Functional and hedonic requirements in training What makes a “good” course?

After introducing my Human-centered Training Management framework, this article focuses on my current thinking about quality in training. This is not as straightforward as it seems: Is a course ‘good’ when you learn a lot, but hate being there? Or when you feel very engaged, but in the end the course made no difference? Neither feels like quality, but still the answer is not a simple ‘both’. Let us look at training quality in Human-centered Training Management in more detail.

Requirements are central to quality

For defining course quality, it is important to dive deeper into the requirements definition phase. We cannot know what makes a “good”, high-quality training if we are not sure about what a course is supposed to achieve.

This definition raises an important question: What kinds of requirements are we talking about? As the Human-centered Training Management Cycle is grounded in UX thinking, I draw on inspirations from human-computer interaction and education to find an answer (Hassenzahl, 2003; Hassenzahl, 2010). Just as product quality has both utilitarian functional and hedonic aspects (Hassenzahl, 2003), training quality has functional and hedonic dimensions. If we want to fully understand training requirements, we need to examine both.

Functional training requirements: Identifying the “jobs-to-be-done” of courses

The functional side of training requirements is utilitarian, similar to the pragmatic dimension of user experience. Functional training requirements are the “jobs to be done” in training management. Often (but, as my research with learners showed, not always), learners book a course for a reason: They want to be able to achieve something, find a new job, realise a project, or similar. This is the purpose of the course. This means that training managers need to truly understand the “jobs” of learners, which are based on their contexts, constraints, and goals. The core questions are always: What is it that learners need to achieve (the job), what do they need to learn for this (the learning objectives), and does the training enable learners to perform the tasks or develop the skills they need (the functional aspect of training quality)?

Evaluation criteria for functional training quality

Functional training requirements, or learning objectives, or “jobs-to-be-done”, are very diverse, and so are evaluation criteria. They cover:

• Effectiveness: Do people learn the required knowledge or skills in a course? Does it help to solve the problem they were trying to solve?
• Efficiency: Is the effort (for example, time, financial resources, mental energy…) required appropriate for the type learning taking place?
• Completeness: Does a course cover all necessary competencies?
• Transferability: Can learners apply their new knowledge and skills in their real work contexts?
• Sustainability: Does the acquired knowledge or skill enable learners for continued development? Can they build on it?

Hedonic training requirements: Creating positive conditions for learning

The hedonic side of training requirements is psychological and emotional. It is about how people feel during a course and whether the course creates conditions which are beneficial to learning. Trainers can contribute to creating these beneficial conditions, for example by motivating learners with engaging activities or by designing materials with high pedagogical quality. However, hedonic training quality also depends on the learners, for example their characteristics, their prior knowledge, their intrinsic motivation, and their current mood. So creating courses with high hedonic quality means to raise the likelihood of positive learning experiences, but is not an automatic guarantee that learners will enjoy a course (Hassenzahl, 2010).

Evaluation criteria for hedonic quality

In deriving evaluation criteria for hedonic quality, it is helpful to dive into human psychology, for example research on psychological needs (Diefenbach, Lenz & Hassenzahl, 2014; Sheldon et al., 2001):

• Psychological safety: Do learners feel confident in asking questions, making mistakes, and providing feedback?
• Autonomy: Do learners feel that they are defining their own learning paths and understand why they are learning about the content in question?
• Stimulation: Do learners feel engaged and joyful rather than bored during the course?
• Relatedness and social connection: Do learners feel to be part of a learning community?
• Relevance: Does the content “feel right”? Does the course connect to the real lives of the learners? Do learners feel that they are developing their true potential?
• Accessibility and inclusion: Does the course support the diversity of learners, allowing them to fully participate regardless of their different needs, backgrounds, and learning styles?

Applying the functional-hedonic framework in practice

The distinction between functional and hedonic requirements is useful for training management practice. But to fully understand the power of the framework, we need to consider two essential points.

First, there are differences in the distribution of functional and hedonic training requirements. These differences exist between different kinds of courses: A professional training like Python programming has a stronger functional component and a hobbyist training like brewing beer has more hedonic requirements. Differences exist also between learners: Some learn purely to reach a particular goal, others are very curious and learn for their internal pleasure. This is why solid audience research involving humans in the entire process of training management is a key principle of human-centered training management: Without this, we cannot identify or prioritise training requirements.

Second, hedonic training quality is not just about “making learning fun” or “keeping people satisfied”. Without high hedonic quality, it is almost impossible to create conditions where deep learning can happen. Without high hedonic quality, learners can feel disengaged, bored, overwhelmed, or anxious; and this means it is unlikely that they will achieve the functional learning objectives.

Thinking beyond functional and hedonic requirements

With functional and hedonic training requirements, we are able to define the short- to medium-term quality of a course. But education does not stop here.

I can see two additional perspectives. The first is what I would call the eudaimonic perspective, based on theories in human-computer interaction (Kamp & Desmet, 2014) and psychology (Huta & Waterman, 2014). Eudaimonic quality refers to aspects like:

• Meaning and purpose: Beyond task completion, do learners feel that a course supports their sense of what matters?
• Self-actualizing: Does the course help learners realize their potential, their true “reason to be”?
• Contribution: Does the course support learners to create real value and have an impact on the world?
• Values: Is the course aligned with learners’ deeper values, their identity, and ethical considerations?

Although my thinking about the eudaimonic dimension is still early, I think it is worthwhile to consider. A course might fulfil functional requirements, providing the learners with all the “skills” they need, and also provide them with a positive, hedonically pleasing experience. But it can still be meaningless and superficial.

The second perspective goes beyond the individual, and more strongly refers to others, humanity, or even the entire system of living beings. This perspective is society-centered, humanity-centered, or even life-centered. It has to do with aspects like supporting democracy by allowing everyone to participate, preserving resources for future generations, providing equal access to knowledge, and many more. In education, we are actively shaping people’s thinking and capabilities, and this means it is our responsibility to think about how these activities impact society, humanity, or even entire ecosystems.

The relation of the training requirements framework to learning objectives and learning experiences

So far, this article established my current thinking of human-centered training requirements, but I did not yet show how this framework connects to related concepts. In order to further help conceptualising the training requirements framework, it is worthwhile to think about how these types of criteria relate to two concepts we frequently discuss in training management: learning objectives and learning experience.

Learning objectives describe what learners should achieve in a course, and therefore typically address functional training requirements, although this is not necessarily the case. Here is an example:

• A typical learning objective for a course on UX research methods could be that “learners should be able to perform usability testing”. This is mainly functional, and we can easily create activities for measuring whether a course achieved it. For example, we could provide a website and ask learners to set up and perform a usability test. By observing learners’ performance and their usability test report, we could verify that they are able to successfully perform usability testing.
• However, a learning objective could also be formulated like this: “Learners should be able to confidently perform usability testing.” This formulation includes an affective dimension, and therefore touches the hedonic quality. We would only be able to measure it by asking questions about how learners feel during usability testing.

So far, I mainly spoke about courses, but this is only one of many ways to learn. Consequently, I prefer speaking of learning experiences. Niels Floor defines these as follows:

So, a learning experience is broader than learning objectives (Floor, 2023). Functional and hedonic requirements are ways to define and ultimately evaluate learning experiences.

Conclusion

By asking what makes a ‘good’ course in human-centered training management, this article investigated training requirements, which could be functional (the “jobs-to-be-done” of a course) or hedonic (the emotional, psychological impact of a course). Both are required for having a high-quality course.

Thinking beyond this practical framework, further dimensions of training quality might become relevant, which were also sketched in this article. In a future article, I will dive deeper into the evaluation of these different types of requirements, as quality is ultimately the degree of training requirement fulfilment.

When you are designing your next course, try thinking about both perspectives: Which functional requirements do you need to fulfil, and which hedonic requirements support successful learning? Both matter. I would be happy to learn about how it worked for you.