Production values: do they really matter?

In any project that involves the design and development of learning content, there are competing priorities which can be hard to reconcile. There are at least three key factors all competing for attention, and it's very difficult to concentrate on them all:

Three considerations

The first major consideration is the subject matter itself. How relevant is this to the target population? How timely is this information? Is it accurate, clear, concise?

The second consideration is the design for learning: What learning strategy should be employed? How can interactivity be used to support this strategy? How can the subject matter best be communicated using examples, stories, cases and demos?

The final consideration is the level at which to set the production values. How professionally should the content be presented? How novel and eye catching should it be? How rich is the media mix?

Clearly each of these is important to some degree. Which comes out top could depend on your role in the process. If you're a subject expert then obviously your focus is on number 1. If you're selling production services, you may well differentiate yourself using number 3. If you're a learner (and rarely are you the one paying for any of this or ever consulted in any way) then your priority will undoubtedly be number 2. My guess is that most design and development teams focus on two of the considerations, at the expense of the other. Let's hope that the learner isn't the one to miss out.

What comes top?

In my opinion, the subject matter should come top. After all, it doesn’t matter how well the content is designed and developed, if it’s saying the wrong things to the wrong people at the wrong time then it’s a complete waste of effort. It may even be doing more harm than good.

Second should come the design for learning. Once you’ve established what you need to teach, your learning design is the major factor in whether you’ll achieve your objectives.

Which leaves us with the production values. While these are important to an extent, I believe it is pointless to get too obsessed, for a number of reasons:

You will never in your wildest dreams be able to match ‘Hollywood’ production values or even get anywhere near.

Even if you did, it would not make a positive impression on learners. Why? Because they’ve seen it all before. They don’t expect it of your content anyway. They may even be suspicious of content that is too glossy – what is it you’re trying to sell them?

Fitness for purpose

Learners (indeed all media consumers) are tuned in to fitness for purpose. They expect Hollywood movies and big, expensive games to be awesome. They expect top-down efforts put together by their employers to be accurate, usable, reasonably engaging and professional in appearance, but no more. And when it comes to user-generated content, then frankly anything goes. Remember they are quite happy skipping from rock promos to home-made YouTube movies. They know what ‘good enough’ means.

Unlike entertainment media, learning content should not be seeking to engage through its production values. What learners find engaging is material that is relevant to their daily work, will help them solve current problems or improve their general employability. It doesn’t take a lot of money to create relevant content, just a sound knowledge of your audience and a lot of care.