Video production: Andrew Kennedy Lewis
Applying the concepts of user experience in a learning environment comes with its challenges. Samantha Zarrini, senior product manager at General Electric, wants learning leaders to remember that UX experimentation in learning is vital and failure is OK.
Read the full transcript of Zarrini’s interview below:
My number one piece of advice for applying UX in the learning environment is to remember that it’s okay to fail and it’s great to experiment. You can learn from all of your failures and then pit and apply them to the next iteration. Experimentation can be scary and can be challenging. But my challenge would be to push yourself. Give yourself a couple weeks to try something that maybe you have never tried before, to go on, embark on a journey, to experiment with an idea, to understand a problem, to discover what people are thinking and saying about it. And then, to try testing with a few, maybe four to five people, to see whether or not that idea has any backbone and whether or not it’s worth pursuing.
Oftentimes, if you limit yourself to a couple weeks, maybe three weeks, you can figure out whether or not something is worth it in the end. Don’t be afraid to fail. Failure only gives you lessons in the end. One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned is it’s important to share your failures with others, because the reality is, we’re all failing one way or another and we’re all learning from it eventually. So creating an environment where people feel comfortable to fail and feel comfortable to experiment, only helps you succeed in the end.
