Restful Refreshments
Microlearning
Induction courses can often be the hardest to get right. It’s a gentle balance between providing the new employee with enough information and not overwhelming them.
I also believe that induction courses should really embody the organisation, reflecting their ethos, branding and tone of voice.
Therefore, I set myself the challenge to create a 10-minute induction microlearning. This had to be engaging, interactive and most of all reflective of my chosen organisation.
I used ChatGPT to come up with a fictional company, values and brand guidance. The result was ‘Restful Refreshments’, a tea company providing sleep teas.
PROJECT DETAILS
Role: ELearning Developer and Instructional Designer.
Brief: creation of a short induction eLearning course based on a fictional tea company.
Date: December 2024.
Duration: 1 month.
TOOLS
Articulate Rise.
iSpring.
Affinity Designer.
SKILLS
ELearning development.
Instructional design.
Graphic design.
My response to the brief
Scoping and instructional design
After prompting Chat GPT to provide me with the company information, I then began to scope out the topics and content for my microlearning. As Restful Refreshments sells sleep teas, I knew I wanted the tone of voice and writing style to be comforting, calming and ‘soft’. This translated as a very informal writing style, using plain English but with a conversational feel, to embody that sense of ‘being part of the team’.
With 10-minutes available, the content needed to be punchy and relevant, providing the learner only with exactly what they need to know. I split the course into 4-parts, beginning with a very short introduction, followed by detail around the company ethos and mission. Then moving into an overview of the ‘hero’ products, or best sellers and ending on a short activity around customer service.
The idea with this microlearning is that it could be suitable for anyone joining the company and doesn’t need to be tailored to specific job roles. It would form part of an induction curriculum and could be in support of more practical, role specific training.
I used PowerPoint to begin scoping my topics, providing loose timings and an idea as to what I wanted the interactivity to be. From here I began storyboarding the course, at this stage I began writing the content out exactly as it would appear on screen. Originally, I began storyboarding the eLearning to be created in iSpring, as I had been given the chance to try the software, and wanted to make the most of using the morph transition to create a fluid, animated course. However, as I moved into building out the course, I realised that I’d prefer the course to be available on a device responsive platform, so that learners could access it at home, or on the go. Therefore, I switched to Articulate Rise.
This meant going back and amending the content to fit a different platform. Whilst some of the interactivity could be kept the same, I used my knowledge of Articulate Rise to identify where certain block types would be suitable for specific sections of the course. As I was intending this course to be fully illustrated and graphic design heavy, it was crucial that the content was signed off first before building in Rise. Any changes to content further down the line would mean redoing backgrounds, which could become time consuming.
Writing for microlearnings can be tricky as you need to be able to ‘cut through the fluff’. There’s no room for over explaining, so trying to achieve a conversational tone of voice, whilst not adding unnecessary information, was a delicate balance. Therefore I opted to write using bullet points, short snappy sentences and provided the chance for further learning at the end of the course in the form a downloadable PDF. I added tangible examples where necessary, but didn’t go overboard with scenarios, as I felt this would be best covered when the new employee moves on to their role specific training.
Visual design
To create the visual design for Restful Refreshments I drew inspiration from Pinterest. Being a sleep tea company, I knew I wanted the look and feel to have a calming, dreamy feel to it. Therefore I created a small moodboard of images, or website design which I feel portrayed this well. From here I was able to draft up a colour scheme, choose fonts and create a logo.
I knew I wanted to make use of illustrations, but I didn’t want a cartoony feel, therefore I pulled on the theme of nature. The sleep teas are all natural, using flowers and herbs such as lavender and chamomile, so I felt it made sense to pull this in throughout the duration of the course. Using Articulate Rise can result in a blocky, segmented feel to courses, whereas in the absence of any transitions, I wanted a fluid scrolling approach where moving between the sections feels seamless.
Therefore, I designed each block to flow into the next, combining wavy shapes, gradients and full width imagery. I incorporated illustrations of plants and flowers to ‘decorate’ the backgrounds, continually checking these across device views to ensure no text was obscured. It was important to achieve a balance of the course not looking to busy or distracting, but adding that subtle nod to the company’s ethos of being ‘all natural and eco friendly’. I feel this was helped through the colour scheme, the dark blues and purples are easy on the eyes and are not jarring.
When incorporating imagery, I made sure to edit this to be in-keeping with the company branding, changing clothing colours to be purple or blue and in some instances turning down the saturation to add to that ‘dreamy’ effect. These are subtle changes which I feel really help with the overall cohesiveness of the course.
Platform and accessibility
Switching from iSpring to Rise meant amending and adapting content to fit Rise functionality. An example of this is the section around hero products. Originally in iSpring I had this as a carousel interaction, which fluidly animated using the morph transition. Within Rise, this kind of interactivity is not available, therefore I had to be creative in my approach. I opted for a carousel interaction within Rise, however had the imagery as static images. I then used alt-text to ensure any crucial information was not lost to those using screen readers.
Alt-text and accessibility was key in this course, as it used a lot of imagery I had to programme in alt-text for all headers, to ensure those using screen readers receive the same experience as those who aren’t. During the look and feel stage I checked colour contrast pairings to ensure text would be readable and whilst I used a decorative font for the company logo and section headings, the body text was Poppins, making all information easy to read and understand.
I made use of the responsive preview in Rise, to ensure my content was translating nicely across devices. Whilst it is accessible across all platforms, I decided to add a caveat at the beginning of the course that recommended learners complete the course in landscape orientation if using a mobile phone. This is because I felt the course looked better in this orientation when on mobile, due to the imagery resizing.
I chose not to include any Storyline blocks, whilst these can enhance interactivity, I wanted the course to be as responsible and accessible as possible and Storyline blocks can look clunky on a mobile device. I also felt for the length of the course, they would not add lots of value and it was best to work with the functionality I had within Rise.
Final thoughts
This project was a great example of how you need solid instructional design before jumping into an authoring tool. Having the content signed off beforehand allowed me to plan the look and feel of each block in detail. This meant the build of this eLearning was smooth and quick. It also reminded me how the authoring tool can really impact the overall aesthetic of a course too. Whilst the iSpring version of Restful Refreshments had added functionality such as the morph transition, I much prefer the Rise version, as in the case of this being a microlearning, I believe the responsive, continuous scroll is more fitting.
