Welcome to the community of Makeshapes creators. This guide is designed to help you learn everything you need to know about using the Makeshapes platform and designing your first On-Demand Group Learning (ODGL) experiences.
The first step is making sure your project is a good fit for delivery with Makeshapes. For help, see Common use cases for Makeshapes, or find out what makes a project a great fit in Is Makeshapes a good fit?.
The basic anatomy of a Makeshapes experience
The magic of Makeshapes lies in how you layer three core ingredients to create a guided journey for learners.
1. Media (the content)
What it is: There are three types of media that can be used with Makeshapes. Video, Slideshow and Audio.
Purpose: There are many ways media can be used when building experiences. A few of the most common are for bringing ideas to life, bottling hard to access expertise and providing structure to your experience.
2. Activities (the active engagement)
What it is: Interactive tools like Post-its, Scales, Drawing and Quizzes. For the full list, see Activities and interactions overview.
Purpose: Move the learner from passive listener to active contributor. Activities encourage personal reflection and support everyone engaging (and having a voice) before broader group discussion.
3. Discussion and reflection (the social learning engine)
What it is: Dedicated blocks of time for the group to talk.
Purpose: Discussion is where the magic happens, from sharing ideas and opinions to ideation, practice and contextualization. More often than not you will follow an activity with a discussion to unpack the results and move from individual contributions to socially driven learning.
Audio: the key ingredient
While Media, Activities, and Discussion are the primary building blocks, Audio is the critical ingredient that allows you to design experiences that are simple to host and make the most of the platform’s ability to auto-facilitate and guide the group.
Auto-facilitation: Audio instructions help to auto-facilitate the experience, significantly reducing the cognitive burden on the host—removing the need to learn and deliver content, provide clear instruction and debrief activities prior to discussion.
Sense of presence: Thoughtfully integrated audio creates a continual sense of "presence" from the pre-recorded subject matter expert or facilitator, making them a constant guide rather than just a sequence of video segments within the experience.
Consistent quality: Maintaining a consistent audio profile (for example, similar quality levels, using the same voices for instructions) creates a professional, high-fidelity experience that learners trust.
Key design considerations
Before you begin the storyboarding process, you must design with the end-delivery in mind.
Design for your host
In a Makeshapes experience, the host is not the "Expert" or "Teacher", nor do they need to be an experienced facilitator. They are the driver, or what we like to say is “the participant with the remote”.
The mindset shift: Because the expert content is "bottled" in media and instructions are delivered via audio, the host is freed up to focus on the group’s energy, psychological safety, and participation. In a leader-led environment the host is also key in helping the group contextualize what they are learning.
Less reliance on facilitation skills: You can choose hosts who are peers or managers rather than skilled facilitators or professional trainers. This allows you to scale delivery because you aren't reliant on a small pool of specialists.
Design for your environment
Your design should adapt to the physical or digital space where the learning happens:
Virtual: Focus on clear on-screen instructions and shorter media clips to combat "screen fatigue."
In-Person: Ensure activities (like Drawing or Post-its) account for people looking at a large shared screen while using their mobile devices.
Hybrid: Prioritize Hybrid Equity. Design your activities so that someone sitting at home has the same "share of voice" as someone in the room.
Design for connection
We design learning for group delivery to harness the unique benefits of social learning—the power of learning both with and from others.
Connection before content: Always start with a low-stakes interaction that allows learners to connect with each other as humans first. This builds the psychological safety required for deep discussion, sharing of ideas, practice and feedback later.
Discussion is where the magic happens: We don't gather just to watch TV. It's important to ruthlessly prioritize the content you introduce during an experience and prioritize time for active learning and social interaction—think discussion, practice, ideation, and sharing of experiences.
The six-step storyboard process
We use a "Skeleton to Meat" approach to ensure a strong narrative and we have developed a couple of Storyboard templates that are designed to move you closer to a production-ready build. Use the storyboard template spreadsheet or the storyboard template document.
Step 1: project scope and strategy
Define the foundations. Getting clear on scope and strategy gives your experience the best chance of having impact.
Key focus: Identify the Key Outcome (the single measurable change) and Business Impact (for example, NPS, Revenue, Retention).
Audience profile: Who is the target learner? What is their current pain? What is the ideal group size for this topic?
Delivery method: Confirm your intended hosts (Peer-to-peer, Leader-led, etc.) and your primary environment.
You can capture all of this directly in Makeshapes as your experience brief — the key outcome and style, audience, ideal duration and group size, host capability, environment and learning objectives. It travels with the experience as you build. See Defining your experience brief.
Step 2: basic outline (learning objectives as chapters)
Before creating any content, plan your "Chapters." Break the experience into 3–5 high-level sections or chapters, each representing a specific Learning Objective.
The objective check: For every section, ask: "What is the specific thing participants need to learn, feel, or do in this chapter to move us closer to the Key Outcome?" If a chapter doesn't map to an objective, it shouldn't be in the arc.
In Makeshapes, these chapters become the sections of your agenda — the building blocks you’ll arrange in the Content tab.
Step 3: detailed outline (the ingredients)
Now you have your outline it’s time to assign specific elements to each chapter to drive the learning. Once you have had a first pass, check to see that your experience length maps on to the available time you have for the session.
Assign elements: Decide exactly which Media (for example, Video) or Activity (for example, Post-its) will be used to drive the learning in each section.
Timing: Assign a time duration to every element. This is where you see if your 60-minute session is accidentally 90 minutes long.
The standard combo: Look for the "Media → Activity → Discussion" pattern to ensure social learning is built-in.
Makeshapes can give you a head start on this pattern with Combos — prebuilt section bundles that open with media, add an activity, then move to discussion. They’re a quick way to start a section from a proven shape, which you can then tweak. See Combos: prebuilt section bundles.
Step 4: first draft (content, scripts and platform copy)
Now that your chapters and objectives are locked, have a go at drafting your experience and adding content, scripts and platform instructions. You can start by drafting in a storyboard (outside the platform), or jump straight in and record placeholder audio to get a quick sense of how the experience is feeling.
Tone check: Read or listen to your scripts aloud. Do they sound like dry instruction or warm energetic guidance? The aim is to bring the experience to life through auto-facilitation, so the experience relies less on the host.
When you move into the platform, you’ll assemble the agenda in the Content tab — adding sections and activities, and expanding to Shape to capture the reasoning behind each one. See Shape your experience.
Step 5: post-experience follow-up
Plan for momentum. Learning shouldn't end when the session finishes. Think about how you can use Makeshapes post-experience sequences to reinforce learning, prompt and keep the conversation alive.
Resource delivery: Decide which materials (Key Messages PDF, expert links, or slide decks) should be included in the follow-up email.
Sequences: Plan your automated "Nudges." What should learners receive at strategic times to reinforce their learning?
Insight playback: Think about how to "play back" the data captured by learners or the group to encourage action or support learning (for example, the group's collective Post-it ideas or a learner's commitment).
Keeping the conversation alive: Think about how you can connect your learners after the session. This could be a peer-to-peer huddle or a Teams channel.
Step 6: test and refine
Once you have completed your first draft, get your team or a group of peers together and run a test session. This is the ultimate "reality check" for your design.
Instruction clarity: Listen for where learners ask for clarification. If an instruction isn't 100% clear, tweak the copy or add an audio prompt to help guide them.
The "time" audit: Did the group finish early or feel rushed? Adjust your element durations based on real-world pacing.
Activity flow: Ensure the transitions between Media, Activities, and Discussions feel natural and achieve the desired outcomes.
Useful links
Activity documentation — media and activity types.
Shape your experience — build and structure your agenda in the Content tab.
Defining your experience brief — capture the intent behind your experience.
Combos: prebuilt section bundles — start a section from a proven shape.