Design Process Review

I designed and developed this scenario-based eLearning concept project to aid customer service representatives in effectively managing and enhancing customer relationships. The learner participates in story-driven, low-risk scenarios designed to emphasize crucial actions for achieving customer satisfaction.

Audience: Customer service representatives who are responsible for identifying the customer’s needs and ensuring they have a positive experience from start to finish.

Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Action Mapping, Storyboarding, Prototyping, Visual Design.

Tools Used: Articulate Storyline 360, Adobe XD, Vyond, MindMeister, Google Docs, Canva.

Overview

A large multinational electronics retailer company noticed a significant decrease in customer satisfaction ratings recently. Through communication with the client and SMEs, I identified various skill and knowledge gaps that were affecting how customer service representatives properly managed and developed healthy customer relationships.

I identified these gaps as stemming from a lack of empathy, delayed issue resolution, poor listening skills, and personalizing customer comments. Through action mapping, I established that addressing these performance issues could be achieved using scenario-based eLearning. This approach enables customer service representatives to practice decision-making in a risk-free environment and observe the resulting consequences.

Utilizing the ADDIE model, I designed and developed this project with the following system:

• Creating an Action Map

• Designing a Text-based Storyboard

• Designing Visual Mockups

• Developing an Interactive Prototype

• Finalizing the Project

Guided by Cathy Moore’s instructional design method Action Mapping, I collaborated with the Subject Matter Expert (SME) to construct an action map. The primary objective was to pinpoint the specific observable actions that learners should undertake in order to successfully achieve a measurable performance goal within the learning experience. Through joint brainstorming sessions with the SME, a range of high-priority actions were successfully identified and thoughtfully ranked. These actions consequently took center stage within the learning content, serving as the cornerstone for enhancing the communication skills of customer service representatives when interacting with customers.

Action mapping ensures that I am directly impacting the company’s performance by keeping the learning experience relevant and purposeful for the learner. By setting measurable performance goals, stakeholders remain oriented towards tangible business outcomes, rather than overwhelming learners with easily forgettable information. Prioritizing key actions results in an engaging experience that minimizes cognitive load and promotes knowledge retention.

Upon approval of the action map, I initiated the development of a text-based storyboard that integrates the identified high-priority actions into a narrative-driven learning experience, closely collaborating with the SME to formulate authentic decision-making scenarios. Progressing through the learning experience, participants encounter questions presenting three options: a single correct choice alongside two distractors.

Selecting an incorrect choice would lead learners through an extended sequence in the scenario where they learned the consequence of their choice in a risk-free environment and try again. The “why” was provided when making correct answers to reinforce important information and principles.  Additionally, a mentor character accessible throughout the scenario offered guidance to learners in moments of uncertainty or confusion.

This approach effectively emphasizes a diverse range of authentic scenarios that closely mirror the experiences customer service representatives (learners) would encounter within their actual job environment.

Upon receiving approval from the SME for the text-based storyboard, I commenced the creation of visual mockups for the learning experience using Adobe XD, a remarkable tool for swift iteration as it empowers designers to swiftly implement alterations and enhancements to the visual design.

Understanding that I was planning on using Vyond for this learning experience, I sourced some engaging visuals and utilized them as I designed the mock-ups. Visual design principles such as contrast, alignment, proximity, and repetition provided visually appealing slide layouts. To establish the desired tone for the experience and prevent color distractions for the learners, I opted to employ the color palette depicted below.

Through each iterative cycle, I consistently enhanced the diverse slide layouts, observing my learning experience progressively evolve into a visually captivating project.

Interactive Prototype

For this client project, I used Articulate Storyline 360 to develop the interactive prototype using visual mock-ups created in Adobe XD, ensuring a smooth and efficient development process. The prototype offers a preview of the ultimate learning journey, featuring slide layouts such as the introductory screen, the screen where the learner encounters the mentor, and the initial question accompanied by corresponding correct and incorrect prompts. This process effectively demonstrates interactivity with buttons, states, and learning experience functionality.

I gathered feedback from the SME and client to align the content with the storyboard. Overall, the interactive prototype was a vital step during my development process because it allowed me to display the functioning learning experience and improve upon it by collecting direct feedback based on stakeholder testing.

Full Development

During full development, I had a solid base to work from to build the rest of the learning experience given the designs I created for each slide layout during the interactive prototype stage. I used an iterative design process during this stage to ensure animations, triggers, and variables flowed perfectly together. Minimal changes were made to improve the final product once feedback was received from the client and SME on the entire learning experience.

The Vyond animated videos played a vital role in this project's success as I aimed to craft a story-driven, immersive learning experience. To create a cohesive and realistic learning experience that contained multiple scenarios, it was paramount for there to be relevant and contextual information for the learner to experience prior to each question to make for a more engaging and fun experience for the learner. Additionally, once the learner actually makes their choice, they get to see the consequence of their choice through additional videos.

At the end of the learning experience, the learner received a personalized certificate of completion. This certificate was created using Canva and was customized for the learner's name and date of completion. To generate the certificate, I integrated JavaScript. I worked with the code to customize its dimensions and added a trigger for the JavaScript within Storyline that once executed, generates the certificate of completion and downloads it to the learner's download folder. This part of the project proved to be a great exercise to hone my developer skills.

Results & Takeaways

The design and development of this project served as a great learning opportunity. Collaborating with the SME to craft an Action Map was pivotal, forming a solid foundation for the learning experience and yielding tangible business results. It took time and patience to distinguish and prioritize the high-priority actions the learner needed to perform but it provided a clear direction for the entire project.

If I were to build this project again, I would like to experiment with a few more common scenarios that learners could experience on the job and implement xAPI to receive data on the learner's interactions with the learning experience. Gaining a better understanding of the interactions that learners spent the most amount of time on and what areas proved to be the most difficult would provide great insight into enhancing the learning experience.