It was the late Steve Jobs who said: "Design is not what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." Classic Steve. In just a couple of sentences he sums up one of the fundamental factors in Apple's phenomenal success.

But you don't have to be the producer of uber-cool computers and gadgets to find relevance in his words. They could be equally applied to aspects of e-learning - particularly with regard to the interface we devise for learners.

In my view, there's an interesting distinction to be made here between User Interface Design (UID) and Learner Interface Design (LID). The first is probably a more familiar term than the latter.

In an e-learning context, UID is about total simplicity and focusing on the ease of use of a course. Good UID shouldn't leave people pondering the outcome of alternative actions. It generally aims to minimise mental involvement. The overriding imperative of good UID? "Don't make the user think".

Now here's the difficult bit. LID, by contrast, has exactly the opposite imperative. It's totally about helping learners to think, learn and perform. Designing a learning interface is about getting learners to engage their mental faculties in order to learn. And this might involve confronting them with problems, challenges and issues.

In designing a learner interface, the focus should be on making it relevant and motivating. Something that will help the learner remember and implement what they learnt long after the learning event.

So, the challenge for e-learning developers is two-fold. First, being clear about the difference between the two concepts. Second, understanding where and when to apply one or the other.

When we are designing training programmes, how much should we consider learners' self-awareness of their learning preferences?

At the risk of doing a Donald Rumsfeld (he of the 'known unknowns'), one of the things that I find fascinating about learning and knowledge transfer is whether we know what we know.

In other words, how much are we really able to assess our own learning needs and preferences?

On this topic, I offer you a fascinating piece of research carried out by a group of people with the snappy surnames of Schnackenberg, Sullivan, Leader and Jones.

In their research, a group of learners taking an e-learning course, were given a survey about their preferences for the amount of practice they do when learning - either high or low.

The learners were then assigned to two different e-learning courses one with a high level of practice, the other with minimal practice.

Half the learners were given the version of the course that matched their preference, the other half were deliberately mismatched.

I've written previously about the significance of practice activities in learning, so you may not be surprised to discover that regardless of their preference, those who took the version of the course with more practice scored significantly higher on a post-course test than those who had taken the version with minimal practice.

First of all, this highlights the importance of practice activities in learning. But the results are important for another reason. They chime with quite a bit of other research that points to a frequent mismatch between what we think we want as learners and what actually produces results.

In other words, our perceived preferences about how we like to learn are not always good indicators of the way we actually need to learn.

If you are involved with designing training programmes and what to learn more about instructional design (or get help with creating a course) take a look at our instructional design programme.

Is a successful learning experience purely about external factors or do our own internal beliefs and motivations play a part?

We've all had good and bad learning experiences, so this is a fascinating question. How much is that success or failure purely down to external influences?

If we go back to the 1930s, Thorndike's Law of Effect holds that a correct answer needs a response to reward the learner. A "Well done, that's the right answer", from the trainer helps strengthen the association between the question and the correct answer and increases the probability of a similar correct response the next time around.

I think most people in the world of learning and development would broadly agree with this view. But this emphasises the external environment. What about if we also put an individual's beliefs into the centre of the picture. It's likely that we then have several other factors to take into account.

1. Beliefs about yourself
Do you believe you can succeed and acquire the knowledge and skills you are setting out to learn? This level of belief varies tremendously and is influenced by existing knowledge and experience. Go outside of familiar territories and domains and it is likely our self-belief and confidence will plummet.

2. Beliefs about the learning content
Is the content interesting? Genuine personal interest makes learners far more willing to engage with content - even when dull and boring. If personal interest is low or non-existent than we need to create situational interest. In other words, grab learners' attention and interest by making sure the learning content is well-crafted and engaging.

3. Beliefs about the success or failure of learning
Do learners believe the outcome they achieved was under or outside their control? Do they believe it was a poor trainer that caused them to fail or sheer good luck that they did well? Whether the outcome is positive or negative, research into something called attribution theory suggests a learner who believes an outcome was caused by factors outside their control, is far less likely to be motivated to succeed in the future.

By contrast, a learner who attributes success or failure to their own effort (or lack of it) is far more likely to be productive and put in more effort next time around.

This suggests it is hugely important to foster an environment that encourages learners to understand (and believe) that the success of learning outcomes is clearly within their control

Of course, all of this is just scraping the surface of an immensely complex (and very interesting) area. But it's a good reminder that we shouldn't just focus on external factors (important as they are) when thinking about how to achieve successful learning.