Articulate Storyline Branching Scenario

Manger Communication Training.

Audience

Shoreline SAAS: Newly promoted managers who come from technical backgrounds.

Client: Senior management of Shoreline SAAS

Responsibilities

Analysis of overarching performance problems.
Identification of sub-tasks that related to each problem and whether training was the solution for each problem.
Recommending to the client which solutions match best with each performance problem and the format for each.
Development of activities or materials that support each performance problem.
Development of a Project Charter and a budget.
Prototyping, testing, and producing of materials.
Implementation of materials and modules.
Evaluation and reporting on the success of the project to the client.
Follow up and suggestions for further initiatives that will support business goals.

Tools Used

Articulate Storyline
Figma (Adobe XD)
Photopea (Adobe Illustrator)
Adobe Photoshop
MindMeister
Twine (twinery.org)
Javascript / xAPI
lrs.io Learning Record Store (LRS)
Midjourney(AI image generation)

Problem and Solution

Client: Senior management of Shoreline SAAS.

Shoreline SAAS is a fictitious company which is in a period of growth and is having difficulty with team productivity. After an initial analysis it was discovered that individuals were experiencing lower levels of productivity once re-shuffled into the new teams under the newly appointed managers. An uptick in resignations, and an increase in complaints to HR were also identified. Anonymous questionnaires were distributed and when the results were collated it seemed that new and less experienced managers were displaying several areas where their performance could be improved. After discussion with the client and one of the very successful managers, that had consistently positive output from their teams, (out SME) it was noted that one of the areas that new managers were failing in was that they were being inadvertently rude and condescending to their team members. After looking at all the performance areas, this was identified as the first problem to address.

We used action mapping, to analyze the problem to determine whether the it was motivational, environmental, skills based, or knowledge based, Motivation did not seem to be a problem because when we distributed surveys to managers and asked questions about why they thought the problem was happening, we saw responses that showed an externalization of the reasons for the problem and indications of a lack of understanding regarding why employees “were being so difficult”. All managers responded that they wanted to fix this problem. Since there were examples within the company of highly successful managers that had not had a decline in their team’s performance over the course of the transition, we ruled out environmental causes in the workplace. This left us with it being an application of skills (how to use language) and a knowledge problem (lack of understanding of expected communication norms).

Communication does not consist of stand-alone events, rather it is a series of events where missteps can be ‘patched up’ in following interactions. To model how this happens a branching scenario was decided on to help guide learners through making missteps with people and recovering / repairing these relationships over time.

Process

I Identified the overarching problem in consultation with the client and one of the “star managers” (our SME) through discussion and distributing surveys which went to both employees and the newly minted managers. This identified,
1. Rude communication from managers.
2. Inconsistency in expectations communicated by managers.
3. Unclear expectations from managers.
4. Inconsistency in check-ups by managers.
5. A perceived lack of empathy and caring from managers.
6. That managers felt they were thrust into their positions without proper training.
I broke down each problem into sub-tasks that the managers would need to do to be more successful and decided whether training was an appropriate activity to improve this area.
I checked with my SME to get my results a ‘sniff test’ to ensure that I had not misinterpreted anything.
I reported my findings to the client and SME with my suggestions for each performance area.
Once rude communication was identified as the first area to pursue, I met with the SME and worked our way through a realistic scenario to create realistic stems and options to try as well as the consequences of making incorrect choices and why people might not choose the ideal path. This was recorded for later use. I then developed wireframe mock-ups of this first interaction.
I then presented a production schedule and budget for development of the first branching scenario.
I designed and collected all the elements needed for development.
I implemented the project upon completion.
I reported on the success of the project.
I suggested further training based on the outcomes of the project.

Action Map

Working with the ‘manager champion’ I was able to look at how managers communicate with their teams by both reviewing survey results and sitting in on update meetings. From here I repeated the process with managers who were having difficulties under the guise of wanting to determine what “is wrong with employees” to get a better idea of the communication structures being used so that the individual would not self-correct in an unnatural way and bias my findings.

From here I built scenarios that were vetted by the manager-champion as realistic and at an appropriate language level. This was organized and developed and shared with the client and the SME where we then filtered through to determine the highest-priority actions to work on first. The decision was to focus on communication skills in the weekly meetings based upon the information gathered from HR. The SME agreed with this as being the highest priority. This was tied to the KPI of lowering missed deadlines for at-risk teams by 10% over the course of a quarter. Further, smaller measures, days missed at work and HR complaints were also monitored weekly to make sure that we were seeing a positive impact.

Text-Based Storyboard / Twine For Branching Scenarios

I then built realistic, vetted scenarios based upon the input I received earlier. I utilized a branching scenario structure with 4 characters to choose from and used Twine (twinery.org) to map out the paths learners could take to success or failure and the ones where errors were made and then recovered from in successive interactions.

I developed 4 different characters based upon an audience analysis which identified average learner age, office dress, and cultural range so users could feel more connection to the avatar they used in the experience. This was chosen in line with Mayer’s personalization principle. Lastly, I created a mentor that could be accessed during the experience for on-demand guidance.

In following best practices in instructional design, I created a structure with severe fail results where learners can “fail fast and fail often and retry” in an environment where the results of failure are felt but not immediately realized. The structure utilized a debrief at the end and a success meter so that individuals could see when their decisions were incorrect but not be given explicit step-by-step feedback that would interfere with puzzling out what had just happened. This structure was decided upon to bring home how important proper communication is to the business and individuals in a realistic format.

Visual Mock Ups

To bring the visual mock-ups to life, I leveraged Figma / (Adobe XD) to craft and refine the appearance and style of the slides in a board format that makes vetting and sign-off easier. I used Mayer’s multimedia and redundancy principle to guide my use of text and images that supported what was written. I also used coherence to guide a simplified design where there was only an action layer with a faded-out background to set context but not distract.

Interactive Prototype

At this juncture, I began the creation of the prototype. The prototype was comprised of identical slides to those found in the visual mock-ups and the visual storyboard, including a title slide, an introductory slide, a mentor introductory slide, a character select screen, two scenario slides, and two concluding slides (one for both the ideal and less-than-ideal choices). This phase marked the project’s transition into a tangible form.

Through the programming of states, triggers, and variables, the use of layers, cue points, and xAPI triggers, I gained a genuine sense of how the final product would function and feel upon completion. I created this prototype so that the stakeholders could get a sense of the look and feel of the project and give any feedback before full development started to avoid re-work later in the process.

During the prototype stage, I brought together all the elements that I had developed and created prompts that would move the learner back and forth between the different and linked elements in the experience. To align with Clark and Mayer’s personalization principle which emphasizes that people learn and retain information more effectively when it comes from a human voice as opposed to a robotic one, I took it upon myself to record the mentor audio.

In the pursuit of creating an engaging learning experience, I devised this character to serve as the training manager, guiding learners through the process to create redundancy and temporal contiguity. Using detailed MidJourney prompts and Photoshop, I masked, blended, and altered each character pose and expressions to achieve the desired appearance and maintain coherence. Once I was content with each character’s look and feel, I recorded the audio dialogue for the mentor. This amalgamation of visual and auditory elements played a pivotal role in ensuring our training experience was both immersive and engaging.

Full Development

Once I got the green light from my virtual stakeholders, it was a smooth journey to the finish line. My deep familiarity with Storyline made this part of the development enjoyable. From here my next steps involved scaling out and fleshing out the remaining variables, triggers, and slides. I used a combination of cue points and layers, which made each slide rather intricate, with the inclusion of text, visuals, and a success meter.

Given the importance of ensuring that employees truly understand and retain the content in this training, I made two critical decisions:

The mentor is available on demand to “talk to” whenever the learner is having difficulty. The mentor gives hints about the mindset of the manager so that this goes beyond a contained language lesson where the learner is encouraged to memorize structures where they could then apply them improperly and not see the desired effect.
The learner can recover from rude and insulting behaviour and return to the success state due to the branching structure used. This was used to simulate the realities of communication where we can be accidentally rude and insulting to someone and then recover from this in further interactions.

I then presented a production schedule and budget for development of the first branching scenario and the breakdown of the full production schedule to the client and the SME for review and sign-off.

I designed and collected all the elements needed for development and then I used Mayer’s multimedia and redundancy principle to guide my use of text and images that supported what was written. I also used coherence to guide a simplified design where there was only an action layer with a faded-out background to set context but not distract.

I used signaling to introduce the mentor and on the character select screen to make the initial understanding of the learning experience more seamless. I used spatial and temporal contiguity to minimize distractions by keeping the text and the characters close to each other in the frame.

Signaling was used when introducing the mentor and on the character select screen to make the initial understanding of the learning experience more seamless. Spatial and temporal contiguity were used to avoid distractions by keeping the text and the characters close to each other in the frame.

MidJourney Artwork

Segmenting was used and the experience was broken up into 3 different meetings. Lastly, I used the personalization principle and the image principle by creating bespoke characters with MidJourney.

Anyone can use the default characters and art from the available archives, but most organizations want their training to follow a theme that matches their organization and prefer characters that are personalized. For this, Midjourney, coupled with image editors such as Photopeia or Adobe Illustrator, can produce this. This creates non-redundant or never-seen-before imagery that can increase learner angagement.

Printable PDF Certificate

In my approach to making this training a self-contained lesson, capable of being implemented independently of an LMS, one key aspect was integrating a certificate of completion directly into the course. To achieve this, I started by creating a custom-branded PDF certificate using Illustrator. Then, I utilized JavaScript to dynamically print the learner’s name and date on the certificate, enabling it to be exported for download as a PDF.

The certificate becomes accessible to learners who arrive at the final success state (with unlimited attempts).

Learning Record Store Dashboard

I utilized Javascript and xAPI to execute scripts that send learner actions to a learning record store (LRS) that allowed me to record and display granular data on each learner’s process through the learning experience.

This was done so that the highest performers (those who passed without looping through any inappropriate communication) as one possible future mentor group and separate them from those who had difficulty and may need further training in the future.

Implementation of Project

In this case, where I am using xAPI and Javascript to gather more granular data, I published this to public-facing web storage using Amazon Web Services (AWS) alongside a Learning Record Store (LRS) to gather learner activity data. This allowed me to monitor student activity in the experience, which learners were having greater success, which were accessing the mentor, and their time on the experience. Their outgoing score was weighted to show those that had progressed straight through (those would have their score maximized by having a 3x sequence of additions to their score) and those that had difficulty and recovered and passed with a less than maximized score. I was also able to track failures through the number of retries a learner had before passing the course.

This collected data and the visualizations that I could produce with it allowed me to produce reporting later in the process to show the value add this experience produced.

Reporting

At four weeks after release, I revisited the earlier metrics that were agreed upon for validation of the effort. In the early weeks of the project release, I monitored the number of missed days of work against the average number of missed days using the prior 12 months average ending before the reshuffling of staff happened. The current average of ~1 absence / week on most teams was looked at after 4 weeks to see if this had gone down significantly. It had not, so I scheduled a re-check of this at 8 weeks to get a better sense of if success was being seen. Further to this I checked with HR to see if they had seen a reduction of complaints coming in regarding those managers that had had a large number of complaints come in prior to the release of the learning experience. This seemed to be lowering so I reported this as a tentative win with a further update scheduled for week 8 and then week 12.

This was then compared at 12 weeks against the time and money that was being spent by HR on complaints and follow-up (average time spent * hourly wage and a note of the time lost on other endeavours, the time managers were spending hiring to fill vacancies (manager wage * time plus lost employee productivity) and a ball-parked estimate of time and money saved by lowering customer churn based upon currently accepted standards. This was calculated at a cost of 3 months of lost average yearly customer revenue ($40,000/4) * yearly loss of ~10%(25) customers.

Further Training

With early indicators of success of the initial stage showing a lowering of days off work and HR complaints I made suggestions for further activities. In this initial stage we had dealt with the areas of,

1. Rude communication from managers.
2. Inconsistency in expectations communicated by managers.
3. Unclear expectations from managers.
4. Inconsistency in check-ups by managers.
5. A perceived lack of empathy and caring from managers.
6. That managers felt they were thrust into their positions without proper training.

And from here I recommended that we move on to dealing with expectations that were identified in points 2 and 3. For both these pain points a clear behavioural change is desired, so I recommended training be used in these cases in the branching scenario structure that was used in stage #1. I recommended this structure so that the shared expectations used by learners would be relevant to follow-up interactions made by managers. This will support the desired behavioural change of managers making sure to keep track of the expectations they place on others and remain consistent.

Follow Up

The follow up for this project was a weekly “one slide scenario” that was emailed out to each manager once they completed the course where they would be given an “update” scenario and a choice. These were developed in conjunction with the SME and strayed to different and related question structures surrounding progress updates. This would then move to an immediate result screen where the mentor would debrief the learner while they spoke to a job aid that displayed the language used in that scenario. This job aid was downloadable in .pdf for later reference if desired. These were hosted on cloud storage so that I could collect data on which managers were choosing correctly and those who were still having difficulty to create a list for further training, if desired.

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