Two weeks ago I was made redundant. That sucked.

Before I started at that job, I had no corporate experience whatsoever. I recall scoffing to my now-fiancé while job hunting: “you’ll never catch me in an office desk job!”. So, naturally, a month or so later there I was in my swivel chair with a giant monitor screen and a new prescription for blue-light glasses.

Photos my fiancé took of me learning how to use VR in June 2022. Apparently I was in my black & white shirt phase.

I had never heard of ‘Instructional Designer‘ or ‘Learning Experience Designer (LXD)’ as roles before I started as a Content Designer. In fact, my first thought when someone asked me if I had considered LXD was: “sure, more money would be useful, but I’m not turning to drugs!”.

I bought a book by Cara North called ‘Learning Experience Design Essentials’. Something that stood out to me immediately was the distinction between just delivering content and exploring how people connect with the content. Making a snazzy presentation with sparkle effects and smooth transitions may look great, but is it actually teaching people anything? Are they able to engage with the topic if you removed the colours and effects? Does it spark an emotional or empowering response that gives people an ‘aha!’ moment? I realised I had spent so much time focussing on improving my graphic design skills, I hadn’t even considered my role as a teacher.

“…I’m not in the underwear business, so I don’t want learning experiences to only be used to cover the bums of the organisation.”

A personal favourite quote from the book’s introduction

Cara included a metaphor by M. David Merrill of learning packages being like big fancy trucks and learning experiences being like the cargo:

The truck is completely useless unless the cargo inside is usable and needed.

I felt like a cartoon character with a lightbulb appearing above my head as I drew a lorry and a cardboard box to stick on my pinboard at my desk. It seemed so obvious to me when it was laid out like this, and I began to wonder how many other things I had been taught in the past that I could have understood quicker if they had just been explained as a simple metaphor.

Redundancy is scary. Especially if you haven’t thought about your CV for 3 years or updated your LinkedIn profile picture since your staff photo was taken. It’s also incredibly difficult to give people a representation of who you are and what you can do in one A4 page. Besides, I didn’t just want to say what I’d done; I wanted to show what I can do.

This website is a passion project more than anything else – a space where I can demonstrate how I think and how I design. It’s also a reminder to myself that I can do it. I have fallen victim to the beast of imposter syndrome more times than I care to recount, so this portfolio is like my golden sword.

So, here I am. A freshly unemployed millennial with a Canva account and a reliance on blueberry iced matcha, trying to make learning a little less beige.

I hope you enjoy reading through this site as much as I enjoyed creating it. It might be a bit rough around the edges, but hey, so is life!