Field Guides
Practical guides for sharper learning design.
Field Guides are practical frameworks, audits, checklists, and design notes for learning designers who want to make better decisions before they build.
Sometimes the best learning design work happens before anyone opens Storyline, Rise, Figma, PowerPoint, or whatever tool is currently threatening to become the whole strategy.
Good learning experiences usually start with better questions.
What decision does this need to support? Where are learners likely to get stuck? What should feedback actually teach? What does success look like after the module, checklist, job aid, video, or workshop is finished?
Field Guides are built for that layer of the work.
They are practical tools for auditing, explaining, mapping, and improving learning experiences before they become another dense scroll, another quiz with suspiciously cheerful feedback, or another “click next until morale improves” situation.
Companion Library
Field Guides turn learning design thinking into usable tools.
Resource Lab is where I share interaction patterns, code snippets, prototypes, and build notes. Field Guides are where I share the frameworks, audits, checklists, and decision tools behind the work.
Available Field Guides
Start with tools that make the design conversation clearer.
Each guide is designed to be practical, visual, and easy to use during planning, review, critique, or redesign work.
Learning Feedback Audit
A practical diagnostic for spotting feedback that grades instead of coaches, then improving it so learners understand why a decision worked, what they missed, and what to try next.
Use the field guide Available NowAccessibility + Visual QA Field Guide
A checklist-style guide for reviewing color, contrast, state changes, labels, interaction cues, motion, and visual meaning so learning experiences stay usable for more people.
Use the field guide Available NowLearning Systems Field Guide
A practical guide for looking beyond the course and mapping the people, tools, workflows, supports, risks, and success signals that make learning hold up after launch.
Use the field guideHow Field Guides fit into the ecosystem
The portfolio is the proof of work. Resource Lab is the pattern library. Learning, Rewired is the point of view.
Field Guides sit between the thinking and the build.
They are meant to help learning designers diagnose a problem, explain a design choice, challenge weak assumptions, and move from “we need a thing” to “we know what this thing needs to do.”
Newsletter
The idea, argument, or design point of view.
Field Guide
The practical framework, audit, checklist, or tool.
Resource Lab
The interaction pattern, prototype, code, or build example.
Portfolio
The proof that the thinking can scale into real work.
Guide Categories
Organized around the decisions learning designers actually make.
As this library grows, Field Guides will be organized by the kinds of design decisions, critiques, and planning conversations that shape better learning experiences.
Feedback + Coaching
Guides for improving feedback so it reinforces reasoning, redirects mistakes, and helps learners make better decisions next time.
Learning Systems
Frameworks for mapping learning beyond the event, including tools, support, workflows, context, reinforcement, and measurement.
Scenario + Judgment Design
Guides for designing realistic practice moments, useful choices, plausible distractors, and coaching that reflects messy work.
Accessibility + Visual QA
Checklists for reviewing color, contrast, labels, states, motion, visual hierarchy, and interaction clarity.
AI-Assisted Workflows
Tools for using AI in drafting, review, critique, prototyping, content operations, and learning design decision support.
Designer Enablement
Resources that help learning designers explain their work, improve reviews, evaluate concepts, and build stronger portfolio artifacts.
What these guides are for
Field Guides are not meant to be giant academic PDFs that sit in a folder until the heat death of SharePoint.
They are meant to be used in the messy middle of the work: during planning, stakeholder reviews, redesigns, content audits, portfolio development, and those moments when everyone agrees the learning needs to be “more engaging” but nobody has defined what that actually means.
Companion Thinking
A guide should help the next design decision get better.
The goal is not to make learning design feel more complicated. The goal is to make the hidden decisions more visible.
Better guides help teams see what they are actually designing for: judgment, confidence, behavior, workflow support, operational clarity, accessibility, or performance in context.
What Comes Next
More practical guides, not more decorative clutter.
The next phase will expand this page into a focused library of field guides that connect directly to Resource Lab patterns, Learning, Rewired articles, and portfolio thinking.
Three available guides
The Learning Feedback Audit, Accessibility + Visual QA Field Guide, and Learning Systems Field Guide are available now as practical tools for improving coaching feedback, design clarity, accessibility, and system-level learning support.
Scenario + Judgment Design
A future guide for designing realistic choices, useful distractors, decision pressure, and coaching feedback that reflects messy work.
AI-Assisted Learning Workflow Guide
A practical guide for using AI to support drafting, critique, review, prototyping, governance, and content operations without turning speed into the whole strategy.
Field Guides are the thinking layer behind better learning experiences.
Use them to question the work, sharpen the design, and make the next build more useful before anyone starts polishing the wrong thing.