The essence of design Architecture provides a good analogy for the value of instructional design. Like the architecture that supports a building, instructional design is invisible, but there are clear signs of its presence or absence if you know what to look for. It feels natural and comfortable to its users. It is functional and demonstrably fulfills its purpose. Stairways lead nowhere.
Light switches are hard to find.
Doorjambs are too low. Many multimedia training courses are constructed similarly, without sufficient planning. In the traditional classroom medium, you can work around poorly designed material with good classroom and interpersonal skills. In multimedia, where the learner is often on his or her own, you cannot. There are two widely divergent types of classroom training that require different design strategies to translate them to multimedia.