Interaction Design: "Interaction designers control the immediate user experience. They determine how to navigate around the information architecture, arrange that users see what they need to see, and make certain that the right data are always presented in the clearest way, with the appropriate emphasis." (Observing the User Experience, Kuniavsky, p. 48)
This project was the design and development of computer-based training (CBT) for Pfizer employees, as well as new Wyeth employees, regarding the 'why' and 'how' of performing role-specific duties, as well as explaining to learners 'how' their role fits into Pfizer's overall product change management process.
When Pfizer Inc. acquired Wyeth in 2009, a great deal of changes were abound on the horizon. Employees at both organizations would be challenged with the synthesis of systems and processes into one. This meant that a trememdous weight was placed on the shoulders of new employees of Wyeth to learn the systems and processes of Pfizer, as well as veteran employees of Pfizer to learn the systems and processes of Wyeth. New roles and new positions were being created. Old roles and positions were changing. The organization hired us to help bring all employees up to speed and onto the same page.
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| Process Map Sketches |
Using Post it Notes to organize processes |
There were two primary user groups: veteran Pfizer employees who were familiar with Pfizer's computer systems, but not Wyeth's, and new Wyeth employees who were familiar with their own computer systems but not Pfizer's. The age range, work experience, and technology knowledge of both sets of employees varied greatly.
There were many constraints in the problem space that our team begain to realize, and that affected the overall design and development of this project:
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For example:
- Culture: When I arrived on site at the Pfizer Inc. main offices in Peapack NJ, my colleagues and I spent a week there going to meetings, and working side by side with SME's to gather information we needed for e-learning content. For one week I dressed as they did, went through the daily security checks at the start and end of our day, and spoke, worked, and lived as they did. Although we were there to gather information for our content, I learned much more through ethnographic observation, and participation, in their unique corporate organizational culture.
The average age of the learner audience was about 35 and over. In the pharmaceutical manufacturing field, there was little room for mistakes. All employees at the organization had the utmost respect for absolutely knowing the right answers at the right times. There was no room for mistakes.
Meetings were organized in conference rooms, with written handouts that went with each person leading their segment of the presentation. Employee clothing was formal wear, although men weren't required to wear ties. Also, not suprisingly, I noticed that this value of being correct, and that employees would often demonstrate their knowledge of their job and the processes to the meeting audience during discussion. I wondered if there was an aura of fear, in fact, as if employees were proving their worth any time they could. This didn't suprise me with the Wyeth acquirement. The word 'redundancy' may have been in the back of some people's minds. |
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- Context: Our team was overwhelmed with information deeply embedded in a pharmaceutical context, and with complex and unusable computer systems. Pulling out context from the hundreds of technical documents that we were provided was no easy task. Even the computer systems that each role would need to use to perform tasks on a daily basis was incomplete. Finding out the needs and responsibilities of each employee's role in the process took many hours of our team interviewing and asking the right questions to Pfizer employees. Gathering context was no easy task.
- Content: Our team needed to learn a lot of unfamiliar information and content in a very short amount of time. I, myself, was completely unfamiliar with content in the pharmaceutical field. Luckily, I had fantastic teammates who had extensive experience working with and designing for other pharmaceutical organizations.
- People: Using time to find the right people with the right information wasn't always an easy task. At times we were assigned to speak with a SME only to find out that the person we were talking to didn't have the right information we needed.
- Time: Deadlines were fast and furious. Some parts of the training had already started, and we were being looked to by our client to hit deadlines that we had agreed upon.
- Technology: Our technological constraints were: 1.) we needed to design for the PC 2.) the courses need to be .html based 3.) any time of animations or linear videos must be created in Adobe Captivate 4.) interactive animations should utilize .html or Adobe Flash.
There was a total of 13 roles specific trainings that needed to happen utilizing e-learning on the PC as a medium. Some employees would receive role-specific training live in a classroom setting. Not all employees, however, would be up to speed after the training sessions, and not all employees would be available to even attend. Pfizer needed 13 solid PC based role-specific e-learning courses for future new employees as well as any employee that needed a review or refresher about the main duties, responsibilties, and tasks required of them for their jobs.
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Originally I was tasked with converting existing classroom training materials onto a PC medium. It was explained to me that this would be a quick and easy conversion, and that there would be little design work on the project. Also at the time of this project, members of our team were traveling around providing employees live classroom training. As they provided this classroom training and instruction, we were also receiving feedback from the participants--my target user/learner audience. The type of feedback we were getting was mostly positive, however, when it came to explaining simple scenarios to the participants (walking them through the most basic tasks required of them on a daily basis), the audience felt the secnarios were too wordy and complex with unecessary information. The target audience wanted something simple, basic and easy to understand.
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| Example of one interactive element being designed |
With this type of feedback coming from the end user, I began to change my strategy for how I would design and convey this information on a PC medium. A direct coversion from one medium to another very rarely works successfuly with users. In order to best convey the basic tasks in a scenario to the audience, I needed to exploit the medium and design something that was customized for the PC. Simply copying and pasting information from existing facilitator or participant guides definitely wasn't the way to go.
I found the workflow processes at Pfizer to be very complex and confusing. Based on feedback from the audience as well as the trainers, it seemed that we had given classroom learners way more information than was needed--it was difficult for new employees to sort through the information and see their tasks in the most basic form. As a designer, then, I started to focus on simplification and synthesis of an abundance of information. What was the task performance required of each employee on the job? How could I easily walk them through the process, once, of the 'why' and 'how' of what they needed to do each day when they arrived at work?
I began by highlighting the headers of each step in each role's scenario, and painstakingly started to pull out basic tasks. As it were listed, everything seemed so wordy. How would our learners walk away and remember what they needed to do?
From a learner-centered perspective, the performance tasks became chunked in a way that was easy and intuitive for the learners to understand, remember, and provided a mental framework in which they can walk away with. Details of the logic and the specifications were explained by me at the time below:
"The scenarios were designed as click-to-reveals with video narrative integrated into them. The decisions were made with the learner audience in mind, and also based on learner feedback from the ILT/VILT sessions.
Using an interactive click-to-reveal instead of only using stand-alone linear videos will help the learners to better comprehend and remember their job tasks and performances:
The proposed approach of the interactive click-to-reveal scenarios is a top down learning approach:
Top Down Approach:
"Top down" (or "big chunk") is stereotypically the vision or a larger picture and overview.
Bottom Up Approach:
"Bottom up" (or "small chunk") cognition is akin to focusing on the details primarily, rather than the landscape.
Using a top down approach for the scenarios provides the learner with a mental framework on which the details of what their job entails may be hung. The interactive diagram not only maps out their own role-specific work process, but also helps the learners to mentally chunk the tasks needed for their on-the-job performance, and focus on what they need to do and why they need to do it.
This approach is contrary to presenting the scenarios as stand-alone video recordings with audio layered overtop, which provides a linear bottom-up approach in which the learner may be lost in the details, or confused by the audio explaining the "why" part of their job without relevant visuals. If relying on visuals of just the system's interface when explaining the context of their job, without relevant visuals, the learners wouldn't focus on the most important performances & tasks required for their role."
This idea of top-down and bottom-up human perception in learning or remembering was something I had read about and borrowed from the field of cognitive ergonomics:
"Perception is partially determined by an analysis of the stimulus or environmental input, relayed from the sensory receptors by the sensory or "lower" channels of neural information. Hence, this aspect of processing is often termed bottom-up perceptual processing. However, when sensory evidence is poor, perception may be driven heavily by our expectations based on past experience, an influence known as top-down processing (Rumelhart, 1977). Bottom-up and top-down processing usually work harmoniously together, supporting rapid and accurate perceptual work. However, sometimes unfamiliar circumstances remove the ability to use past experience, leading bottom-up processing to do nearly all the work." (Engineering Psychology and Human Performance, Wickens & Hollands, p. 12)
Since there was so much new information, and so many tasks, for our learners to remember, walk away with, and then apply on a daily basis, their bottom-up perception and remembering became a huge cognitive burden. To remember every detail being thrown at them, and then also to figure out exactly what tasks they needed to perform, and when and why would hinder performance and take a longer time to remember and then apply on the job.
What I found was needed was a top-down approach that would provide context to our learners, and simplify their daily tasks that was specific to their job and their role. I began by sketching out the tasks I had highlighted in the documentation, and started writing them in the most basic phrases. Then I arranged them in a vertical top-to-bottom order that followed how we usually read. As they clicked on each step in their basic job performance process, verbiage explaining 'how' and 'why' they perform each task appeared on the screen. This 'click-to-reveal' style worked nicely with the technical constraints (flash interactive), and also used editable .html text so that we could ensure accruacy and edit the text quickly and easily when reviewing with our subject-matter-experts.
In essence, this was an interaction design problem disguised as an instructional design problem. While instruction and learning was happening, the need of our end users was an organization of information, and clear signage that gave them a mental model in which they could apply to their daily jobs. Ultimately, by perceiving the problem with a different lens (recognizing that this wasn't particularly a suited problem for instructional design), the design was a success, and the client was able to fullfill their goals. |
