Overview

Audience: Baristas at JavaCo Café

Role: Action Mapping, Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Prototyping, Visual Design

Tools: Articulate Storyline 360, Google Suite, Adobe Illustrator, Vecteezy, Snagit

JavaCo Café (a fictitious client for this concept project) noticed that its baristas needed to increase bakery sales by more effectively promoting the cafe’s variety of bakery items. Unfortunately, there was a lack of product awareness among customers, so JavaCo was losing potential sales because few customers were incentivized to purchase the seasonal. high-quality baked goods sold at the café.

After investigating the performance issue, I proposed a scenario-based eLearning experience where baristas could practice upselling and promoting the café’s products in a risk-free environment. The goal was to improve sales and increase product awareness by equipping new hires with the skills and knowledge to effectively promote the café’s bakery items.

I suggested incorporating an acronym that helps the barista remember the three key upselling skills, PEP, which stands for:

• Pastry Pairing Guide

• Engage Customers

• Present Punch Card

I proposed a branching scenario that provides the barista with feedback on each choice and highlights areas for improvement. The client accepted my proposal, and we proceeded with the project.

.Action Mapping: I consulted an experienced barista as my Subject Matter Expert (SME) to develop the Action Map and establish the overall goal for this project. We decided to measure progress by monitoring sales data and landed on the business goal of improving bakery item sales by 10% in 2023. We then identified the actions needed to help baristas effectively sell and promote the company's products along with proposed incentives that would incentivize customers to purchase bakery items. This was done through a 30-min SME meeting with discovery questions sent to the SME prior to the conversation.

Text-Based Storyboard: Once the action map was completed and approved, I began working on a text-based storyboard that would incorporate these critical actions into a coherent narrative.

I framed the scenario as a barista's first day on the job and consulted with SME to make sure every element was based on reality. I chose a design where a customer orders a cappuccino, but the barista can sell and promote the company's specialty baked goods.

The storyboard includes question prompts with correct choices and realistic distractors as the learner moves through the scenario. In addition, each answer selection provides a breakdown of the response to reinforce key learning.

Selecting an incorrect choice would require the student to immediately try again or walk them through an extended sequence where the customer leaves, and a feedback poll is displayed, providing feedback. This approach highlights a variety of realistic outcomes, including lost sales and the need for product awareness among customers.

Visual Mockups: Once the text-based storyboard was reviewed and approved, I created visual mockups for the scenario in Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator allowed me to experiment with visuals and layouts to settle for something polished and engaging.

I kept a consistent visual style for everything from the background to the characters. I also created a custom color palette based on the title slide's background illustration. Then, finally, I worked on editing each asset within the background image to work perfectly with the scenario I wanted learners to envision.

Another priority was maintaining a logical narrative, which meant sourcing and modifying the café and its products realistically. I combined many vectors sourced from public Vector libraries to create the right ambiance for the story, such as a bakery display case, plants, shelves and lighting. Finally, I designed the prompts, buttons, and fonts to reinforce the focus of the training and make it as engaging as possible.

The final product is a scenario-based eLearning experience that equips newly hired baristas with the skills and knowledge needed to upsell and promote the company's products effectively. Plus, the sales acronym and customer scenario responses offer a measurable way to track progress and identify areas for improvement.

The full development of the scenario in Articulate Storyline 360 was straightforward and efficient now that all elements had been created and a programming framework for each consequence was established.