activity authentic and a reflection of the real-world situation it is aiming to replicate, if that real-world activity is messy and complicated to complete, that may need to be reflected in the design of the activity. Meaning that from a learner perspective, it might not be simple, consistent and intuitive.

Diving into that in a bit more detail is probably a good topic for another day. Today I really do want to focus on simple, consistent and intuitive UID. Because endless unnecessary clicks can be a quiet killer of learner engagement.

Every extra click — the extra “Next” button, the redundant confirmation screen, the maze-like menu — acts as micro-barrier. It slows learners down, interrupts flow, and chips away at motivation. It may not seem like much, but multiplied across an entire course or module, the hidden cost is high: lost learners, missed outcomes, and frustrated managers.

E-Learning is a particularly problematic delivery medium in this respect; but the hidden cost of too many clicks or actions is not restricted to e-learning.

Performance support provided in a digital/electronic format is no different. If we want support tools to be genuinely used in the flow of work, they need to feel like they fit perfectly in that flow. That means eliminating friction at every step. Every second counts when someone is trying to solve a problem or apply a skill on the job.

The principle is simple: the easier the journey to the required solution, the more likely the learner is to stick with it — and the more likely performance will actually improve.

If you’ve been following my posts recently, you’ll know that I’m very focused on supporting performance in the flow of work just at the moment. So well-contextualised performance support tools built around well-defined and contextualised moments of need are very much top of mind at the moment.

That’s why, as I continue building performance support-focused tools like PerformaGo, one of my guiding principles is simplicity. Because every unnecessary click isn’t just wasted effort — it’s a lost opportunity for impact.

If you are interested in reading a little behind the scenes story of my obsession with UID, you can read the latest entry from my PerformaGo diary here.