This project was completed as part of my Human Performance Technology course. The goal of the project was to create a performance improvement campaign. Building upon my previous Instructional Design project where I created a training program aimed at introducing new users to Adobe Inc.’s photo editing software Lightroom, I designed a campaign aimed at increasing usage of the software. The performance improvement campaign begins on the premise that a training program has been created as a marketing deviceto introduce new users to the software, however, sales of the software have not increased as much as was anticipated. Resulting in the need to move beyond an instructional approach to solve the performance problem.
Performance Needs Assessment
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To begin, I performed a performance needs assessment to determine the performers, the performance objectives and the issues leading to the performance issues. The document provides the campaigns requirements as well as its constraints.
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High Level design
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Following the performance needs assessment, I created a high-level design for the performance improvement campaign. The high-level design provides an overview of the 10 interventions aiming to solve the performance issue.
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Demo Video
Below is a demo I created to generate interest and promote the interventions presented in my High-level design. The demo highlights the 2 main themes present in my High-level design.
Detailed Design
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Following the High-level design, I was tasked with creating a Detailed Design of one of the interventions. I opted to design the podcast intervention as I found it presented an interesting challenge. My detailed design takes the form of two documents. The first, the Coordination Details document outlines the work to be done that does not concern the creation of the podcast. The second, the Production Details document outlines the work to be done to complete the podcast.
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Podcast Advertisement
Below is the 15 second YouTube advertisement for the podcast.
Reflection
Overall the project proved to be quite challenging. I can truly say it was a learning experience that forced me to think beyond the realm of education. It took me some time to wrap my head around the concept of performance and understanding the multitude of variables affecting performance. What at first appeared to be a simple cause and effect relationship proved to be much more complex. Writing my performance needs assessment challenged me to examine the performance issue from a macro perspective. Looking beyond the surface explanation for the root cause of the issue. Similarly, while creating interventions for my High-level design I had to challenge myself to think outside of the box to create interventions that make sense with in the highly creative field I am designing for.
Creating the demo video proved to be quite challenging. Forcing me to go through several concepts and several iterations of my final concept. In the first iteration of my final concept I used actual photographs of various individuals in the process of taking a picture. Using this method proved to be a challenge for representation. I was having difficulty portraying the diversity of the performers. It was then that the idea of using silhouettes came to mind. Using silhouettes removed the problem of representations as they could represent any and all potential users of the software.
The detailed design proved to be the most challenging aspect of this project. While at first appearing easy, it quickly presented itself to be a true learning experience in educational communications. The first draft of my detailed design turned out to be written using proposal style, forcing me to go back to the writing desk. I had to challenge myself to rethink what I was writing and start over breaking down the various aspects of the podcast and detailing not only how they come together but what needs to be done to complete every single one of the small aspects
Creating the demo video proved to be quite challenging. Forcing me to go through several concepts and several iterations of my final concept. In the first iteration of my final concept I used actual photographs of various individuals in the process of taking a picture. Using this method proved to be a challenge for representation. I was having difficulty portraying the diversity of the performers. It was then that the idea of using silhouettes came to mind. Using silhouettes removed the problem of representations as they could represent any and all potential users of the software.
The detailed design proved to be the most challenging aspect of this project. While at first appearing easy, it quickly presented itself to be a true learning experience in educational communications. The first draft of my detailed design turned out to be written using proposal style, forcing me to go back to the writing desk. I had to challenge myself to rethink what I was writing and start over breaking down the various aspects of the podcast and detailing not only how they come together but what needs to be done to complete every single one of the small aspects
