Smart Service

 

An interactive branching scenario that allows employees to empathise with customers.

Overview

A client is experiencing a higher than normal volume of customer returns and customer retention has fallen. My task for this concept project was to produce an asynchronous learning solution that addresses both concerns.

  • Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Visual Design

  • Target Audience: Store employees at a national retailer of trade tools, accessories and hardware products

  • Tools Used: Articulate Storyline, Vyond, Camtasia, Adobe XD, Twine, Mindmeister, Adobe Illustrator, Audacity

 

The Process

In order to achieve an effective result I employed the principles of instructional design from the beginning of the planning process through to development and testing of the final product. By adhering to project milestones I was able to seek feedback at each stage which helped me to iterate in an agile manner.

 

Action Map

The use of action mapping was key in determining the observable actions which were the cause of the issue. Using MindMeister, I worked to draw up a mind map which detailed the ordering process and identified the potential issues known to lead to a return. I then identified the observable actions that could be addressed with a learning solution. I determined that the learning solution should involve an eLearning scenario with branching, involving a customer attempting to order an unfamiliar product by phone.

 

Storyboard

As this project involved extensive use of branching a linear storyboard would not be efficient, so I used Twine which is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. This allowed me to keep track of all the paths the user may be able to take through the scenario whilst I wrote all of the questions and endings.

Using Twine enabled me to easily view and amend the paths available to the learner

I wanted to include visual feedback as to how the learner’s responses were affecting the customer. The use of Twine enabled me to assign a positive or negative score to each response that could be assigned to an answer when the course was built and also act as reference for fine-tuning of the values in the future.

 

Visual Mockups

Visual mockups were of particular importance with this project. The layout had to be clear to the learner, but I also wanted to achieve a seemless transition between static and video content, which necessitated iteration and rounds of feedback before settling on a final design:

 

Interactive Prototype

Once I had finalised the visual design, I produced a prototype, consisting of a small part of one strand of the branching scenario. This was to confirm that the functionality worked as intended and to solicit feedback relating to the user experience.

 

Advanced Storyline Development

As well as demonstrating the use of instructional design principles in order to solve real world problems, I wanted to use this project to push the potential of Storyline’s inbuilt trigger functionality to its limits.

  • This project does not use any Javascript. Only triggers, variables and cue points are used. To see an example of Storyline working with Javascript and external libraries, check out my Corporate Location Map.

  • Movement of objects is achieved through the use of variables, not animation effects. The one exception is the appearance of the job aid and mentor buttons at the start of the module.

  • There are no static background images. Triggers are used to move to various points in the timeline where the background video may appear to be static instead.

As part of my prototype I chose to integrate the product information necessary to complete the scenario as a job aid and make it interactive. When the learner selects an option, the variables which hold the values of yield strength, tensile strength and proof load are assigned values which are populated according to the user’s selection. These values act as a target for a second set of variables, the values of which are incremented to or decremented from until they match the target value. The triggers that allow this process to occur are ‘driven’ by another rapidly incrementing variable which is turned on or off according to if the target conditions have been met.

An interactive job aid gives the learner quick access to information needed for the scenario

The area containing the question and answer boxes expands and contracts according to the principles described previously (see image opposite). When an answer is selected, numerical values are passed to variables to act as target values according to the size of the area required for the next question. The white and blue areas beneath the text consist of four sliders, which move simultaneously on a vertical axis to present the space required for the next question. When the user chooses to consult their mentor ‘Bob’, multiple sliders move concurrently to produce the effect of a single element expanding and contracting and moving on both a vertical and horizontal axis. This is all timed to occur precisely with cue points aligned to corresponding sections of video.

As well as immediate visual feedback of the customer’s initial reaction to an answer, I wanted to show the learner how their responses affect the customers overall mood. I used variables in Storyline to represent this, based on the principle of a Likert scale. The result is that the customer’s mood can change over the course of the scenario and their reaction to an answer will differ depending on if they are happy or unhappy with the answers they have been given so far. The learner can salvage a situation - a customer that was previously unhappy can have their mood improved by selecting better answers as they progress. There are five emotional states that represent the customer’s overall emotion and they can respond with one of eighty five different reactions to any question - a good response may calm an angry customer, but the same response might make a happy customer ecstatic. The customer will also gradually tire of responses if the conversation is too long, as in real life.

 

Full Development

Development of the final product involved duplication and amendment of the slides produced for the prototype and adjusting the scoring assigned to each answer.

Additional ending scenes were produced using Vyond and transitionary elements to bring the scenario together:

Setting the scene

I used a continuous zoom to transition from the start screen to the beginning of the exercise to efficiently establish the setting and place the learner in the scenario.

Multiple endings

To show the consequences of the learners actions, multiple endings were produced using Vyond and Camtasia.

 

Seamless transition

By combining transition effects in Camtasia with careful alignment in Storyline, the scenario appears to restart seamlessly.

Results and Takeaways

The final product was received well by my peers as a conceptual piece that explores the possibilities of intuitive feedback within a branching scenario and the ability to allow eLearning courses to respond dynamically to user input.

 

Other projects

 

Creating effective training

An animated video which demonstrates how employing learning methodology can result in better instructor lead training sessions.

Corporate location map

An interactive map that shows current time, date and opening status at 14 locations across the globe; with key staff, embedded maps and live video feeds.