Storyboard, Graphic Design ensuring brand consistency, AI prompter.

Mindsmith

Gilbert’s employees encounter a wide range of performance challenges. Shifts are typically hectic, and employees juggle phone calls, in-person customers, insurance rules, and filling scripts. The technical acumen required to measure, mix, or count hundreds of drugs demands accuracy and attention to detail under the law. To ensure patients take their prescriptions as directed, pharmacists and technicians educate them and answer questions. This results in employees not dealing well with customers in person and runs the real risk of dangerous and/or costly errors being made when filling prescriptions.

As Gilbert’s has grown over the past 85 years, its core values have remained the foundation of customer care. During performance review conversations, people managers use the GROW Coaching Model to help employees identify obstacles and take ownership of their improvement.

A scenario-based course that reminds managers of the coach to GROW model and Gilbert's values. Branching scenario tasks were interspersed with learning content in order to avoid cognitive overload. A scaffolded approach to learning is taken through these, culminating in the opportunity for learners to practise the GROW coaching method in a 'sandbox' activity in the form of a conversation with an AI playing the role of coachee. This allows managers to feel confident having real-life conversations before they take place during the performance review process.

After the initial ideas and storyboard generated by AI, I noticed that the story behind the learning experience needed adjustment. For example, I think that using named characters in the narrative makes for a more authentic learning experience. When left to the AI to generate these, the same predictable names are generated (Jordan, Maria,) and so I created original names for the learning myself. 

In addition, I wanted to create character consistency throughout the course, and so I prompted the AI to do this. However, a drawback is that the tool cannot easily place the same character within instructional pages of the course and on the branching scenario involving the same character as the latter uses preset characters. As a work-around to this problem, I removed the character image of Carmella from the start of the learning so that it seems more authentic when the learner meets her in the branching scenario later. In addition, the embedded AI character generation is not as efficient or realistic as other tools I have used. I prompted and iterated several times within Mindsmith to create the finished character of Theo, with the name badge and branding within the image taking several prompts to perfect.

Having read and sense-checked the narrative of the course from start to finish, it needed tweaking for consistency and to make better sense. I therefore prompted the AI to include a pharmacy manager, Theo, that the learner was going to follow and help through the learning process, giving a more immersive feel to the learning process. In addition, the AI had automatically selected 'Will' to be represented by the 'W' in the 'GROW' Coaching acronym, but I edited this to 'Way Forward' as this would have more meaning for learners. I also prompted to include a slide showing the learner the positive consequences of effectively coaching Carmella through the branching scenario tasks, generating and tweaking the 'Friday Afternoon' slide. Showing learners consequences, both good and bad, can increase the impact of the learning by creating an emotional response in the learner: