D292 Learning Experience Design Foundations II, catalog number LXD 5069, is the three-CU second foundations course, and it carries the third, fourth and final phases of the design thinking process. Having researched learners and defined a problem in the first course, you now generate options, build something people can react to, and test it with real learners. The assessed skill is not the artefact. It is the trail: options considered and rejected with reasons, a prototype at a fidelity that suits the question being asked, a test that could have gone badly, and a revision that visibly follows from what the test showed.
Ideation, prototyping and testing are one argument
Students often treat these three phases as three deliverables that happen to be stapled together. Evaluators read them as a single chain of reasoning, and the joins are where aspects are won or lost.
Ideation is scored on divergence before convergence. A submission that presents one idea has skipped the phase, however good the idea is, because there is no evidence of a choice. Present several genuinely different directions, including at least one that does not involve building a course, then state the criteria you used to select. Criteria drawn from your problem definition are the ones that read as principled; criteria drawn from what you already wanted to build are visible from a distance.
Prototyping is scored on fit between fidelity and question. A paper sketch answers whether the structure makes sense. A clickable wireframe answers whether people can find things. A styled, interactive module answers whether the experience holds attention. Building the expensive thing first is the classic error, because you have spent the budget before you know whether the structure works. Say what question your prototype is asking and the fidelity choice defends itself.
Testing is scored on the possibility of failure. A test where you demonstrate the prototype and ask whether people liked it produces politeness, not data. A test where a learner attempts a real task while you watch, without help, produces something you can act on. The strongest submissions include at least one finding the designer did not want.
Building the submission from your rubric aspects
Scoring detail for D292 sits in your Course of Study rather than in the public catalog. Open it before you draft and count the scored aspects. Each is judged on its own against a three-point scale and each needs a 2, so a beautiful prototype cannot rescue a testing section with no protocol.
Use the aspects as headings, in the rubric's own words. Design deliverables tempt students into narrative structure, and narrative hides evidence.
The word budget, worked. Take a rubric with seven scored aspects and directions asking for around 2,400 words of accompanying documentation. Reserve 150 words to restate the problem definition carried forward and 150 for next steps, leaving about 2,100 for scored content, or 300 an aspect. Then weight it. The two aspects that reward extra room are the selection rationale and the revision-from-findings aspect, because both are causal arguments rather than descriptions. Take 70 words from each of the three inventory-style aspects and add 105 to each of those two. The total is unchanged and the reasoning gets space.
One planning habit prevents the most common return in this course. Write the revision section before you write the prototype section. If you cannot say what changed and why, your testing did not produce findings, and you still have time to run a better test.
A structure that fits a prototype and test report
Where the directions prescribe an artefact or template, follow it. Where they do not, this order matches how ideation through testing aspects are typically written.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Problem carried forward | The definition from your discovery work, stated in one short paragraph | Usually unscored, but every selection criterion is checked against it |
| Option set | Three or more genuinely different directions, each described in a few sentences | Scored for divergence; variations on one idea are read as one option |
| Selection criteria and choice | The criteria, where they came from, and how each option scored against them | Scored for traceability to the problem rather than to preference |
| Prototype rationale | The question this prototype is built to answer and the fidelity chosen to answer it | Scored for fit; high fidelity without a reason reads as decoration |
| The prototype itself | Screens, flows or artefacts, annotated with the design intent behind each | Scored for the annotation as much as for the build |
| Test protocol | Participants, tasks given, what you measured, what you deliberately did not help with | Scored for whether the test could have produced a bad result |
| Findings | What happened, separated from what you concluded | Scored for grounding; a summary of opinions is not usability evidence |
| Revision | Each change, the finding that caused it, and what you left alone and why | The aspect that most often decides the score |
Keep the same learners across the document. Testing a workplace prototype on classmates because they were available is defensible only if you say so and say what it costs you.
Evidence craft when the evidence is behaviour
Design testing produces a kind of evidence that graduate students often report badly, because it is qualitative, small and messy.
- Report behaviour before opinion. What a participant did carries more weight than what they said about it, and the two belong in different sentences.
- Give numbers even when they are small. Four of five participants missed the navigation is precise. Most participants struggled is not.
- Write the tasks you set word for word. A usability finding cannot be interpreted without knowing the instruction that produced it.
- Cite the method. Think-aloud protocols, task-based testing and heuristic evaluation all have literatures, and citing them shows the test was designed rather than improvised.
- Anonymise participants and get consent before recording anything. Role and relevant characteristics only.
- Ground learning claims in learning research, not in design blogs. Assertions about chunking, feedback timing or cognitive load are the ones an evaluator will look for a source behind.
The move that reads as mature is admitting what the test could not tell you. Five participants in one sitting cannot establish that the module teaches anything durable. Naming that, then saying what a later evaluation would measure, is stronger than overclaiming.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects score independently, so returns here are narrow and predictable. The commonest is a revision section that lists improvements without linking them to findings.
- Each scored aspect has its own heading using the rubric's noun.
- At least three materially different options appear, with a stated basis for choosing between them.
- The prototype's fidelity is justified by the question it was built to answer.
- The test protocol is reproducible from the description alone.
- Every change in the revision section names the finding that caused it.
- Accessibility is treated as a design property that was tested, not as a compliance note.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs time rather than standing. In a six-month flat-rate term the arithmetic is simple: closing more courses inside the term is what lowers your effective cost per course, and a design task that cycles twice usually displaces something else.
Where D292 sits alongside a proctored objective assessment, the rule does not bend: we prepare only, we never sit an assessment, and we never ask for portal credentials.
Six mistakes that cost time in D292
- Presenting one idea as the option set. Ideation is scored on the range you considered. A single direction with two colour variants is one option.
- Building high fidelity first. A polished module tested late leaves no budget to act on what the test finds, and evaluators reading the rationale aspect notice the sequence.
- Helping during the test. The moment you explain where to click, the data stop. Note the struggle, wait, and record what happened.
- Recruiting only friendly participants. Colleagues who want you to succeed produce reassurance. If that is all you can access, say so and treat the finding accordingly.
- Reporting satisfaction as usability. Liked it is not a finding. Completed the task in four minutes with two wrong turns is.
- Revising things the test never touched. Changes made because you preferred them dilute the causal chain the revision aspect is scored on.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study, the task directions and your problem definition. What comes back is aspect-mapped: an option set with real divergence, selection criteria traced to the problem, a prototype rationale that matches fidelity to question, a test protocol written so somebody else could run it, and a revision section where every change names its cause.
The habit is what transfers. Once the option, prototype, test and revision chain is visible to you, the lab course and the capstone sequence become far quicker, because they run the same loop at larger scale.
Questions students ask about D292
Is D292 the same course as LXD 5069?
What makes two ideas count as genuinely different options?
How many people do I need to test with?
Prototype built but the write-up will not come together?
Send your Course of Study rubric, the task directions and your test notes. You get an aspect-mapped draft where every revision names the finding that caused it.
Where D292 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 3 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.