The Design Loft began as an in-person, face-to-face, round-the-table, hands on set of 45-minute practice workshops held as part of the American Evaluation Association’s annual conference. That proved to be a great way to learn (we have the evidence!).
The biggest limitation? It was one day per year in one location and restricted to only those available to join at that time and place. This meant that I got a lot of “I’m sorry I missed it!” afterward. Another limit is more subtle. While I heard firsthand (and through an evaluation conducted by the AEA’s GEDI trainees) that people liked the Design Loft, found the content useful, and expressed interest in using it in the future, the biggest problem was tied to the conference itself.
When people travel to a conference, they are 1) exposed to an enormous quantity of signals competing for attention in their brain, 2) out of their normal environment and learning context, and 3) taking a pause from their everyday work patterns.
The last two points can be facilitators of learning some of the time. They can also be hinderances. As I’ve written before, if we are going to get serious about learning, we need to design for it.
Learning fails in bad systems and most conferences are bad systems for (some) learning. I love conferences, but what I love them for are meeting people and getting inspired, less about content. What I tend to be exposed to at a conference is isolated and decontextualized from what I want to learn and I’m usually not in the right place to integrate what I am exposed to into my memory and practice. I meet people, build relationships, and maybe get inspired, but my learning at a conference is low.
Also, learning at large conferences — while useful for some — is becoming harder to justify in terms of its financial cost and the logistics that excludes too many people from participation. We aren’t helping change-makers if they can't attend.
So how do we fix that?
Redesigning the Design Loft
If it were up to me, the best design and evaluation training would be conjured up for you to do practice-based learning alongside your projects whenever you needed it. It would give you the tools, theories, and practice opportunities right when you were about to use them. In both design and evaluation, practice is the way to learn the most, the fastest, and in ways that stick.
Face-to-face learning is enjoyable and can lead to a memorable experience. However, it involves travel, time, money, and a cumulative effect on our environment. It’s bound by space and time. That’s why I redesigned The Design Loft.
A direct-to-email course-in-a-newsletter is simple, direct, free (or low cost), portable, and available anytime. It’s also accessible to anyone with an email account or web access. A full set of workshops at a conference — 7 per day with 20 people per session — reaches 140 people. A Substack like this provides reach to a thousand times that.
It does this by being just-in-time, on-demand, and part of your regular practice by giving you exposure to new ideas as part of a drip, rather than a firehose. 🚒
Now, for the practice part.
Making The Most of The Design Loft
The Design Loft will arrive every week. Your subscription includes a carefully selected links to ideas, tools, cases and examples to help you create better, evaluate creatively, and make change. This will always be free. 🎉
Lessons are going to continue to be posted along with an array of content aimed at providing context, use cases, and tools for implementing it. These will mostly be available through a paid subscription that will include access to coaching support (like having your own design and evaluation advisor!) and a variety of additional real-time ways to help you take what you learn and apply it. Your paid subscription supports the ongoing development, refinement and expansion of lessons. 🎓 It also provides you with an ongoing library of content, lessons, and access to a community of impact-seekers, too. Lastly, it helps deliver more free content to more people 👏🏼
It’s all available for the fraction of the price of hiring a design consultant, buying books, or attending a conference. And you don’t have to leave your chair.
Whether it’s with links, lessons or coaching, the key is to take what you see and try it out. Ask questions (click below to leave a comment!) and share what you’re learning and curious about. I want the Design Loft to be a place for you to get comfortable with the language, tools, and techniques of design, evaluation, and change-making.
Thank you for reading, subscribing, sharing and learning with me. I want The Design Loft to replicate some of the fun we had in the many years of doing it at the AEA’s annual conference. Now, the party’s open to everyone!
Let’s get designing, evaluating and impact-making.
Professional consulting is included with this subscription? To make sure I am clear, are you saying that with this subscription I get, for the time being anyway, access to some amount of evaluation and design one-on-one coaching? And this is in addition to the regular design and evaluation workshops (in the form of a newsletter) and the pile of other tools, lessons and content you are sharing through The Design Loft?