Picture this: you requested information from a company on a service, and the email you recieve in reply simply states, "you been thinking about one of our products?" 

No greeting, no context, no clear action steps. Unfortunately, this is not a made-up scenario. It's an issue at companies and organizations across the nation, and in companies I've worked for. 

To train staff on better, more robust, more professional emails to clients, customers, etc., I created a training on professional communication. 

This Storyline interaction is a small part of that larger training. 

Note: I do not have a current personal license for Articulate so the link for this asset has been replaced with a video of the course I developed.

The goal of this interaction was to allow people to explore the key parts and pieces of a good email before they got into the learning content. 

This activates background knowledge and helps prep them for upcoming learning in the course. 

It's also a good way for people to be able to pay attention more closely to sections they might have struggled with during this exploration. 

The correct and professional email wording populates on each screen so that people are also seeing a model of good communication as they move through this exploration.

This is a low-stakes activity, meaning, there's really no failing here. Incorrect answers explain why it was incorrect, and the correct answer still populates on the next screen. There's no keeping score or preventing you from moving on if you guess incorrectly. That's part of what makes exploring activities like this less stressful and more enjoyable for participants. 

I also added a small extra piece of bonus content at the end to delight learners who wanted to continue learning by sharing an extra tip to help make emails easier to read. 

I developed this microlearning course utilizing Articulate Storyline. I used this tool instead of Articulate Rise alone, as I wanted people to be able to interact with the content and make choices to connect and ground them to the model content. 

To create this in Storyline, I used an email screenshot, created some smaller graphics in Canva, and used some of the graphic design tools in Storyline. 

I utilized triggers (including variables) and buttons (including States) to create the movement between slides as well as the movement between layers. I tested my project continuously throughout to make sure that all parts and pieces functioned properly.