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Sense-making note

You Can’t Avoid What You Never Detected

This short note is working out why detectability comes before perception, processing, memory, and application and why that makes it a foundational consideration when designing learning experiences.

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You can't avoid... what you never detected.
Imagine you're walking down a familiar path.

Right in front of you is a deep hole.
You never see it.

Can you avoid falling into it?
Of course not.

Not because you don't know how to avoid holes...
But because you never detected it in the first place.

That simple thought completely changed how I think about instructional design.

As instructional designers, we often jump straight to questions like:
How do I make this engaging?
How do I improve memory?
How do I increase transfer?

But Clark Quinn reminded me that all of those questions come after a more fundamental one:

Can learners even detect what I want them to perceive?
Because...

What isn't detectable can't be perceived.

And what isn't perceived can't be processed, remembered, or applied.
That was my biggest takeaway from Quinn Seed #1.

I unpacked the idea in more detail in my latest article.

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In case you missed the Quinn Seed articles 👇

Quinn Seed #1- CLICK ME

Where this comes from

  1. Join The Conversation On Linkedin — **Enjoyed the blog?** The conversation doesn’t have to end here. Join me on LinkedIn, share your thoughts, challenge an idea, or repost it to help the conversation reach more people. **Let’s learn in public. Let’s make the ideas travel.**
  2. Check out "Learning Science" by Clark Quinn — If you design learning, teach, or train people, you need to understand what is actually happening when someone learns. Learning happens at the neural level, but we design for it at the cognitive level. There’s a lot more in Clark Quinn’s book that I can’t share because of **intellectual property**. Get the book and experience the learning yourself. 📚You Would Love It!
  3. Check out "40 L&D Stakeholder Challenges: Of L&D Leaders, Practitioners, Clients, and Learners" by Guy W. Wallace — This book shares the answers I got from my EPPI-PACT Guidance Bot. The free EPPI-PACT Guidance Bot is a digital, interactive knowledge-transfer resource designed to help Learning and Development (L&D) practitioners, performance consultants, and business leaders master and apply Guy W. Wallace’s Performance Improvement and Performance Based L&D methodologies.
  4. To Learn More Join the "Learning Development Accelerator" — Click the link to join the Amazing Learning Development Accelerator Group Where practice meets evidence