Sunshine Music:
Can you calm frustrated caregivers to keep them coming back for more?
Customer relationships are such an important part of many jobs. How you interact with people can have a major impact on if a customer will return or not, especially when that customer is upset. Dive into this problem within the context of a parent-and-me music class to see how teachers can best interact with parents.
Featured Project
Audience
franchise owners, newly hired music teachers
Responsibilities
instructional design (action mapping, storyboarding, mockups, prototype, full build), visual design, graphic design, eLearning development
Tools Used
Articulate Storyline 360, Vyond, Adobe Illustrator, Google Docs, MindMeister, Freepik, Freesound, Audacity, Figma
The Problem
Sunshine Music (A fictitious company for development purposes) is a franchise with hundreds of centers around the US. Staff has been reporting an uptick in dealing with heated parents and a frustration that they are not sure what to do when these situations come up. Data collected by the corporate office also shows that many customers that do not sign up for more than one session left because they felt frustrated with how new teachers were speaking to them. This issue was causing a loss in revenue for the company.
The Solution
Why would a Scenario-Based eLearning course be the best solution for this problem?
Learners can complete it whenever it is most convenient to them.
This training could also be utilized for as many years as the information is relevant.
The course could potentially reach tens of thousands of new employees in the next 5 years.
Why is a different learning solution not right for this project?
An in-person mentor trainer could be a good option to help learners become comfortable with dealing with issues as they come up, but it would be very expensive for the company to have to pay a mentor teacher each time someone new is hired.
A job aide could include some of these strategies, but it would be clumsy for a facilitator to have to pull a job aide out when someone is already heated. It would also lose some of the nuance that is needed in such varied situations.
An online instructor led training would require people logging on at the same time. Since facilitators are placed all over the world, it would be difficult to schedule around different time zones.
For all of these reasons, I decided it would be the best solution to create a Scenario-Based eLearning course.
My Process
I utilized the ADDIE model to complete this project. During the analysis phase, I drew from my own expertise as a former educator in the parent-and-me space. I also consulted with a franchise owner to serve as a subject-matter expert (SME). I then designed the outline of the course by creating an action map, storyboard, and visual mock-ups. Throughout the process, I gathered feedback from both the SME and other instructional designers. Once the project was ready for development, I created the project using Storyline 360 and Vyond.
Action Map
Action Mapping helps instructional designers design focused, results-driven training by identifying real-world actions learners must take to achieve business goals. This ensures that content is practical and directly applicable to what learners do in their jobs.The fictional business in my course was facing problems with retaining customers and class facilitators were increasingly complaining about caregivers treating them poorly. I wanted to ensure that this training addressed the need for facilitators to learn to deal with frustrated customers in a way that would lead to fewer withdrawals.
Image: Action Map created in Mind Meister
Text-based Storyboard
My next step was to develop a text-based storyboard to guide the direction of the story and create a situation where the learner felt immersed in the decisions they might need to make on the job. One struggle I faced while writing this storyboard was choosing between having the main character face a different upset customer for each question, or to have each question follow the story arc of one caregiver who was upset. After going back to the action map, I ultimately decided to have the entire scenario surround speaking to one caregiver because there were many steps in the process of calming someone down before finding a solution.
Image: Excerpt from Text-based Storyboard created in Google Docs
Visual Mockups
I used Figma and Vyond to create my visual mock-ups to ensure consistency between slides and to help develop the visual style of the backgrounds and characters. There are a lot of colors to help draw kids in, but I chose more muted tones to create a calm space that would be attractive for adults. The brand is named Sunshine Music, so I included a lot of sunny yellows and oranges, but also blues to give the project visual depth through contrast. The mentor button was also meant to incorporate the brand and invite the learner in through my unique hover design.
Image: Style Guide
I knew I wanted to include many interactive elements such as the ukulele reward system (highlighted below in the Favorite Features section) and the drum being thrown across the room. Though these would be possible to create in Storyline 360, I thought the story could be shown more realistically and more dramatically with Vyond’s animation software. This story also has a lot of characters. There is a main character teacher, a mentor teacher, and 3-4 families with a grown up and child. It was challenging to find that many characters who looked like they belonged in the same world. The characters also needed to be seated on the floor to emulate a scene from a parent-and-me music class. Vyond made it easy to animate my cohesive characters in the poses and convey the emotions I wanted the learners to feel.
Images: High Fidelity Mock-Ups created in Figma
Interactive Prototype
Throughout development, I asked for feedback from several instructional designers on the design and implemented changes as necessary. I developed the project in Storyline 360 through the end of the first question so the project could benefit from other instructional designers’ expertise. Including this step allowed me to gather feedback before developing the entire project so I could avoid wasting time implementing feedback on an entire project rather than a small portion of the project. I also found a few people who know very little about instructional design to see what the user experience was like for them. Since many learners who take eLearning courses are not experts in the field, I wanted to see if the course was intuitive and informative for them as well. After making a few changes in the pacing of the animations, spacing in the text boxes, and button placement, I was ready to move on to developing the full project.
Image: Introducing the Mentor Character
Image: Mentor Help Slide
Full Development
I then went on to develop the full project, keeping the feedback I had received in mind. I intentionally kept the visuals and placement consistent throughout the project so the user could focus on the content.
Image: Question 3 Slide
Favorite Features
Ukulele Reward- Many eLearning courses that I have seen use some sort of reward system to let the learner know how much progress they have made while taking the course. I wanted to create a system that would accomplish this goal, but I also wanted to make it unique and exciting for the learner. I decided to create a system where the user would be working to repair an old ukulele in the music studio, earning a new string for the instrument each time the learner makes a good decision. This also included a sound effect where each string earned would play on each reward screen.
Video: Ukulele Reward with Sound Effects
Sound Effects- Since I wanted to use a sound effect for the ukulele, and because the course takes place in a music studio, I thought it was only appropriate to incorporate some music and other sound effects. I used Freesound.org and Audacity to edit the sound effects. These can be found in the introduction and conclusion slide as well as on one of the screens before the first question. I included what it might sound like to have several children of a young age playing instruments at the same time. This sound can be fairly overstimulating to some and helps the user understand why it could be a stressful environment to be in.
Emotional development- I was able to draw on my past experience in directing theater to create an immersive experience that felt realistic. I used zooms and changes in body language of both the acting characters as well as the reacting characters to show realistic situations. The intention was to help the learner feel the impacts of their decision in real-life scenarios.
Workflow Systems- To develop this project, I created and imported 50+ Vyond videos into Storyline 360. I quickly realized that I needed to find a filing system to enable me to maximize my workflow. I developed a labeling system that started with a number and ended with a text description that matched my storyboard. This way I could always find the file I needed when tweaking a video that was already in Storyline.
Image: Files to demonstrate Workflow System
Reflection and Takeaways
While creating this project, I reached out to my network of other Instructional Designers to get some feedback on my work. Many had positive things to say about my color scheme and visual design as well as how the Vyond videos enhanced my storytelling through character facial expressions, body language, and camera zooms. They also felt that the reward system was unique and added a lot of fun to the overall feel of the course. A colleague of mine who teaches this type of parent-and-me music class said they felt like they have met Damian’s mom before and this course helped them think about new ways to approach issues that come up in their classes.
To enhance this project’s effectiveness, I would consult more parent-and-me music teachers to gather additional stories. These insights would allow me to create more scenarios addressing common customer complaints, resulting in improved customer retention for the business.