Designing Open Badges

Slide 1: Title slide

This presentation covers the practical aspects of creating Open Badges for workplace learning. You’ll learn the essential elements of badge design – from establishing clear criteria to specifying evidence requirements. The focus is on creating badges that serve a clear business purpose while providing meaningful recognition for informal learning and skills development. By the end of this presentation, you’ll have a structured approach for designing badges that align with your organisation’s or client’s learning objectives.

Slide 2: Hello

I’m Rob Stewart. Over nearly a decade, I’ve designed hundreds of Open Badges across multiple sectors and organisations since 2014. My work with Open Badges has been both challenging and rewarding – leading to recognition as Training Journal’s L&D Professional of the Year in 2019.

I’ve created this presentation to share practical insights from my badge design experience. After the presentation, you can find me on LinkedIn or visit dgty.uk if you’d like to discuss badge design for your own projects.

Slide 2: What we need to create

When we talk about designing an Open Badge, we mean more than creating a graphic with a title.

The design process involves creating criteria that set out what people need to do to get the badge. We need to give them advice on meeting these criteria, think about how the badge links to any standards or frameworks, and then create a title, description and graphics that fit.

If you’re planning to create several badges, you’ll need to work through these pieces for each one.

Slide 4: Contents – Badge purpose and value

Before starting to design an Open Badge, you need to think about its purpose and value. Just as not every learning need requires an e-learning course, not every situation needs a badge.

People in your organisation or clients might ask for badges the same way they ask for eLearning – but as a digital learning designer, it’s your role to assess whether a badge will actually serve a useful purpose. You’ll need to consider what value it brings, both short and long-term, to everyone involved.

In the next slides, we’ll look at the different stakeholders that need to be considered by the design process and what makes a worthwhile badge.

Slide 5: What value will it bring to stakeholders?

When designing Open Badges, we need to consider three key stakeholders who each interact with the badge differently.

The issuer creates and awards the badge – typically your organisation or client. While they might request a badge, they may not have a clear picture of its business value. Part of the design process involves helping them articulate what success looks like beyond just having another badge to award.

The recipient or earner completes the requirements and receives the badge. They need to understand why the badge matters – both for their motivation to earn it and their engagement with it afterward. Without clear value, the badge becomes just another thing they forget about.

The consumer could be anyone the recipient shows their badge to. This might be their current manager looking to verify completion, or a future employer years later evaluating their capabilities. Badge designs often overlook consumer needs, but effective badges account for how these stakeholders will use and interpret the credential.

Each stakeholder has both immediate and lasting benefits. In the short term, recipients get recognition, issuers track awards, and consumers see verification of achievement. But if these are the only benefits, a simple certificate would work just as well.

In the long term, recipients can build up a portfolio of their work over time through the evidence they submit for badges. Issuers can look at all these submissions to see how well their learning programs are working. And consumers don’t just see that someone earned a badge – they can look at the actual evidence behind the badge – perhaps using it for Recognition of Prior Informal Learning or to see which candidate better matches the requirements for a role they are hiring for.

Short-term benefits alone can make badges feel disposable. The most effective badges consider all three stakeholders – issuer, recipient, and consumer – and create value that lasts beyond the moment of achievement.

Slide 6: What is the purpose of the badge?

Every badge must serve a clear, measurable business need. When someone does what’s needed to earn a badge, their actions should directly contribute to meeting this need.

Let’s look at some practical examples of where badges can work well.

You might have a performance gap that affects many people across your organisation. A badge could motivate people to build specific skills that close this gap.

During technology rollouts or organisational changes, badges can encourage people to engage with new systems or ways of working.

For compliance training, badges can go beyond standard eLearning quizzes. They can ask people to show how compliance requirements affect their specific role and workplace.

Large organisations like IBM and Microsoft use badge suites for capability building, but this isn’t limited to tech companies. Any organisation can identify key capabilities and create badges to develop them.

For new starters, instead of front-loading all training in the first few weeks, badges spread over six months or a year can help people develop and retain skills and knowledge as they settle into their role.

Cathy Moore’s book Map It transformed how I identify the right situations for badges. While it doesn’t specifically cover badges, its action mapping approach helps pinpoint whether a badge, course or some other solution best fits your business need.

Like any learning intervention, badges aren’t always the answer. Your role is to determine when they’ll genuinely help achieve business goals.

Slide 7: Contents – Where does this badge fit?

After deciding a badge will be useful, we need to work out exactly how we’ll use it.

We’ll look at some basic questions: Who needs these badges? What will the badges show they know or can do? Will we need just one badge, or will it be part of a set? And how will people actually receive their badges?

Answering these questions will help make sure the badge or badges do what we need them to.

Slide 8: Broader context

When designing a badge, the first questions to consider are about the bigger picture.
Who will this badge serve? We need to identify our target audience and understand their needs. Different groups might need different approaches – a badge for new starters will look very different from one for experienced specialists.

What exactly will this badge recognise? This could be specific skills, personal qualities, workplace values, or subject knowledge. Being precise here helps everyone understand what the badge means.

Some badges work best on their own, while others are part of a series that builds up over time. Deciding this early helps shape the overall design. A series might show progression from basic to advanced skills or cover different aspects of a role.

The badge also needs to match up with any existing standards or workplace expectations. This could include national occupational standards or your organisation’s competency frameworks. These alignments can be included in the badge’s technical information, which helps make the badge more meaningful to employers, professional bodies and other organisations.

Answering these questions early on, helps us create badges that are useful and make sense. But, it is by no means the most glamorous part of the process and you should be prepared to motivate other stakeholders involved in the design to consider these questions fully before they jump on to drafting the criteria.

Slide 9: Entry level or advanced

The level of your badge affects several key decisions in the design process. Let’s look at what you need to think about.

For advanced badges, you might want recipients to hold other badges first. This ensures they have the right foundation of skills and knowledge before moving forward. For example, someone might need a basic customer service badge before tackling an advanced complaint handling badge. Entry level badges, obviously, won’t need any prerequisites.

You’ll also need to decide how people will receive their badge. There are several options: You might issue it directly after observing someone demonstrate a skill, like watching a presentation or seeing them handle a customer interaction. You could provide a claim code at the end of a training session – this works well for workshop attendance or completed courses. Or you might ask people to submit evidence of their work, which could need assessment before the badge is awarded. This last option is particularly useful when you want to see real examples of someone applying their skills.

Time is another important factor to consider. Be realistic about how long it will take – not just for people to earn the badge, but also for assessors to review submissions or for managers to verify evidence. If you’re asking for portfolio evidence, factor in time for collecting examples and writing reflections. If assessment is needed, consider how long reviewers will need to evaluate submissions and provide feedback. A badge that looks simple might actually need significant time investment from several people, so it’s important to be clear about these commitments from the start.

Slide 10: Contents – Defining clear criteria

Now that we understand where our badge fits, we need to set out what people will need to do to earn it.

The next slides will cover how to write clear badge criteria and how to structure them in a way that makes sense. Good criteria are essential – if the criteria aren’t clear, people won’t know what to do and the badge won’t achieve what we want it to.

Slide 11: Open Badge criteria

Criteria are the most important part of any badge. They tell applicants what they need to do to earn it and show other people what the badge holder actually did. When you assess someone’s evidence before awarding a badge, you’re checking it against these criteria.

You can include many different things in your criteria – specific tasks you want people to complete, questions for them to answer, or skills they need to demonstrate. The flexibility of badge criteria is what makes them so useful, but it’s why you need to be completely clear on the badge’s purpose before you write them.

When writing criteria, think about what you want applicants to do with their learning. Do you want them to try something new at work? Show how they’ve improved a process? Reflect on what worked and what didn’t? The criteria should push people to think about their learning and show how they’ve used it.

You can change criteria over time – they’re not set in stone like a formal qualification. If they’re not giving you the results you want, adjust them. Test different approaches and see what works best.
But criteria are often where badges go wrong. If your criteria just ask for basic things like “attend the workshop” or “complete the e-learning module,” you’ll get weak evidence in return. The resulting badge won’t be worth any more than a standard certificate. Your criteria need to ask for meaningful evidence of learning and application if you want the badge to have real value.

Slide 12: Crafting your criteria

When you write badge criteria, present them as bullet points – it makes them easier to read and understand than blocks of text. Keep your list short though – no more than five points. Any more and you risk overwhelming applicants.

Write in plain language that everyone can understand. Avoid jargon, technical terms, or complex academic language. If you wouldn’t use the phrase in everyday conversation, don’t use it in your criteria.

Make it clear which parts of your criteria are essential and which are optional. For example, you might require evidence of trying something new at work, but make sharing their thoughts about their learning in a group discussion optional.

Tell applicants how much time they’ll need to complete everything. They need to know if this is a quick task they can do in an afternoon or something that will take several weeks of preparation. This helps with learning planning and, in organisations, makes it clear to someone’s manager how much time they will need set aside.

Finally, spell out exactly what evidence you want them to submit. Don’t make them guess – if you want a short video of them using a new technique, or screenshots of their work, say so directly. If you are asking questions, give advice on what someone should include or mention in their answers. Being specific about the evidence helps applicants give you what you need first time.

Slide 13: Contents – Evidence and verification

The next two slides cover evidence and verification – both critical to making badges meaningful.

Every badge needs evidence. Earlier, I spoke about how evidence shows what someone actually did to earn their badge. Two people can have the same badge but very different evidence behind it. For example, one person might have just met the minimum requirements while another demonstrated exceptional ability. This difference matters, especially if a consumer is reviewing badges during recruitment for example.

Strong evidence makes a badge more valuable over time. A badge with clear evidence of what someone accomplished is far more useful than a simple “completion” badge with no supporting information.

I’ll cover what kinds of evidence you might accept for your badges, and how to assess that evidence before awarding the badge.

Slide 14: Types of accepted evidence

You can accept many types of evidence for Open Badges. Applicants might write answers to reflective questions about what they’ve learned and how they’ve applied it. They could submit videos showing them using new skills, or audio recordings of presentations or discussions.

Photos and illustrations work well for visual evidence – like screenshots of a project or photos of an event they organized. Portfolio pieces demonstrate their work directly, while completed worksheets can show their thinking process.

Some people prefer to write blog posts or articles about their experience, or create presentations explaining what they’ve done. Testimonials from colleagues or managers add weight to their other evidence.

One crucial point about evidence: it must be suitable for sharing externally. Open Badges are meant to be shared on social media, LinkedIn, portfolios, and job applications. When you write your criteria, avoid asking for anything confidential or commercially sensitive. The evidence should be something the badge earner can freely share anywhere without concerns about privacy or business information.

Slide 15: Verification and assessment

Before launching your badge, you need to plan how you’ll handle the evidence you receive. First decision: will you assess the evidence at all? Some badges are awarded automatically when evidence is submitted, while others need careful review.

If you’re assessing evidence, you might want a rubric to keep decisions consistent. This helps when multiple people are involved in assessment, and lets applicants understand how their evidence will be judged.

Think about feedback too. Will applicants get detailed comments on their evidence? Will you offer guidance if they need to try again? The type of feedback you provide affects both the resources you’ll need and the value of the badge to learners.

Be clear about who’s doing the assessment and giving feedback. This might be a single person, a team, or even peer assessment. Whoever it is needs time and expertise to do it properly.

With AI tools becoming common, consider whether you need plagiarism or AI detection in your verification process. This is particularly important for written evidence like reflective answers or blog posts.

Finally, think about quality assurance. You might want someone to review a sample of assessment decisions, especially if your badge is tied to professional recognition or workplace capabilities.

Slide 16: Contents – Putting it all together

We’re at the final stage of creating the badge. The criteria are set, but there are still a few key decisions to make before we present everything as a complete package.

The next two slides cover these final considerations and show how to bring all the elements together into a badge that’s ready to launch.

Slide 17: Important considerations

Tags help people find your badge in backpack services where they store all their badges. Common tags might include the skill area, like ‘customer service’ or ‘leadership’, or the type of learning like ‘health and safety’.

Consider whether your badge should expire. This makes sense for skills that need regular updating or knowledge that changes frequently. An expired badge still shows someone had the skill at one point, but flags that it might need refreshing.

You might want third-party endorsement as part of the badge. For example, requiring a manager to confirm they’ve seen the learning applied in practice. This adds credibility, especially for badges that recognize workplace skills.

Think about what benefits badge holders get. Some organizations give badge holders access to special events, or eligibility for staff awards. Training providers sometimes offer discounts on future courses to people who hold their badges.

Sustainability matters too. Plan who owns the badge and is responsible for keeping it current. Decide when you’ll review and update it – typically at least every three years, with closer monitoring in the first few months. Consider what happens if key people leave – who takes over assessment or administration?

Slide 18: Presenting this as a complete badge

Your badge needs a concise title – two to four words that capture its essence. Follow this with a short description of 10-20 words that explains what the badge represents.

You’ll also want a longer introduction that gives more context about the badge, its purpose, and its value. This fuller description isn’t part of the badge metadata, but it helps people understand if this badge is right for them.

The badge image should be a PNG file, at least 600×600 pixels, with a transparent background. This ensures it displays well across different platforms and backpack services.

Plan how people will discover your badge. Will it be listed in your Open Badge catalogue? Featured on your learning platform? Mentioned in team meetings? Make sure potential earners know it exists and how to get it.

Create promotional materials that explain the badge’s value and benefits. This might include examples of evidence from previous badge earners or testimonials about how the badge, or previous badges, helped people in their learning.

By this point, you’ll have a complete badge ready to publish on your Open Badges platform. All the key elements are in place – from the technical requirements to the learner experience.

Slide 19: Summary

There was a lot to take in during this presentation, so thank you for sticking with it. Let’s go through the key points we covered.

Creating effective Open Badges involves several key components. You’ll need a clear title and description, well-defined criteria, guidance on evidence submission, relevant alignments to standards, and appropriate graphics.

The value of a badge extends across three groups: the organisation issuing it, the person earning it, and anyone they show it to later. Each of these gets both immediate and lasting benefits from well-designed badges.

Your badge must address a specific business need – whether that’s fixing performance issues, meeting compliance requirements, building capabilities, or supporting new employees. Without this clear purpose, the badge risks becoming just another digital token.

When writing criteria, limit yourself to five bullet points. Use straightforward language that people would use in everyday workplace conversations. Make it obvious which parts are mandatory and which are optional.

Badge recipients can submit various types of evidence – from video recordings to portfolio pieces, presentations, or workplace testimonials. Whatever form it takes, this evidence must be something they can share publicly without revealing sensitive information.

Slide 20: Thank you

That’s the end of our exploration of Open Badge design. Thank you for watching.
The slides and additional resources from this presentation are available at dgty.uk/DLDB2.

This presentation is released under a Creative Commons license. You can download, share, and use these materials in your work or organisation, as long as you don’t alter them and include proper attribution.

If you have questions about badge design or want to discuss your badge projects, you can find my contact details at the web address on screen.