#52 We've Been Designing Learning Backwards (Play It Forward)

I got a new book in my inbox last week. Play it Forward: En bok om lärandets drivkrafter, the result of a multi-year research collaboration initiated by the Swedish government, written and edited by Katarina Pietrzak, researcher and strategist at RISE.

214 pages. Fourteen chapters. Interviews with researchers, educators, entrepreneurs, and practitioners, all exploring the same question. What actually makes people want to learn?

The researchers behind it, including cognitive psychologists from Luleå and Umeå universities, identified four forces that consistently drive genuine learning. Curiosity, intrinsic motivation, psychological safety, and recall (retrieval practice). The book treats them as design materials. Things you can actually build into how organisations, teams, and tools work. The central argument is simple. We've been designing learning backwards, starting with content and format instead of asking what makes people want to engage in the first place.

If you work in design, product, or any field where you're trying to help people grow, or if you lead a team, it's worth your time. 

I'm in it, briefly, towards the end, in a section on technology and learning. That chapter started as a podcast conversation that Katarina and Carl Heath recorded with me back in January 2023, and continued with some follow-up questions from Katarina late 2025. Reading it back, I thought Katarina had done a good job capturing the thinking behind Ambition Empower. What this kind of service needs to do, and why. We haven't figured it all out. But the direction is right. So I translated it.

Translated from Swedish with support from Claude

Invisible technology supports learning

Johan Berndtsson is co-founder and CEO of Ambition Group and the digital service Empower, which helps organisations develop their culture, leadership, and approach to learning. With a background in design, strategy, and organizational development, he has long explored how technology and pedagogy can work together to create real growth in the workplace. He believes that learning is an ongoing process, and that the organisations of the future are built by people who keep growing, together.

After Petter Wannerberg's journey into immersive worlds, we stay in the digital but step closer to the everyday craft. Because if VR and simulated environments can create powerful learning experiences, something equally important needs to exist in the background: tools that stay out of the way. That's where Johan Berndtsson comes in. His argument is straightforward, and hard to disagree with, though it's still not always followed. Technology is worthless if people can't use it well.

Our days are already full. "I'll get to the learning later" almost never beats the calendar, the kids' football practice, or the next deadline. Johan's work addresses exactly that, not by adding more content, but through better design. Behavioral design with rhythm and tools that bring people back to learning week after week, without upending daily life.

The invisible toolbox

"When I do good work, nobody notices," one of Johan's colleagues once told him. That's about as good a summary of good UX as you'll find. In everyday tools, the effect should emerge when the interface disappears. Time reporting just happens, or is eliminated entirely because the system has already handled it. Attention lands on the task, not the tool.

In learning, this becomes even more important. Noisy, unnecessarily complicated, or poorly designed systems create stress, and stress kills motivation. So Johan and his team design for learning to feel like the obvious next step: low threshold, clear direction, the right support at the right moment. No cascading wall of notifications.

"We all know how to swipe away notifications. The trick is to help, not to nag.”

One hour a week — for real

Early on, Johan and his colleagues interviewed fifty design leaders. What they found forced them to rethink. Their assumption, that people could set aside two dedicated hours a week for continuous learning, turned out to be wishful thinking.

"Someone at Spotify said it straight out: two hours is what I have for getting my most important things done, and this isn't going to be one of them."

So they followed the users and worked out what design could actually hold up in real life. The answer was one hour a week, built for maximum effect.

That hour carries three layers:

• Curated content: articles, videos, and assignments where every minute earns its place.
• Shared pulse: live sessions and group coaching with experienced facilitators who build practice, not just temporary inspiration.
• Behavioral design: small triggers, calendar anchors, and nudges that make it easy to show up without feeling pushed.

The live sessions are never recorded. Not to exclude people, but to create a safe space.

"It has to be here and now. People share the unfinished stuff when they know it won't end up in an archive."

The internet is broken

Johan's critique is sharp, and constructive at the same time. Search engine optimization has pushed quality down and made it genuinely hard to find reliable information online, especially when you're trying to learn something properly. The answer isn't more courses. It's active curation of the best material already out there, guided by people with real domain knowledge. When time is tight, someone needs to guarantee that this article, this talk, this exercise, is actually worth it.

"We don't need more content. We need better guides."

Intentional friction

Johan talks about simplicity but also defends certain thresholds in learning. It sounds contradictory. It isn't. Some friction deepens engagement. Showing up to a live session, being present when it happens, not just watching a recording later, creates a different kind of investment, and a different outcome. The small effort creates presence, opens up real conversation, and makes mistakes and do-overs part of the process, rather than something you deal with alone.

From course to ongoing capability

Johan describes the shift away from the two-day course model. It's about building something that holds over time, a steady learning environment where people can step in and out, change direction when needs shift, and where a network of colleagues in similar roles share what actually works.

"After the first few, more absorptive years in working life, it's often the good conversation that drives development. The live sessions, where experiences, methods, and different professional cultures meet, become the engine."

The design process, honestly

On the surface, their process looks simple: an idea, an app, a launch. In practice, it started with a password-protected WordPress site, manual links, and a cobbled-together calendar. The technology came later, once the patterns had been confirmed. Time zones, coach availability, rhythm and pace. All tested at small scale before being built to last. Learning design at its best. Start small. Scale when it works.

Since launch, the service has kept evolving. The app has been refined, but the most important shift has been learning to support managers and team leaders in actually driving the learning themselves. Early on, they mostly sold individual memberships. Now it's almost exclusively to whole teams. When the manager creates the conditions and follows up, it becomes a structure that works even for people who wouldn't naturally seek it out. To strengthen the community further, Ambition has introduced an annual conference — a kind of end-of-year celebration before summer — to celebrate the learning together and build something that lasts.

The architecture of motivation

Johan's model is practical. Motivation shows up when three things work together:

• Meaning: why this matters, for me and for the organisation.
• Opportunity: low threshold, clear path, one hour that actually fits.
• Trigger: a gentle nudge at the right moment: the calendar, a colleague, the coach.

None of this is a new formula. But it only makes a difference when the whole service, content, UX, communication, and community, consistently holds together.

From training to becoming

Learning isn't about completing modules. It's about becoming someone who contributes, in the room, in the role, in the profession, over time. Petter showed how immersive environments can make learning physical and experience-based. Johan reminds us what has to be there underneath: tools that work without being noticed. When rhythm, social connection, curated content, and intentional friction all pull in the same direction, something sustainable emerges.

Together, they show that Play, Code, Learn aren't three separate parts. They're three steps in the same movement: from experience, to design, to habit.

The whole book is available for free (166 MB), so far only as a PDF, but a print version is planned.