Alison Roberts

September 2024 - TD Magazine

In-house programs can be a means to upskill staff.

Connect Mentors and Mentees for Low-Cost Development

User-design provides an alternative to top-down expert-driven design processes. Grounded in systems theory, user-design empowers frontline stakeholders to design and create their own innovations. As a result, users of innovations are transformed into co-designers of innovations, rather than passive recipients of designs that are imposed upon them by an expert, which in turn may lead to greater adoption and diffusion of those innovations.
During this webcast, we will also discuss the role of instructional designers, specifically how they provide resources and facilitate the work of the design team rather than impose their expertise upon the team members. We will discuss a range of user-design tools, including ethnography, cooperative design, design-based research, action research, and scenario-based design.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently launched a curriculum for its mission critical occupation—economists. Robert Jordan, an instructional designer, led an agency-wide team of economists and successfully incorporated user-design tools in creating the new curriculum. Joining Robert is Alison A. Carr-Chellman, a professor of Instructional Systems and an author on the topic of user-design. During this webcast, you will learn how the user-design process unfolded at BLS and the critical lessons learned as a result.

 