The John Lewis Partnership is on a journey to bring an excellent user experience to the heart of learning for all Partners and to bring user experience thinking to the heart of the teams supporting learning and development.

Beginning with a user experience review of the previous incarnation of their learning content portal I have been helping the Partner Development team understand the principles and benefits of good UX and to take that message out across the organisation.

Central to what has become a long standing relationship, is a series of focused initiatives to help teams develop their own tools and techniques and guide them into practice on the next generation of digital learning products and content across the business.

With major organisation and digital changes a constant factor in working life, the team and leadership have a clear focus on what works best in their context, how to design for user needs and how to demonstrate real value to their partners and stakeholders across the business.

This work has involved the following elements:

• An independent user experience review of the Partner Development content portal, including content and product recommendations 
• A series of workshops to highlight the benefits and impact of user experience thinking and practice for senior stakeholders, content producers and product designers
• Establishing design principles to define and manage the next generation of the learning content portal 
• Advising on user research methods, data gathering and analytics to support bringing user data into all content and product planning