Draw your learners into a maze — but one that they can solve
For thousands of years, complex mazes have scared and delighted us. Their enduring appeal offers a lesson for learning designers.
During a recent labyrinthine discussion with my colleagues on the Mind Tools Custom team, a conversational detour brought us to the topic of mazes.
Claire Gibson, one of the shorter of our Learning Designers, told us about a recent experience where she marched confidently into a hedge maze and got lost. Though she could hear her friends elsewhere in the maze, she couldn’t jump high enough to spot them over the shrubbery.
This story reminded me of my own horror, running in tears around the hedge maze at Hazelhead Park in Aberdeen. I think I was probably six, but I can remember the mounting fear at each wrong turn: and the relief of the final escape.
This mix of fear and excitement is why mazes have proved so enduringly popular. From the ancient Greek story of the minotaur in the labrynth to last year’s film adaptation of Saltburn, the experience of being in a maze is an undeniably emotional one.
Here’s what Adrian Fisher, maze designer and consultant on Saltburn, had to say about the process of creating them:
‘I have to work out how to lose – just before my opponent, the maze user, has had enough. I have to convince them that it’s really tricky, and then give them the opportunity to think they’ll solve it after all. They don’t realize that I’ve actually contrived their vision of the solution. But, by the time they’ve internalized it, it has nothing to do with me at all. They found it all by themselves. I want them to feel clever. I’m an entertainer, helping people feel good about themselves.’
In learning design, we would describe this concept as ‘desirable difficulty’. If a learning experience is too easy, the learner will get bored. Too difficult, and they might give up. An optimum learning experience, that triggers real change in the learner, is one where they feel challenged but succeed.
Crafting a learning experience then is akin to designing a maze, where the learning designer should offer up opportunities for challenge, exploration and discovery.
And the parallels go further. In his article for Frieze, Fisher describes the importance of partnering with clients to co-create the experience. Of creating something that will resonate with a wide demographic. Of ensuring that visitors feel safe as they delight in the challenge and the even the beauty of the experience.
In workplace learning, we are not necessarily in the business of entertainment. But we are seeking to capture the imagination of our users: To have them commit themselves to our learning experiences and to leave with a sense of satisfaction and achievement.
We want them to enter the maze and, when they leave, to look forward to their next adventure.
Want help crafting learning experiences for your people? Get in touch with us by emailing custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox.
🎧 On the podcast
What does good management look like? What skills and capabilities does a manager need? Are you a good manager?
In last week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Owen and I were joined by Dr Anna Barnett from our own in-house Insights team to discuss the findings of our latest report: ‘Building Better Managers’.
In the episode, Anna shares her findings into the key skills and capabilities that make a measurable difference to the performance of people and teams.
What struck me most during the recording was that all of those capabilities are about how we interact with others. The role of the manager, ultimately, is a social one.
Check out the episode below. 👇
The report, ‘Building Better Managers’, is out on July 9. You can pre-order a free copy now.
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or #MindToolsPodcast
📖 Deep dive
And here’s a couple of other insights from tomorrow’s report: What struck me, reading an early draft, was that 86% of managers reported that they “know what skills they need to be a good manager”.
But, when the team interviewed managers and asked them to explain what “good management” was, most participants couldn’t articulate what they were striving for.
To me, this is another challenge to the concept of self-directed learning. While desirable, if managers don’t know what skills they need, how can they be expected to identify their own development opportunities?
This problem gets worse as managers become more experienced in their careers.
New managers, less than a year into their roles, are far more interested in discovering their strengths and weaknesses than those who are more experienced.
Experienced managers think they know what they need to do to improve. But, based on our interviews, that’s unlikely to be the case.
Our report, ‘Building Better Managers’, will be available on July 9. You can pre-order it now, or get in touch if you’d like help measuring the capability of your managers.
👹 Missing links
We’ve all heard that an elephant never forgets, but have you considered what a tortured existence that must be for our be-trunked friends? In this article for The Cut, Katy Schneider writes about the freedom from guilt and pain that comes with never remembering anything, while her ‘Rememberer’ friends are haunted forever by what they and others have done.
🏢 The pros and cons of sitting-with-Nellie
There’s an old model of training, where a new start sits next to “Nellie” and learns everything she knows. Now researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have looked at performance data for co-located software developers and identified the pros and cons of this approach. Teams who work in a single location tend to give each other more feedback and therefore likely learn more from each other. But they also produce less code, likely because they spend so long giving each other feedback. The question for employers then is, what’s more important? Long-term people development or short-term productivity?
👨💻 Building software used to be easy
Before the advent of generative AI, it was generally assumed that any software could be built. It was just a case of: ‘How long will it take?’, ‘How much will it cost?’ and ‘Does it meet user needs?’. These are all difficult questions to answer, but the outcome itself was theoretically possible. Now, in this excellent edition of Lenny’s Newsletter, Intercom’s Chief Product Officer Paul Adams argues that this model has been flipped. With generative AI, it’s not at all clear whether something is possible or, if it is, whether it will be good. That requires a different approach to development, and a big mindset shift for product people.
👋 And finally…
Some light but exciting news to end this week’s Dispatch: paleontologists have discovered a new dinosaur, named 'Lokiceratops rangiformis', or “Loki’s horned face that looks like a caribou”.
As you can see in the video below, the animal is similar to the famous triceratops but with horns like the Norse God Loki, that are slightly askew like a caribou (hence the name).
According to Joe Sertich, co-author of the paper that revealed the lokiceratops to the world, the discovery: "pushes the envelope on bizarre ceratopsian headgear”.
This might be the best sentence I’ve ever read.
👍 Thanks!
Thanks for reading The L&D Dispatch from Mind Tools! If you’d like to speak to us, work with us, or make a suggestion, you can email custom@mindtools.com.
Or just hit reply to this email!
Hey here’s a thing! If you’ve reached all the way to the end of this newsletter, then you must really love it!
Why not share that love by hitting the button below, or just forward it to a friend?