The City Resilience team

The City Resilience e-learning team

This is the learning team of the online program on the fundamentals of City Resilience units, formerly known as disaster management. When the subject matter expert (SME) submitted the content, originally built in PowerPoint (PPT), I knew we had to discuss the program further. In the first meeting, we had already agreed we could break the program in four parts, if not five, make it more engaging by designing a few characters to walk you through the program, and that PPT would not cut it. With a plan in mind, I developed 2-3 characters to host and facilitate the learning and called for another meeting to present the strategy and production plan. She approved it all and like the characters so much that the scope went from three to 13. Long story short, here they are. Each one represents a business unit, and will tell you all about what they do, why they do it and how their work fit in the grand scheme. Fun and informative.

Okay, team photo. Everybody say, safe!

The characters started on paper, as usual. I have added a few of the original sketches below. The original plan was to get them animated in Blender, but production time would never allow for it. The solution was then to rig them in Photoshop and animate them in Character Animator, which proved to be quite okay given the limitations; and the time it saved when redoing the animations were invaluable.

Contract Management Fundamental

The Contract Management Fundamentals is one of the animation-based trainings I did with cartoon characters. Instead of reading chunks of text, two senior contract experts, John and Kate, pictured above, explain to the learner everything they need to know to get started in this field. After a number of changes and with the project changing hands, eventually we moved the production from Blender to Adobe Character Animation. Understanding the limits the new system imposes, with a few workarounds the production did become easier and faster.

“Some people say our voice sound flat or even… robotic! Can you believe it?”

That is John, prompting learners they are about to hear a computer generated voice-over throughout the course. And he is right, there are many users that can’t stand a robotic voice. But with the AI-based text-to-speech getting better and better, the usual resistance to computer generated voices is getting less of an issue.

Information Security Awareness

Lara strikes back

This project first came to me, as a request for advice for potential external providers. By the sounds of it, the business unit responsible either didn’t know or didn’t trust this kind of work could’ve been done in-house. So, the team took as a challenge to show off some of the capabilities we could offer, and I did a small teaser. The briefing was impress the customer but don’t spend too much time on it.

Instead of adjusting the existing e-learning package, I re-wrote the script to a scenario-based animated story. In the original training, the main character had to escape the cyber traps created by Lara. Your job was to keep him safe, by succeeding in the quiz questions. This second iteration, I designed it so she was not only really annoyed you helped our hero to succeed but also much better prepared. She has new technology available to her, learnt new tricks to deceive you and are fully invested in stealing your money and identity, better if both. Beware, Lara Strikes Back.

Long story short, although the concept was well accepted, it would not fit the timeframe allowance. However, it did win us the project, we got to revamp the current version of the training and the online team is now working on a version for team leaders and managers, likely to be sure targets given they have better access to the organisation systems, some including decision power over budgets.

But… the whole thing looked so real.

Yes, it normally does. Hackers will disguise their traps into products and services that look almost like the original, if not identical. In this learning program, the user receives emails and messages that look very ordinary, and even from people they know and trust. Their job is to identify signs that will hint the whole thing might not be what it looks like. The message might not even come from the sender it says it does. At times, they trust their source, follow the instructions and before they know it, they get their identity stolen, dodgy charges on their credit card and their reputation compromised. It is good people being targeted for just being good. Sadly, in this business, if you trust others easily, you are a good target.

Some tips that could be useful when judging whether a content is safe or not

If you hover the link for a little while, a info may pop with the real address. So if the link says “yourbankname” but it points to “someplaceelse“, don’t click.
If an existing supplier asks you to change their banking details, call them and confirm this.
if an offer looks too good to be true, good chance it is.
If a lawyer from wherever chooses you, out of the blue, to transfer a large sum of money from an unclaimed inheritance… like, seriously? Just report it.

Lara releasing viruses in an office environment

Decode the Code

We’re all in this together.

This would be the third official iteration for the Code of Conduct (“the Code”) e-learning program. Unlike the previous version where you read a story (eg. scenario) and make a choice, a cartoon character will tell you their story and ask you for advice. If you give them good advice, we move on. Give them a less-than-ideal advice and we’ll visit the content of the Code, to remind us of the organisation’s expectations and preferred behaviours. In a way, similar to the classic “choose your own adventure” stories.

There aren’t winners or losers in this training package, yet for every choice you make, the game logic will still grant you points for both good and not so good decisions. The big reward would be the time you will save when collecting more good points. The ‘Code Ninja’ mode, added in the current version, is still present. The program lets you choose whether you want to see the entire content, or just face the scenario-based quiz. This option, in particular, triggered many positive feedbacks. There are thousands of employees that have been working in the organisation for many years and will know the Code by heart. I find it is only fair to respect their existing knowledge and build from there.

The team members you encounter along the course. Each one plays a role in a story they will tell you. You then decide what to make of it, whether the event was “okay” or not, as well as if further action could or should be taken.

Issues that are seldom black and white.

With the characters telling you their story, you don’t have to go through large chunks of text to understand the scenario before making a decision. Plenty of research out there will indicate video can increase engagement and characters can increase relatability. The scenarios deal mostly with grey areas, where there isn’t a 100% right or wrong answer. In this gamified experience, we go for better choices rather than absolutely correct ones.

The rationale behind it? I like to think that workplaces are complex. It is made of people, and people are complex (Cynefin, anyone?). I understand it is more than just that, with governance and its policies, organisation culture and perhaps a management strategy that will not always match the environment needs. However, that is beyond both my reach and the scope for this project. So, what then? After some reasoning, I managed to persuade the subject matter experts (SMEs) to let me “blur the line” between right and wrong answers in some of the scenarios, and score them accordingly. Each time you choose an option that is not the organisation’s preferred one, and yet it is not wrong either, an extra screen will say that, while we respect your choice, there are other ways to handle the issue. You are invited to consider alternatives, yet if you don’t want to, we’ll respect your choice. You still get to proceed and finish the training without any penalty.

The end of a saga

In the past few years, I’ve been lucky to be involved with some important learning programs, such as Connection and Take-Off, both part of Council’s Leadership Academy, as well as the Code of Conduct. That’s house rules, it’s what we accept and what we don’t. It sets the expected behaviours for every single employee, internal, permanent, part-time and what have you. This version with the character animation would be my third and latest iteration.

For a solid two-ish years, there were many conversations over the content, what and how it should be presented, adjustments, updates, fine-tuning etc. From concept to completion, every stakeholder involved was consulted, most got to play-test the gamified work in progress during production. Every single one of them, including the sponsor, provided a very positive view of the program, in a constant feedback loop we had. All milestones approved with flying colours – except the last, the final sign-off.

This one got stuck for months, before the bomb landed on my desk; the project was canceled, without any explanation. After some digging I learned that the sponsor decided the project wasn’t “serious enough”. Which made us all wonder, what changed? Two years in a loving relationship and then, boom! It’s over… but hey, “it’s not you”.

Classic rational system with complicated strategies, I told myself. Once an executive decision is made, a descriptive process follows and the adoption is enforced top-down, with little to no latitude for interpretation. Efforts are appreciated, support is offered at team level; we vent a little, shake it off and move on. Next?

I just completed the game and loved it! So nice to see something different. some comments from my perspective: I think the goal is clear as there are hidden messages throughout which links back to the Leadership Blueprint behaviours. It’s very easy to navigate (…), and the dashboard is a great idea, as it’s a constant reminder of where you’re at. So clever, well done you.

Penny M.

Senior Learning Designer, A/ Leadership Team leader, BCC

BHP safety training

BHP training finished and delivered. That was 5 modules, with 12 characters, modelled, rigged and animated. Some serious work, but also lots of fun. Cool thing was, the client was happy and the training ended up going global and was delivered in both English and Spanish. Gracias a Cortex y al equipo involucrado, bien hecho! Looking forward to the next challenge :)