The Best Books for Storytelling in Learning Design
At some point, "good instructional design" is no longer enough. Learning objectives based on Bloom's taxonomy, well-structured content, clear progression, plenty of interactivity... and yet, you are still left with the feeling that something is missing. In my search for that "something more," I dove into storytelling and experience design—and I’ve read quite a bit over the years.
In this post, I’m sharing five books that aren’t directly about learning, but have deeply informed and enriched my practice from the outside. What connects them all, in my view, are three core questions: What actually constitutes an experience? What makes a moment memorable? And what does all of this have to do with learning?
If you are currently transitioning from content to story, from instruction to impact, or simply want to broaden your horizon, this list is for you.
Design is storytelling (Lupton, 2019)
Why good learning design shapes not only knowledge but also feelings
What is it about?
Ellen Lupton is one of the most renowned designers out there—a curator at the Smithsonian, a professor, and the author of a dozen books. Her book is exactly what you would expect: highly visual, engaging, and packed with insights. It’s a well-curated and practical toolkit.
Lupton shares how the foundational principle of "design is problem-solving" eventually stopped being enough for her, prompting her to look deeper. Design is so deeply integrated into our daily lives that it constantly prompts us to act and feel. Design transforms meaning, and that is precisely why design is storytelling.
What I love about it:
he book uses numerous examples to demonstrate that designed experiences always operate on multiple levels at once—whether intended or not. Early on, it gave me a broader design perspective that I lacked before, providing an easy entry point into topics like storyboarding, emotional journeys, and Gestalt principles. I often use the examples from the book in workshops to illustrate why excellent learning design isn't just about what people know or do, but also about what they feel.
Understanding Comics (McCloud, 1993)
What Visual Sequencing Teaches About Content Curation
What is it about?
If you love comics, you’re in for a treat. Scott McCloud uses the comic format itself to develop a robust theory of visual-sequential storytelling. Comics are inherently immersive because the audience actively completes them; we naturally fill in what happens between two panels. McCloud analyzes how comics manipulate time, space, perspective, and reader participation—and why the medium works so well despite leaving so much out. He calls this "closure": the mental work we do to bridge the gaps.
What I love about it:
What you leave out shapes the experience just as much as what you show. This applies to slide design, branching scenarios, onboarding flows, and interactive modules—basically anywhere you decide what to display and what the user has to "fill in" themselves. Why do comics trust their readers so implicitly, while we in L&D so rarely do?
This book helped me truly grasp visuals and visual narratives, showing me how crucial these principles are for digital learning. I read it while building my first interactive story, „Speak or Sink“ It teaches you how to give things a natural flow and how to create space for cognitive and emotional impact. In short, it’s a masterclass in instructional reduction.
Designing Experiences (Rossman & Duerden, 2019)
The theoretical foundation for structured experience mapping
What is it about?
This is the most academic book on this list, yet it remains highly readable. Rossman and Duerden are professors in the field of experience design, and they successfully bridge theory and practice across multiple disciplines. What is an experience? How do you build one? What makes it memorable or even transformative? The book provides a wealth of theory and frameworks to truly understand and design experiences. Courses and workshops are, fundamentally, experiences that we must intentionally shape to achieve real impact. This book helps you do exactly that.
What I love about it:
In my experience, stakeholders, SMEs, and even L&D professionals often fixate entirely on the content to be delivered, forgetting that the overall experience and surrounding context matter just as much. This book is my absolute go-to for frameworks: experience mapping, micro- and macro-experiences, sequencing, touchpoints, and transitions. Whenever I design an experience from scratch or audit an existing one, these categories make it painfully clear where a design shines and where it falls apart.
The Power of Moments (C. & D. Heath, 2017)
How to Anchor Psychological Peak Moments in Learning Processes
What is it about?
While backed by psychological research, this book is written as a highly accessible popular science book filled with compelling stories. The authors explore why we remember specific moments while completely forgetting others. They identify four elements that drive these memories: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. Most organizations design for information transfer. For anyone designing training, onboarding, or educational programs, this book poses a direct challenge: What is the one moment someone will still remember six months from now? And what did that moment do to them?
What I love about it:
Their breakdown of "pit" and "peak" moments. When I design learning experiences, I actively look for the friction points: Where is the design unintentionally creating a pit? And where is the opportunity to design a peak? It is an incredibly useful addition to journey mapping and emotional design.
Storyworthy (Dicks, 2018)
Narrative Design and the Search for the Moment of Change
What is it about?
Matthew Dicks is a multiple-time champion at The Moth StorySLAM. n this book, he shares the craft of storytelling he learned over years on stage, focusing on personal stories that truly resonate with another human being. Coming from L&D or communications, you are used to structuring content because you want your content to move people. Dicks asks a critical question to achieve this: Where is the moment of change? His stance is clear: a story without a moment of change is just an anecdote.
What I love about it:
I use his "Homework for Life" exercise both professionally and personally. Every evening, my child and I share the most memorable moment of our day. It trains you to look at everyday life through a storytelling lens. In my learning design, I now look much more intentionally for that five-second moment where everything changes, and I think deeply about how I want to shape it.
Immersive Storytelling for Real and Imagined Worlds (Kerrison, 2022)
Spatial Storytelling as the Future of Hybrid Learning Spaces
What is it about?
This book is right at the top of my reading list. Margaret Kerrison has worked for Disney Imagineering, among others. I’m looking forward to its insights into spatial storytelling—how to use physical spaces to involve people in a narrative so they don't just remain passive spectators. I am certain that many of these principles translate beautifully to digital and hybrid spaces as well.
The best ideas rarely come from looking within a single industry. Comics teach us instructional reduction, experience design explains why a workshop fails even when the content is flawless, and storytelling shows us what makes a moment unforgettable. That’s why it pays to look past our own horizons and draw inspiration from other fields. In the term Learning Experience Design, "learning" comes first. In practice, however, it works the other way around: first comes the experience, then comes the learning.
Want more? My colleague, Jennifer Fritz – Learning Experience Designer and Storytelling Expert – also has her book recommendations written in her blog.