This article is intended to supplement a published research report (Gersten, Baker, Smith-Johnson, Dimino, & Peterson, in press) on an instructional intervention study by discussing some of the behind-the-scenes issues that typically do not appear in a published research report. In particular, I discuss how use of design experiments helped shape the intervention, the interaction between research questions and research design, and the role of intuition in designing and refining experimental studies of instruction.