Senior-led, lean by design
ID Atlas is an instructional design agency built on an apprenticeship model. A senior designer leads every project, backed by a mentored community of freelancers we can scale up for a full curriculum or keep lean for a single module, so the engagement fits your budget and timeline.
Who runs it
Mike Stein
Founder & Lead Designer
Mike Stein is an instructional designer who has worked across higher education, nonprofits, and small business. He started in faculty development at a community college, running workshops and coaching instructors one-on-one, then moved into full-time eLearning as a remote designer. His work spans custom eLearning, serious games and simulations, live and blended training, faculty development, and accessibility.
He works across a wide range of authoring tools, increasingly with AI-augmented production, and designs to Quality Matters and WCAG / Section 508 standards. He is the author of two books, on design thinking and on project management for learning design, and develops open-source tools for the field, including the AuthorScratch authoring app.
Why range matters
We don't hire identical instructional designers
Most of the best designers we've worked with didn't start as instructional designers. They came from other fields and brought those instincts with them.
A designer who spent a decade in marketing thinks about audience and motivation differently. A former teacher reads a room and knows where learners get stuck. Someone from engineering structures a messy problem into a system. We hire for transferable skill and genuine curiosity over a particular line on a résumé, and your projects get more angles on the problem because of it.
- Marketing
- Teaching
- Graphic Design
- Engineering
- Business
- Technical Writing
How we're built
Small on purpose
No sales team, no account managers, no ads. You work directly with the people building your project, and we take on only what we can do well. Nearly every new project comes from a past client or someone they told.
Custom, not template
We take a real look at your challenges, goals, and culture before we propose anything. You get training built for your people, not a course we had lying around.
Partners, not vendors
We work alongside your team from needs assessment through post-launch evaluation, which keeps the whole engagement honest and measurable.
Scales up or down
A senior lead is on every deliverable, paired with a mentored bench we can grow for a large build or keep lean for a quick one. You get senior-only judgment with the cost flexibility of an apprenticeship model.
How we work
The 5D Spiral
A structured, iterative methodology adapted from ADDIE. It treats analysis and evaluation as continuous work rather than discrete phases, and every engagement we take on spirals through it, from defining the right problem to proving we solved it.
What we believe
Our take on learning
The 5D Spiral is how we run a project. These are the convictions underneath it, and the fastest way to tell whether we are a fit.
Training should change behavior, not just deliver content
Completion rates and seat time measure activity, not learning. We design backward from the behavior you need on the job and judge the work by whether it moves.
The format is the last decision, not the first
A course, a job aid, a five-minute chat, a redesigned process. The right answer depends on the problem, so we pick the format that fixes it, even when that is less than you came in asking for.
Accessible by default, not a final-step checklist
Designing for keyboard, screen reader, and cognitive load from the start makes the learning better for everyone, not only the people who need an accommodation. We build to WCAG and Section 508 throughout.
People learn by doing
Watching a slideshow is not practice. We build decisions, scenarios, and consequences into the work so learners try, fail safely, and adjust before it counts.
In their words
From the people we've worked with
Working with Mike was a positive experience. He quickly learned complex subject matter, asked thoughtful questions, and created engaging training modules. He was receptive to feedback, flexible, and highly communicative throughout the process.
