Category: Design by Digital Planning
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The Recurring Cost of Being Digital
The evolution from Web 2.0 to today’s subscription economy has shifted operational costs, burdening small businesses and freelancers with recurring payments for digital services. This creates dependency on digital platforms, complicates ownership, and raises concerns about long-term affordability. The implications for digital inclusion and sustainable operations are increasingly significant.
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Scale Is Not Reach
One of the lessons I have taken from working in digital learning for international development is that reach and scale are not the same thing. We often report the number of learners reached, courses completed, institutions involved or countries served and use those figures as evidence that something has scaled.…
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Surfacing Value: What Project Evidence Can Tell Us Beyond the Indicators
Development projects often generate significant evidence about their value, which can be overlooked in traditional reporting focused on predefined indicators. Agility in programming requires informed judgement and adaptation to context. Effective project specification and documentation allow for a deeper understanding of value creation through learning, decision-making, and stakeholder experiences, highlighting…
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The Conditions Under Which OKRs Actually Work
Organizations increasingly adopt Objectives and Key Results (OKR) without the necessary understanding to utilize them effectively. The framework, originally a tool for disciplined execution, requires clarity of outcomes and proper measurement. When applied in complex environments lacking this foundation, OKRs become meaningless, creating an illusion of progress without genuine understanding.
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AI Governance, Opaque Systems, and the Quiet Extraction of Human Intelligence
This week I attended a UN multi-stakeholder consultation on AI governance as an observer. As a wee little fly on the wall—positioned somewhere at the intersection of digital learning systems, quality assurance, and accessibility across multi-country environments—I listened to contributions from across the globe. There were structured, thoughtful, and often…
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Learning KPIs and the Digital Transformation fairy tale
Across the learning and development landscape, organizations are increasingly declaring that they are “moving beyond baseline indicators.” Completion rates, attendance metrics, and basic learner satisfaction surveys are no longer considered sophisticated enough. Instead, strategy documents now promise cutting-edge KPIs and OKRs aligned with ambitious Digital Transformation Strategies for 2026–2029. The…