Effortless vs effortful

What's the best learning experience you've ever had? Could be a university course, could be something your parents taught you, or could be a lesson learned from a failed startup, think about it.

How did it change your life? How were you better off after experiencing it?

I'll give you a second to take it in – that feeling.

Fantastic. Feels good, doesn't it?

Here's the thing...

Did it feel easy when you went through it?

I can say, with certainty, it didn't. If it was memorable, if it transformed you in some way, it was probably hard. In fact, it could have been the hardest learning you ever had to experience.

When designing your product, you want users to work with it effortlessly. Zero friction, right? That's the goal of user experience.

That's not the goal when designing a memorable learning experience. Effective learning is effortful. That's the only way we learn – otherwise, we are simply acquiring knowledge and allowing it to evaporate. Without application, there's no learning, and applied knowledge is effortful.

I'll tell you a story of a memorable learning experience I had at a conference tomorrow.

Have a lovely day,
Kamran

PS. For more on why effective learning is effortful, check out episode 2 of the podcast with Joe Eames.