Of all the supra-badges, Design and Development felt the most familiar to me because it reflects the work I have spent years doing in Learning and Development. At Genesco, I regularly built onboarding programs, leadership development experiences, workshops, and eLearning solutions for employees across the organization. Because of that, many of the competencies within this supra-badge were things I had practiced professionally. What Purdue helped me do was become more intentional about why I made certain design decisions and how each part of a learning experience connects together.

Across the projects in this supra-badge, I worked through many of the core competencies that make up the instructional design process. In Understanding Coffee Roasts, I was responsible for specifying learning outcomes, sequencing content, selecting instructional materials, developing assessments, and creating a complete eLearning experience for new baristas. One of the biggest lessons from that project was learning how to keep every part of the learning experience aligned to a practical workplace task: helping a barista confidently explain roast differences to a customer. In Fail Fast, Fail Forward, I encountered a very different design challenge. Rather than teaching procedural knowledge, the goal was to help learners develop a healthier mindset toward failure and learning from mistakes. That project required me to think more carefully about instructional interventions, reflection activities, and assessment strategies that could support changes in attitude and behavior rather than simple content recall. Together, these projects reinforced that effective design often looks different depending on the learning goal, but the need for intentional alignment remains the same.

The competencies related to instructional interventions, instructional materials, and assessment connected particularly well to my professional experience. One lesson that emerged across both projects was that engaging activities are not automatically effective activities. In Understanding Coffee Roasts, I used comparison activities, customer-service scenarios, and knowledge checks because they mirrored situations learners would encounter on the job. In Fail Fast, Fail Forward, reflection activities and personal action planning were more appropriate because the desired outcome involved mindset development rather than technical skill acquisition. These projects challenged me to think more critically about why a particular activity, resource, or assessment belonged in the learning experience and whether it genuinely supported the intended outcome.

Looking back, the biggest thing I gained from this supra-badge was a greater appreciation for how all of the pieces fit together. I came into the program with significant experience creating learning solutions, but these projects helped me become more deliberate in connecting objectives, instructional strategies, materials, technology, and assessment. Today, when I design a leadership program, onboarding experience, or development initiative, I find myself asking more questions about why a particular activity exists and how it supports the overall goal. That mindset has made me a stronger designer and will continue to shape my work as I create learning experiences that support both employee growth and organizational performance.