ARFFS presentation 2025

ARFFS presentation 2025

When I joined Airservices Australia (AsA) in mid-2024, my main job was to ensure the online courses we had were still working as expected.

After my run with the courses, the Rescue Firefighters (ARFFS) learning lead invited me to collaborate on a project they had been working on for months. Before they could go any further, they had to present the idea to CASA, a regulatory body in the industry, to ensure they were onboard. Not only approve the new training format but also endorse it – the word of the project was, we needed to impress CASA.

Fancy PowerPoint

Despite the need to wow CASA, we didn’t have the time or the resource to create anything out of this world, especially considering that once approved, the learning team would have to use that material in their training sessions. It should be manageable, user-friendly and something that they know how to customise, if needed. They already had the majority of the content in PowerPoint (PPT), so that’s what we stuck with.

After some research, I learnt that if you use the morph transition between pages, 3D models will move and spin to help sell the illusion. At first, it was tough because none of the models we had would import in to the PPT presentation, and those few that did looked awful. My job became [a] optimising the models and [b] finding a way to “render” them properly… in PPT? The first I accomplished by decimating the model polygon count until it was light enough without distorting the shape or the texture. The second I only cracked after the project lead, a brilliant developer I had the pleasure to work with, told me there is a text file that ‘tells’ PPT how to display 3D models in the slides. You have to delete the old and reimport the model each time you tweak the numbers, which is fiddly. However, once you learn which one does what, the rest of the models is just more of the same.

The result?

I have to admit, I was never a big fan of PPT – or Microsoft, for that matter – but I was impressed. Moving from one slide to the next made the 3D aircraft resize, move and rotate right there, on the fly, giving you the impression the model is animated. Kudos to Microsoft on that one. The good thing was, I wasn’t the only one impressed. The ARFFS team were too, and so was CASA. They approved the project, and the VR training became the new standard in the organisation, earning AsA and the team awards on innovation and best use of technology in education, both nationally and internationally.

Code of Conduct – Code Ninja version

Code of Conduct – Code Ninja version

Welcome aboard. Here’s a project for you.

When I first joined this organisation I’m with, one of the first tasks I was given was to review the e-learning version of our Code of Conduct (aka. the Code). This project was started by another fellow designer, more senior, they had been in this back and forth with the subject matter expert (SME) for over an year. At some point, the project is parked. It lands on my desk with the instruction, “see what you can do”,  but apparently no high expectations. 

Let’s roll back a little. Code of Conduct, put simply, is the rules of the house. In such a large organisation you have several divisions, branches, units, teams and thousands of employees – and getting SMEs from all business units to agree on what should be included in the learning program proved to be a challenge. After struggling with unclear instructions for months, I asked to see the sponsor. My plan was to get straight to the one leader that would decide whether this project was going any further.

She told me how frustrated she was. The CEO was putting pressure to develop a more updated version and with the project running for over an year, they still had nothing. Feeling like tip-toeing on a mine field, I remind them she did have something, but still chose to bin the project and start another, despite the first being so close to be finished. In a few minutes, we listed the reasons why that project was parked and I asked, “if I address these issues, would you approve the project?”. With that one out, the CEO would be happy, she would tick that box, and employees would have an updated, more engaging version of the training. With a yes for an answer, I thanked them and left, quickly.

Tell me, how much do you already know?

As previously mentioned, the package was almost finished; the original instructional designers had done a great job putting the content together. My job then was to make it more engaging and easier to digest such dry content. The plan was simple:

  1. Check existing knowledge.
  2. Add game elements to the learning program (also referred to as gamification).

For checking existing knowledge, I literally ask right at the beginning: how much do you already know? There are many thousands of employees that work in the organisation for many years, some for decades. Many already know the Code by heart, and forcing them to go over the entire program year after year was not ideal. So, I asked. If you said you already know the Code, you are given a code ninja status and go straight to the scenario-based questions. Get them right, and you are good to go. However, if you get one wrong, you revisit the relevant section of the Code. Get two questions wrong, and you lose your Code Ninja status and go through the entire content. Fair? I think so, and I was glad they agreed.  

Although there was a lot of work in configuring the new version, such as access to the content, navigation, point system and achievement badges, the bulk of the work was already done. I revamped the look and feel, created a user interface for the game components, fixed the logic and went back to present the new version of the program. Same same, but different. To my luck and everyone’s relief, the course was approved and published in the same week.

 

The proof is in the pudding.

In the first quarter after the e-learning program was launched, in May 2019, the report showed:

 

  1. The vast majority approved the new version (98.7% said good or excellent);
  2. They thought the knowledge gained would be useful (94.1%) and
  3. They liked the format it was delivered in (88.8%).
  4. Also, I embedded the satisfaction survey right in the slide, raising the response rate from an average of 7% to a whopping 56%, compared with the previous version.

Hooray, happy ending. Good night, you can go now. 

Or can you? Little did I know, this was chapter one for many to come. But that is a story for another post.

assessment for learning

Below, some feedbacks collected through the satisfaction survey.

Time-saving, and very easy to understand.

Anonymous learner

Love the ninja option. So much better for those of us who are well versed in the Code

Anonymous learner

LOVED being able to skip right to the question, the layout and scenarios were also contemporary and attractive. Great job designing this course.

Anonymous learner

This was, by far, the best formatted code of conduct training I have done, awesome that you can skip to the quiz if you want to.

Anonymous learner

Being in learning and development roles throughout my working life, and more recently online learning, I really appreciated and loved this course. It looked modern and relevant, choice of imagery and mix up of the storyboard slide layout was excellent to keep the learner engaged. Even the details of choosing names that reflected a certain age and demographic was perfect. Well done, a pleasure to complete. I wish all Council online courses look at this great. I also loved when I got it right you still provide me the answer, just in case it was a fluke. Well done, loved it!

Anonymous learner - fellow designer apparently :)

The City Resilience team

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

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

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