PART 1 — Instructional Design Explained So Simply Your Grandma Gets It (LOL) (Part 1 of 6)

1. The Simple Version: What the Heck Is Instructional Design?

Let’s start stupidly simple.
Because the problem with most experts is they start at the deep end while everyone else is still tying their floaties.

Instructional Design (ID) is basically:

👉 Figuring out the best way to teach someone something.

That’s it. Simple...Say, If learning were a kitchen: (Cooking is my unwinding therapy)

• Ingredients = the content

• Recipe = the lesson plan

• Chef = SME

• Head Chef = you (the Instructional Designer)

• Taste Test = the assessment

• Restaurant Goal = performance outcomes

Your job?
Make sure learners don’t burn the kitchen down… and maybe even enjoy the meal.

Instructional Design = Learning recipe engineering.

2. The Mid Version: What IDs Actually Do (Without the Jargon)

Once you get past the kiddie pool, ID becomes:

• Solving performance problems

• Designing learning experiences

• Choosing activities, tools, and methods

• Making knowledge understandable and usable

• Checking if people actually learned what they needed

ID = learning meets logic meets psychology meets strategy.

And unlike people who confuse “education,” “training,” and “instruction,” here’s the grown-up distinction:

• Education = broad growth (life stuff)

• Training = immediate job skills

• Instruction = intentional, structured learning

• ID = designing that instruction so it actually works

3. The Complicated Version: The Beautiful, Nerdy Truth

Instructional Design is:

A Discipline

because it uses research + learning science
(Bloom, Gagné, cognitive load, systems thinking, etc.).

A Process

because it follows models like ADDIE
(Analysis → Design → Development → Implementation → Evaluation).

A Science

because everything revolves around:
“What changes performance?”
and
“How do humans actually learn?”

Good IDs don’t guess.
We design.
We test.
We refine.
We align goals → objectives → strategies → assessments.

This is why companies love instructional designers.
We make training EFFECTIVE instead of “Let’s throw 50 slides at them and pray.”

4. A Reality Check (My prospective)

Instructional Design is NOT:

❌ “Making pretty PowerPoints”
❌ “Uploading files to an LMS”
❌ “Copy-pasting SME lectures into 40-minute videos”
❌ “Putting text on slides and calling it eLearning”

Instructional Design is:

✅ Engineering knowledge transfer
✅ Making complex things simple
✅ Fixing human problems with learning
✅ Understanding behavior, motivation, cognition
✅ Designing experiences that actually improve performance

If you ever see a course that feels painful, boring, confusing, or pointless…
someone skipped an instructional designer.

5. Why This Blog Series Exists

Most explanations of ID are academic, dry, and written like they’re trying to win the Nobel Prize for Boring. :(

But, Not this one. This series is built like this:

Simple → Useful → Smart → Complex → Mastery.
Whether you’re a student, a PM, a leader, a SME, or "just AI-curious," by the end…

You’ll think like an Instructional Designer.

Preview of Part 2 — What IDs Actually Do (The Real Behind-the-Scenes Truth)

From ADDIE to analysis to dealing with SMEs who send files at 2AM labeled “final_FINAL_v7_reallythisone.pptx,”
Part 2 breaks down the job like you’ve never seen.