Over the next decade, learning designers are likely to find themselves working in spaces that would once have been considered peripheral to “traditional” education and L&D yet are now central to how people live, work, and learn. These may include:

• Edutainment and edutourism - Designing learning that blends cultural, social and life-enhancing experiences with meaningful educational outcomes. At Lexedio, for example, we have been developing educational escape rooms that combine narrative, problem-solving, and collaboration in ways that typical eLearning formats simply cannot offer.
• Wellbeing and recovery-focused education - Creating learning experiences that support physical and mental health, emotional literacy, resilience, and sustainable working practices. For example, we are currently researching and developing online resources that facilitate Gaelic language learning through wellness activities. This interdisciplinary shift is recognising that learning is not separate from wellbeing, but entwined with it.
• Continuity and resilience planning - It's an increasingly unpredictable world out there. So we've been looking at how learning designers can support organisations to prepare for disruption, whether environmental, technological, or social, through learning that builds adaptive capacity. Just a few years ago, learning designers helped the world to "pivot" online. Now we're planning for the moments when we might have to "pivot back".
  

These avenues expand, rather than replace, the more familiar work of designing courses, programmes, and resources. They invite learning designers to draw on disciplines as diverse as game design, tourism, psychology, environmental studies, and organisational development.

As these shifts unfold, the idea of a “postdigital” future becomes increasingly relevant. Postdigital does not mean “after technology”, but rather a world in which digital tools are so embedded in everyday life that they are no longer the main point of focus. For learning designers, a postdigital perspective means:

• seeing technology as part of a wider tapestry of human, physical, and social contexts;
• designing for blended, hybrid, and place-based experiences, not just screens;
• attending to the material realities of learners’ lives: time, energy, access, environment, and community.

In this landscape, AI is one of many tools and conditions shaping learning. The craft of learning design lies in interpreting the technological, environmental, and social conditions, and creating experiences that respond thoughtfully to them.

To thrive in this wider landscape, learning designers will still need strong foundations in learning theory, design methods, and ethical judgement. But they will also need to develop new capabilities that reflect both AI and the broader transformation of the field. Some of these include:

• AI literacy and promptcraft, as part of broader critical AI skills - Understanding how to work with AI, i.e. when to trust it, when to challenge it, and how to shape its outputs to support human-centred design. This is not just a technical skill; it is a form of critical literacy. Our new course, AI Prompt Engineering Essentials, was created to help learning professionals build exactly this capability: using AI to enhance creativity and efficiency, without outsourcing judgement or responsibility.
• Experience design across modalities - Designing learning that moves fluidly between digital and physical spaces, such as immersive live sessions, place-based activities, and personalised or heutagogical challenges. This includes thinking in terms of journeys and ecosystems, rather than isolated interventions.
• Wellbeing-aware and sustainability-aware design - Considering the emotional, cognitive, and environmental impact of learning. This may involve pacing and workload, reflective practices, low-carbon modalities, and learning that helps people engage with sustainable and regenerative practices in their own context.
• System thinking and resilience - Understanding how learning connects with risk management, continuity planning, and organisational culture. Learning designers will increasingly be involved in helping organisations rehearse responses to complex challenges, not just roll out standard training.

These new skill avenues make the profession even more exciting. They reposition learning designers as sense-makers, connectors, and advocates in systems that are themselves under pressure and in flux.

For learning designers to do this work well, organisations will need to rethink how they understand and support the role. This includes:

• moving beyond seeing learning design as a content production function, and recognising it as a strategic capability that supports resilience, wellbeing, and long-term value;
• creating space for experimentation in areas such as edutainment, edutourism, and postdigital learning experiences, rather than defaulting to the safest or most familiar formats;
• investing in AI-related skills with a clear ethical and educational frame, for example, by supporting learning designers to develop practical prompt engineering skills, while also investing in wider capabilities around facilitation, system thinking, and sustainability.

When organisations make these shifts, AI becomes part of a richer ecosystem of human capability, rather than a quick fix or a threat.

Looking ahead, I don't see learning design being hollowed out by automation. I see a profession extending its reach: into new domains, new partnerships, and new ways of thinking about what learning means.

Programmes like the Learning Design Foundation Certificate remain crucial in building the foundations for an evolving profession. Courses like AI Prompt Engineering Essentials then sit alongside them, helping learning designers to expand and adapt their practice as tools and contexts evolve.

Taken together, they reflect a simple but important truth: the future of learning design is not about choosing between humans and technology. It is about equipping humans to design, with care and creativity, in a world where technology is everywhere, but where meaning, responsibility, and possibility still belong to us.