Effective Remote Team Management
Overview
An immersive scenario-based eLearning course designed to help corporate managers learn to apply effective remote management skills. Learners practice decision-making in a real-life, low-risk scenario and learn which actions lead to increased team productivity and morale.
Responsibilities: Instructional Design, Needs Analysis, Storyboarding, Graphic Design, Mockups, eLearning Development, Performance Objective Writing
Tools Used: Articulate Storyline, Adobe Illustrator, Figma, MindMeister, Google Suite
Skills: ADDIE, Design Thinking Model, Adult Learning Principles, Empathy Maps and Personas, Action Mapping, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Principles
Key Performance Indicator: Employee turnover rate will decrease by 20% as managers apply effective remote management techniques.
The Pain Point
Since moving to a remote working model, the client has measured an increase in their employee turnover rate. This has caused several negative effects: the company is closing fewer sales, having difficulty retaining top talent, and spending more money training new employees. They reached out for consultation and help.
The Solution
Through careful analysis of interviews, company surveys, and direct observation, I devised that most remote managers had a strong motivation to build a positive team environment and could capably use the available technology. I confirmed that the problem was performance-related, caused by managers’ lack of skill to effectively manage their teams in a remote setting.
I proposed an immersive scenario-based eLearning experience to help team managers practice remote management skills in a low-pressure, real-world setting. Managers would be able to apply the skills to their management teams to increase employee productivity and satisfaction.
My Process
Guided by ADDIE and the Design Thinking models, I iterated on each step, gaining approval from the subject matter expert (SME) and stakeholders on each iteration. My process included:
Creating empathy maps and learner personas
Defining the objective
Creating an action map
Drafting a text-based storyboard
Designing visual mockups
Building an interactive prototype
Developing the final product in Articulate Storyline 360
See these steps in detail below!
Needs Analysis
One of my favorite steps in this process was conducting a needs analysis. I am passionate about getting to the root cause of challenges, and I feel thrilled when I can identify learning gaps that, once filled, will help clients achieve their goals.
My first step in conducting a needs analysis is to look further into key performance indicators. Analyzing interviews and survey metrics, I discovered trends in employees feeling a lack of support from their managers after moving to a remote working model. Managers rated supporting their employees as highly important but rated their skills in that area as low, so I focused on designing instruction for the managers.
Next, I created empathy maps to identify learner needs and used these maps to develop learner personas. I like to display the personas while I work.
Research-based empathy maps and personas are a crucial part of my design process. They allow me to understand and predict how each design decision will affect the learner. I like to display the maps and personas while I work, to keep learner needs first and foremost in my mind.
Based on the data, managers felt highly motivated to support their employees and could capably use the available technology. This confirmed that the problem was performance-related, caused by a learning gap in skill to manage their teams remotely.
From the maps and personas, I could see that the learner needed:
Practice in a low-risk environment
Short and to-the-point instruction
Choice as to when and where they access instruction
With stakeholder input, I created a measurable performance objective using Bloom’s Taxonomy. Level three, Apply, would work best to address the learning gap. An objective based on level three would support learners in applying effective management principles and would elicit a behavior change, resulting in a positive outcome in performance indicators.
Performance Objective:
Employee turnover rate will decrease by 20% as managers implement effective remote management techniques.
I proposed that a scenario-based eLearning experience would best meet both the performance objective and learner needs. After the client accepted my learning solution proposal, it was time to proceed to the design and development stages of the project.
Ideate
Action Map
I used Cathy Moore’s strategic action mapping process to further analyze the performance goal. I led brainstorming sessions with SMEs using Kirkpatrick’s Model backward to guide the action map. I placed the performance goal in the middle of the map and added the observable tasks and behaviors learners would need to engage in to meet the performance goal. I categorized them into actions and sub-actions.
After creating an action map, I chose which actions would have the greatest impact on the performance goal. This evaluation revealed four high-priority actions that became the content of the course. The actions can be seen in orange, branching off from the performance goal in the action map below.
Text-Based Storyboard
Once I defined the content, I drafted and iterated on a text-based storyboard with feedback from SMEs and stakeholders. I outlined a story and created four decision points based on the observable actions from the action map. The storyboard used mostly conversational, informal language, drawing from Mayer’s Personalization Principle. All language was clear, consistent, and free from idioms, slang, and jargon to increase access for diverse learners.
I crafted a fully immersive story. Learners begin with a captivating introduction. They receive a call from Savvy Sales Hiring Manager, Bill, that they’ve been hired as a new remote manager. At the end of the “year,” they will meet with Bill again to evaluate their progress. In the end, if they have made effective management decisions, they receive positive employee reviews. If they have made poor management decisions, they receive negative employee reviews and are prompted to try again.
Learners are presented with authentic, nuanced management decisions. The slides for each correct and incorrect choice present the realistic consequences of each decision made as the learner progresses through the scenario. This process of using authentic situations and genuine consequences immersed the learner in the story and aided learning and retention.
Creating a text-based storyboard allowed me to make quick iterations of the content based on SME and stakeholder feedback before moving on to the development phase.
Visual Mockup
Once I was confident the text-based storyboard laid out an engaging scenario, I began the visual design for the project using Figma. I created a style guide to keep the design consistent across each slide. I aimed to create a professional yet aesthetically pleasing look and feel.
I designed the layout and graphics for each slide type using Adobe Illustrator. I made sure to create a few different styles for each slide type to give stakeholders options for the look and feel of the course.
I shared the mockup with friends in the graphic design and learning and development communities and iterated on their feedback. One piece of feedback I received was to use tutorial-style boxes to visually draw the learner’s attention to the Morale Meter. See a few iterations below:
Visual Design Highlights
Look and Feel: Clean, modern, minimal, professional
Color Palette: I chose a clean, minimal color palette. I used blue tones for a majority of the experience to promote a sense of calm and used splashes of warm color to create a visually dynamic and aesthetically pleasing experience.
Negative Space: I used negative space to create a modern vibe for this project and prevent sensory overload, drawing from Mayer’s Coherence Principle. This helps the learner focus more easily on the content, while also giving the course a more attractive feel.
Typography: I opted for sans-serif fonts to add to the modern and minimal look and feel.
Images: I curated and custom-designed vectors to give the experience a modern, corporate feel. I designed the majority of slides to look like the learner was facing a laptop. This was intentionally done to connect learners to their natural work environment and support knowledge transfer.
Characters: I created characters to create a fully immersive story. It was important to me to use a variety of races and ethnicities to represent diverse learners.
Interactive Prototype
Before full development, I created an interactive prototype in Articulate Storyline 360. This allowed me to fine-tune any issues and apply stakeholder feedback to each slide type and saved time. In the interactive prototype, I added states, triggers (standard and conditional), animations, and a conditional success meter.
Interactive Highlights
Scaffolding with Strategic Feedback: During each decision point, users have access to a mentor that they can call on for support. The mentor is careful not to give learners the correct answer but provides assistance to help them answer the question. Following each choice is a consequence slide, giving learners an authentic reaction to their choice. At the end of the course, learners read reviews from their “team members.” All of this feedback serves to reinforce concepts for the learner.
Personalization: It was important to me that learners could personalize the course and feel a sense of ownership. Learners are more engaged when they feel personally involved, so I added a place for the learners to type in their names and choose their pronouns.
Glowing Buttons: I challenged myself to learn how to create actively glowing icons to draw learners' attention to interactive portions of the course, utilizing Mayer’s Signaling Principle. To do this, I had to create a separate layer for the glow and create looping triggers. I did this to cue learners to answer the phone. I also used active glowing to draw attention to buttons, the Morale Meter, and mentor icon during the learner tutorial.
Gamification: I used gamification principles to increase learner engagement and enjoyment, so I created the Morale Meter. I had to deepen my understanding of variables to create a meter that changed based on the learner’s choices. With each correct answer, the slider moves up, signifying to learners that their decision has increased the morale and productivity of their team. With each incorrect answer, it moves back down. At the end of the scenario, if the learner has not raised the meter into the blue, they are prompted to try the whole scenario again. The Morale Meter increases motivation throughout the scenario to win a good evaluation in the end.
Sound Cues: The interactive prototype included many features that users loved, but I also received some feedback that helped make the experience more immersive and functional. For example, based on a user suggestion, I added sounds to each consequence slide to further cue the learner and reinforce the effects of choices.
After rounds of feedback and iteration based on user testing, I refined the layout, interactions, and sound and moved on to full development.
Full Development
Once I was confident with the interactive prototype, I advanced to implementing full development until the flow and functionality were complete. Full development was straightforward and efficient now that most issues had been resolved from user testing during the interactive prototype phase. From further user tests after full development, I was able to discover some kinks with sound triggers and the Morale Meter variables, which I investigated and fixed to allow for better flow and cohesive story-telling.
I thoroughly enjoyed crafting this eLearning experience and gained a deeper understanding of the instructional design process. Overall, it was well-received by users, who widely appreciated the interactive introduction, personalization, and sound triggers. I look forward to creating more meaningful and engaging learning experiences in the future!
Results and Takeaways
The project was well-received by members of the learning and development community. Read some of their testimonials below:
“The training was very well graphically designed, the UI was user friendly and made a very clear path to each new section. Company training programs often look boring and thoughtless and I feel like this training would stand out as a more interesting alternative to those!”
“I learned a lot in that short space of time because of the imagery and ease. It’s a neat project, well done!!”
“It was easy to follow and clearly written. I I enjoyed the interactive graphics and the clear purpose of the training. I love how the learning was a part of the story… You learned without realizing it because it was enjoyable.”
I thoroughly enjoyed crafting this eLearning experience and gained a deeper understanding of the instructional design process. Overall, users widely appreciated the interactive introduction, personalization, and sound triggers. I look forward to creating more meaningful and engaging learning experiences in the future!