Personas Course

You can view the project by clicking here.

About the Course

I was given the task to introduce ten different personas for salespeople. This would be challenging enough as is, but when I was told the course needed to only be between 15-30 minutes in length, I knew I was going to have to get extra creative.

As I thought about how to successfully introduce a whole cast of memorable characters in a very short amount of time, Agatha Christie popped into my mind. I had read and absolutely loved many of her books such as Murder on the Orient Express or And Then There Were None where she successfully introduced 10+ unforgettable characters in just a few pages. With this in mind, I decided to write the course in the style of a whodunnit/film noir.

Building the Personas

As I was still mulling over my storyboard ideas, I decided to create my characters first. I used Articulate characters for the photorealistic characters, and then created their dopplegangers using Vyond for use in future video projects.

I thought it was a bit much to have a murder in the course, so instead, learners must try and figure out which persona might have been motivated to send them a locked box with a mysterious note. The objective of the learner would be to pay careful attention to each conversation to figure out who would have the most motive to send the box – and through the conversation, hopefully learn a lot!

As I thought it would be almost impossible for a learner to get through the conversations on their own, I created a folder for each persona (which I’ve blurred here for privacy) that learners could access throughout the course. This was also a fun way for me to hide little Easter eggs about each persona!

The core concept of the course was to have branching conversations with each persona in order to build trust. The user can use the notebook to get through it, of course, but even if they get the answer wrong, they’re still guided towards the direct response. The branching scenarios also allowed a more “real world” feel of actually interacting with someone, rather than the stilted feel of sitting through a course.

Sound interesting? You can view the project by clicking here.

(Note: all sensitive information from the original course has been replaced.)