This concept project is for a fictional luxury resort that wishes to focus more on making memorable experiences for their guests. Since the hotel butlers play an integral role in the guest experience and are responsible for “wow”ing the guests every step of the way, the resort decided to help them learn how to better serve the guests. They reached this conclusion after receiving negative guest feedback about the lack of personalization in online reviews.

I proposed a scenario-based elearning experience to help the butlers with real guest situations and moments. The training lets employees practice making choices about how to interact with guests. After making a choice, they see the consequence - the outcome is good if they chose correctly, and the outcome is not so good if they chose incorrectly. Ultimately, the learner should be able to identify and act on guest’s wishes and needs to provide a personalized, memorable experience. 

This learning experience enhanced guest service skills of the resort’s experienced and new butlers. 

Based on online guest reviews and my own professional experience at luxury hotels, I identified common pitfalls in guest service interactions and how hotel staff approached these situations. With this information, I created an action map and wrote a text-based storyboard. After a review and approval, I created visual mockups, drafted a visual storyboard, and developed an interactive prototype. Finally, I collected and applied feedback before developing the final full project. 

I served as the subject matter expert for this project due to my extensive professional experience in this space. I determined exactly what staff needs to do in order to provide unforgettable guest experiences. I compiled these actions in an action map.

The action map served as the blueprint for the scenario-based learning experience.  The business goal is in the center and the observable actions surround it.

After completing the action map, I created a text-based storyboard. To do this, I identified the real-world situations that we would immerse the learners in. I wrote five different decision-points over the course of a guest interaction, and for each question, I created one ideal response and two common mistakes as distractors. I also wrote real-life consequences for each option to show the impact of each decision.

In addition, I came up with a fictional character named Winston. Winston acts as a guide and gives sound advice to the learner throughout the learning experience. The learner can access Winston at their own discretion, simulating a mentor on the sideline when needed.

Once the visual design was completed and reviewed, I combined the text-based storyboard with the visual mockups to draft a visual storyboard. I outlined the elearning content including descriptions, instructions, and programming notes. 

Once the visual storyboard was created, I built an interactive prototype in Articulate Storyline. The key slides from the visual mockups were recreated to test the functionality of the product. 

After the various iterations, I received feedback from other designers on visual contrast (text, color, line thickness) and overall consistency on slides. I applied this feedback, changed the items and added brief animation to create motion in the slides.

After completing the interactive prototype, I continued to develop the final product in Storyline. 

I am proud of integrating layers, applying animation and adding sound effects to the various slides. For example, I added an “alert” trigger to the title screen to ensure the learner puts their name before starting the course. Furthermore, adding animation and sound effects when the learner earns a golden star was a challenge to correctly integrate in the timeline.

The design and development of buttons were quite a challenge to overcome. The iteration on effects, shape, color and position took some time to get the final result.

• Designing and developing this project helped me get hands-on experience with action mapping, Adobe XD, Articulate Storyline and visual design.

• Action mapping has encouraged me to look beyond traditional learning objectives to identify real solutions and solve performance problems. 

• Learning Adobe XD and Articulate Storyline from scratch has prepared me to work on real-world instructional design projects.

• Designing the visuals was a big undertaking, and I spent a significant time on my visuals. However, I am pleased with the final result, and I feel much more confident designing professional layouts going forward.

I look forward to using my new skills to support an organisation and their employees.