Relationship is everything. I work in an industry where egos abound.

For a host of reasons, SMEs often feel that because they are the masters of their profession, they naturally have mastered ours too.

Unfortunately, they aren’t far off when I look around and see some of the design that has been passed off as “professional” in the past.

So what to do?

I find it helpful to sit down with the Project Manager and the SME beforehand to define roles and responsibilities. How THAT is briefed carries over into how the next part goes.

I then sit down with the SME and guide him/her as he/she puts together a Task List, from which we’ll draw the objectives for each medium and subsequent Lesson.

Next, I’ve found that a “Smart Board” (or white board if that’s all you have) can really help. I do the drawing and writing on the Board. The SME sits at an adjacent table.

The SME and I take those objectives and “storyboard” on the Smart Board. I ask a lot of questions, and make it a point to hold on to the marker. I’ve found that this allows me to better-guide the conversation. It also allows me to apply screen-design on the front end so the SME and I both know what is going to be on-screen later.

If the SME has a preference, I can weigh it at this time and either adjust to accommodate, or explain why that might not be the most effective and efficient way to present it.

When we are done with the Smart Board work, we then have a product we both buy into and can go back to the Project Manager with the plan for approval.

After that, I either produce the Storyboards into the deliverable myself, or “contract” it out to a developer.

I tap the SME for technical input, and when complete, we get the PM’s final approval for distribution and delivery.

Easy as pie!

Then I wake up from my daydream as the SME directs me to nudge his stick-figure graphic 3 points over to the right on the screen and not to change his blazing puce background with neon orange font because he thinks it’s cool!!!

but seriously, SME’s get a bad rap sometimes, and frankly, some deserve it; but I’ve found that bad situations are usually the result of poor front-end planning, poor role clarification, weak management support, Designer incompetence, or failure of the Designer to establish boundaries.

My one cent,

R

For example, if a manager goes to an ID and says, “We need a course about widgets for our salespeople,” the ID could do two things.

1. He or she could say, “OK. Give me all the information you have about widgets.” The result: an information dump about all the features of all widgets.

2. OR, the ID could ask, “Why do you need a course about widgets?” The resulting discussion could go something like this:

Manager: My department won’t make its sales goals unless the salespeople sell more widgets.

ID: How many more widgets do they need to sell?

Manager: We need to increase sales by at least 5% in the next six months.

ID: Does the problem affect all types of widgets?

Manager: No, it’s mostly the mega-widgets that aren’t selling. I think the salespeople don’t know how to upsell from micro-widgets to mega-widgets.

The result from this would be a far more focused and activity-based course on how to persuade customers that a mega-widget would be the best solution to their problem.

While it’s not the ID’s job to set strategy for the company, I do think it’s the ID’s job to uncover and clearly state the performance problem before designing a solution for it.

In my experience, SMEs never have enough time, they are rarely compensated for working on e-learning and nobody cuts them slack on their daily duties, so working on e-learning is mostly unpaid overtime for them. As a result you can easily push them into believing that a quick interview will save them time and effort, and they tell you “Do whatever you want as long as whoever is in charge of elearning is happy”.