Online learning experience for COVID-19 safety

Better safe than sorry!

After understanding the client’s goals, my digital solution increased user satisfaction by 24% when they engaged with an online learning experience. This experience gave users certification that instilled trust in customers.

100% of our target users completed the online learning experience within 2 weeks!

 

I worked with a consumer products company to meet their goals. Ultimately, the final result created strong engagement among Field Sales Representatives when learning about COVID-19 best safety practices. As a result, this increased customer trust within the client’s brand and employees.

When compared with other virtual training courses the company has released in the past, overall user satisfaction increased by 24%!

This project was worked on using agile design methodology. I worked within a sprint format to meet the client’s very aggressive timeline.

Client: Fortune 500 Company

I worked with a consumer products fortune 500 company. Due to an NDA agreement, I am unable to reveal the company’s name. The client requested my services to create an engaging online experience where Field Sales Reps can learn about COVID-19 safety best practices.

Team 

I worked with a team of developers, a project manager, animators, and illustrators.

My Role 

I worked as the sole UX/UI designer and content creator for the project. I conducted research and designed the interface from the ground-up.

eKickoff

Client Needs and Goals

Three of the client’s business units, which have Field Sales Representatives, needed to prepare their employees to return to their typical work as they transition out of the COVID-19 quarantine. Their ultimate goals were to:

  • Ensue their employees remain safe, protect themselves and customers from infection.

  • Ensure customers have trust within the business and feel peace of mind when allowing Field Sales Reps into their place of work.

The Challenge

I was tasked with creating a solution that would remotely train Field Sales Reps in COVID-19 best practices. The training must be engaging to ensure retention of the information.

Research

My research preference was to conduct user interviews with the target users. Unfortunately the client did not have the time or budget for me to conduct user interviews.

Instead I referenced existing data related to infectious disease safety training. After synthesizing my findings, I found the following insights:

  • Users must have an understanding of the disease before they can learn how to prevent infection

  • Safety is about knowing how to protect yourself as well as taking measures to protect others

I also performed a comparative analysis by looking into how other companies were training their employees on COVID-19 safety and how this training was received. After synthesizing my findings, I found the following insights:

  • Trainings were very text heavy, which made them tedious and hard to follow

  • The trainings were very long (over an hour) and provided too much detail. This information overload led to poor retention rates.

  • The evolution of information on the topic as the COVID-19 Pandemic continues presents a challenge regarding up to date information.

What does it all mean?

How might we quickly create an engaging training that will effectively teach learners to implement COVID-19 safety best practices.

 

An online learning experience that’s short, concise and full of customized visuals to reinforce concepts and maintain engagement.

 

Overall Course strategy

Have a structure that starts broad, and then narrows down into more specific guidelines as the learner progresses. This is because it is important the learner first receives a general understanding of COVID-19 before they begin learning specific guidelines for safety.

The course then provides a high-level overview of how learners can protect themselves. This prepares them to then delve into more detailed guidelines regarding the most important methods of protection and prevention of infection.

In order to increase the likelihood of course success, I planned to ensure the course had these attributes:

  • Simplify the content down to the core messages. This ensures the use focuses on what’s important and not the ancillary details

  • Keeping the course short, under 15 minutes, to maintain user attention

  • Presents concepts in bite-sized chunks within several modules. Information is presented in a combination of videos and interactive activities. This diverse presentation helps maintain user engagement

  • Tracks progress to show create key milestones to ensure learners feel a sense of accomplishment

  • Provides a menu that facilitates fluid navigation

  • Includes a final quiz to ensure information retention

  • Ensures the training can live in the client’s LMS system. This gives all the target users access, while keeping the course internal to the client’s company

The Solution

An online learning experience that’s short, concise and full of customized visuals to reinforce concepts and maintain engagement.

 

The learning experience would:

  • Have a structure that starts broad, and then narrows down into more specific guidelines as the learner progresses. This is because it is important the learner first receives a general understanding of COVID-19 before they begin learning specific guidelines for safety.

  • The course then provides a high-level overview of how learners can protect themselves. This prepares them to then delve into more detailed guidelines regarding the most important methods of protection and prevention of infection.

  • Ensure the course is engaging by:

    • Simplify the content down to the core messages. This ensures the use focuses on what’s important and not the ancillary details

    • Keeping the course short, under 15 minutes, to maintain user attention

    • Present concepts in bite-sized chunks within several modules. Information is presented in a combination of videos and interactive activities. This diverse presentation helps maintain user engagement

    • Track progress to show create key milestones to ensure learners feel a sense of accomplishment

    • Provide a menu that facilitates fluid navigation

    • Include a final quiz to ensure information retention

    • Ensure the training can live in the client’s LMS system. This gives all the target users access, while keeping the course internal to the client’s company

Information Architecture

IA for the online learning experience.

The Design

Unfortunately, I cannot share the design for the project due to an NDA.

Outcome

Since the day of this submission, over 300 people have taken the COVID-19 Learning Experience. Although the course is mandatory, the speed in which all assigned users have completed the course is far ahead of the average for the 3 business units that have released it.

The Association for Talent Development considers 55 percent the standard Net Promoter Score for successful virtual learning experiences. With this in mind, Colgate-Palmolive has defined their benchmark for successful virtual learning experiences to be 65 percent.

At the moment, the COVID-19 Learning Experience has a Net Promoter Score of 89 percent. This is outpacing the Colgate-Palmolive benchmark by 24 percentage points, and the ATD standard by 34 percentage points.

These numbers indicate the learner community sees the value of the course and highly recommend others take it.

The Scrap Learning scores for the COVID-19 Learning Experience align with the results of the Net Promoter Score. They show the learners are applying, and will continue to apply, the information they learned throughout the course on the job.

In comparison to the 2004 Brinkerhoff study and the 2014 Conference Executive Board report, the COVID-19 Learning Experience is delivering numbers that are in a class of their own. Further proving the execution of the learning experience has delivered valuable content to the learner in a timely manner.

With the Kirkpatrick Model in mind, both teams designed the training to reach all learning and organizational goals. Due to the accelerated nature of both completion of the course and application of the skills learned, level 3 of the model, behavior, has been assessed in a short time frame. This is notable, as very few learning experiences can deliver level 3. Through observations and feedback from Colgate-Palmolive leadership, employees who completed the learning experience are successfully applying what they learned regarding health and safety measures during the current COVID-19 pandemic. This includes, wearing masks, frequent hand washing when appropriate, social distancing when possible, wiping down frequently touched surfaces, and overall office health and safety best practices. It’s important to note this real-world information solidifies the scrap learning score of 3%.

100% final quiz completion

So now what?

Next steps

Nabi Music is currently working to develop an iOS app using our designs. There are planned to release in the near future. 

Future Plans

Based on our user interviews, we found a couple other features that could be useful, however we were not able to design them while remaining within scope. We recommended Nabi Music consider adding these features down the line: 

Conclusion

Overall, the Nabi Music app fills gaps that the website was missing. It revolutionizes its primary function. It will no longer only be a service that pairs instructors and students. It will also be used as a tool that instructors can use to communicate with students directly, give students assignments, suggest reschedules, provide availability for lessons, and give comprehensive feedback. We feel the future of Nabi Music is just getting started, we can’t wait to see it flourish!