When first transitioning to a career in instructional design, it’s easy to get caught in the binary funnel of corporate or higher education roles. This can reinforce the belief that there are two main audiences that IDs serve: employees at a company or learners at an educational institution. However, there are a lot of SaaS (Software as a Service) companies that covet your instructional design skills for their customers.

Welcome the world of customer education.

Leading companies such as HubSpot and Canva understand the critical role of robust customer education in achieving long-term success. These companies not only offer products but also build communities focused on their users. (Check out Hubspot Academy and Canva’s Design School).

You might go to their webpage because you want to use their product to solve a problem, but like an eager and knowledgeable hardware store assistant, they’re invested in the whole experience. They’ll come to your house and help you install those rain gutters.

Or, in SaaS speak: “Here’s our product; we hope you like it. And hey, just so you know, we’re also a community of people who want to see you excel at your job and your life for that matter, so here’s a ton of other resources and certifications.”

And guess who is behind the scenes making all those awesome resources? That’s right. It’s the instructional designer(s). (Although we are sometimes hiding behind other titles)!

If this ID rabbit hole is of particular interest to you, I recommend digging into the game developer Kathy Sierra’s book: “Badass: Making Users Awesome”. Sierra argues that the success of a product is directly linked to the success of its users. The problem is that a lot of SaaS companies hype their awesome product and invest in building more features when their focus should really be on making more awesome users.

(Sound familiar? Exactly. A similar blindspot exists in L&D: Businesses frequently spend a lot of money on training with shiny bells and whistles, and then forget to measure the learning outcomes in the real world.)

To make awesome users, you’ve got to make awesome learners and that’s where brand loyalty and instructional design unite.

Here are the key principles of Sierra’s user-centric approach and how you might articulate your value as an instructional designer in support of them.

1. Focus on Outcomes

Sierra asks: Don’t just tell me about the product features. How do these product features help users achieve their goals?

ID responds: We can develop tutorial videos that walk users through specific tasks they need to accomplish with the product and how that success carries over into other areas. For example, our product might help a user to get home in time for dinner each night with his family because he is now able to automate some of his end-of-shift tasks and gain back that time.

2. Build a Path to Mastery

Sierra asks: Is there a clear and motivating path to mastery? Are users able to overcome challenges?

ID responds: We can create a learning roadmap and certifications that visually represent the progression through different levels of expertise. This will include milestones, checkpoints, and content that has been divided into manageable chunks. We can also offer optional advanced modules for our superusers and extra scaffolding for our beginners.

3. Enhance User Confidence

Sierra asks: Do the users have tools, knowledge, and encouragement they need to succeed?

ID responds: We can incorporate practical exercises and real-world scenarios that allow users to apply what they have learned in a risk-free environment. We can create a social community space to offer support, celebrate wins, and positively engage with our users.

4. Create a Feedback Loop

Sierra asks: Do the users receive timely and constructive feedback to promote continuous learning?

ID responds: We can include regular quizzes and self-assessment tools in course design or onboarding experiences. We can track user progress of product mastery, ask for feedback, and identify areas where additional support might be needed.

5. Design for Motivation

Sierra asks: Are you leveraging intrinsic and extrinsic motivators to drive users to excel?

ID responds: We can create personalized learning paths to ensure users are exposed to relevant information, make interactive and engaging content in a variety of formats, and offer incentives. We can also proactively identify superusers and collaborate with them as brand ambassadors and success stories.

Kathy Sierra’s approach offers a powerful framework for user empowerment that leads to greater brand loyalty, and learning her language will give you an advantage if you decide to pursue a role in customer education.

Remember “I can finally drive!” usually holds a bit more euphoria than the exclamation “That was a really effective driver’s ed course” because we get excited about what we can DO.

And “I’m a great project manager” sounds much savvier than “Asana has saved my life on more than one occasion” even if both are true!

Whether it be customer education or instructional design, our goal is to help individuals be confident, capable, and well, badass, in their abilities. So if you’re contemplating your next career move, consider bringing the badass to the SaaS. You’re in good company.

Additional Reading

The Power of Customer Training: Evaluating Return on Investment (ROI)

How Does Canva Nail User Retention?

Who Are The Super Users and Why Should Marketers Care?

5 Real-World B2B SaaS Customer Education Examples

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