What happens when training evolves but learner expectations evolve faster

*Above: A nervous professional trying to close the door buy pressing the button furiously.*

Have you ever gotten in an elevator and pressed the "Close door" button over and over again, like it will somehow close faster if you press it more? How about when you're at a crossing, smashing that big round button, like it gives you magical control over the red light? Why the impatience? Maybe your Starbucks mobile order has been sitting there for 20 minutes. Or maybe these interactions were designed for a different set of expectations, then repeated for decades without anyone stopping to ask whether it still made sense for anyone using it today.

I find the same thing in compliance training. Maybe at some point these experiences made sense for the workforce, but on the whole, the expectations of the modern day user are not being met. We've advanced in design, in development, in our understanding of the mind and retention, yet we keep making the same creative (or not creative) choices.

Now imagine the elevator can predict when you want to press the button. You're standing there and it just knows. You don't even have to move. Incredible! But here's the thing... It still takes the same amount of time for the doors to close, in fact, you have more time to stand there and wonder "when is this thing gonna shut!". We didn't reimagine the experience. We just made the elevator smarter within the confines of its previous existence.

That elevator is AI...

And right now I fear the training industry is doing exactly this. We're using the most powerful creative tool we've ever had to produce within the same interface, the same templates, only faster. Cheaper. At scale.

We have a real opportunity here. Let's Men in Black this thing altogether, forget the mistakes and limitations from the past, the iterative updates on a fundamentally flawed experience, the checking of the box... all of the boxes. The opportunity here isn't to make the elevator faster, smarter or capable of reading our minds. The opportunity is realizing we don't have to keep building within the elevator at all.