How Expert Designers Design

Two studies were carried out with expert educational designers at Arthur Andersen and the Open University of the Netherlands to determine the priorities they employed when designing competence‐based learning environments. Designers in a university context and in a business context agree almost completely on what principles are important, the most important being that one should start a design enterprise from the needs of the learners, instead of the content structure of the learning do main. The main difference between the two groups is that university designers find it extremely important to consider alternative solutions during the whole design process; something that is considerably less important by business designers. University designers also tend to focus on the project plan and the desired characteristics of the instructional blueprint whereas business designers were much more client‐oriented and stressed the importance of “buying in” the client early in the process.