Useful, Usable and Used (the 3Us): the key to successful digital learning and development (2025)

The 3Us is a common framework for analysing the value of any product or service, that should be:

• understood to be Useful by the customer, meeting a real need, providing clear benefits, giving a good cost/benefit pay-off, based on solid content
• experienced as Usable, easily understood, navigated and applied, with no barriers, hiccups or complications
• Used in practice by a large % of the target group so that the value reaches to the people that have use for it

The pandemic will, in all likelihood, accelerate the digitalisation of learning and development in organisations. HR departments will need a framework like the 3Us to help them in choosing the right products amongst the many suppliers trying to sell their solutions.

The content of each U can vary dependent on the product area. For digital learning and development, the model below can be useful.

There are 3 Usefulness factors:

1. There clearly needs to be a strong business case, where the organisation has a clear need and the product in question addresses that need, at a cost far below the expected benefits. The expected benefits need to be a combination of hard economic benefits and softer, qualitative benefits.
2. In addition, all users need to see what’s in it for them. The organisation wants employees to embrace the solution. Each user needs to see the ‘business case’ for them, how the solution makes their life easier or better.
3. Lastly, the content has to be solid. For learning and development practitioners this means evidence based, as far as possible. Much of what we do is based on informed beliefs. Many of these beliefs draw from what we have read and learned and are therefore evidence based, more or less. But some aren’t. Evidence checking content ensures that it’s solid.

Our collective tendency, learning and development professionals included, to follow fashion and the latest ‘must do’ thing can weaken our hold on Usefulness. Each organisation should do a structured, independent check of the Usefulness for them of any solution.

But Useful products fail if they aren’t Usable, designed from the user’s perspective. There are 3 Usable factors:

1. Digital products need to be intuitive and effortless in use. This makes iteasy for the user to become familiar with, and competent in,using the solution onfirstcontact. Effortlessness makes us feel that what we are doing is right: the solution is good, and we master it.
2. Effortlessness rests on logical structure. The logical layers, steps and links between them need to be crystal clear. The user must know where they are, and be able to navigate easily, at all times.
3. Limited content is easier to use than lots of content. The key principle is to present only that which is essential. The quote ‘I’m sorry this letter is so long. I didn’t have time to write a shorter one’ is well known for a reason. Reducing content down to the essentials is hard work but necessary.

The value potential of a very Useful and eminently Usable solution is only realised if people Use it. An organisation needs to put it’s weight behind the solutions it chooses if they are to be Used. They can do this in at least 3 ways:

1. Communication and training, introducing the solution in an easy structured way, gets things going. It creates awareness and motivation. The training part should, given high Usability, be minimal.
2. The next step is follow-up. The user’s colleagues and line manager should ask for, and talk about, output of the solution. Follow-up through measurement of outcomes can drive use in many situations, but the key is that output of the solution is actively sought after.
3. Lastly, making the solution compulsory is the clearest expression of the organisation’s belief in it’s usefulness. If a solution scores 10 out 10 on Usefulness and Usability, it is logical for an organisation to make Use compulsory. This strengthens and reinforces the communication and follow-up.

Like many similar frameworks, the 3U’s are best expressed in a multiplication formula:

HR departments’ challenge is to maximise all 3!