Designing Under Ambiguity

Training requests often arrive as pre-determined solutions — "turn these slides into eLearning" — rather than clearly defined learning problems. Without early clarification, instructional designers ship content that fails on the floor, increases support burden, and quietly erodes stakeholder confidence in learning strategy.

This scenario models how design decisions compound over time, and how IDs can influence outcomes without direct authority.

I designed a branching, scenario-based experience in Articulate Storyline placing learners in three escalating stakeholder interactions: an intake call, a content review, and stakeholder pushback under time pressure.

Across the scenario, learner choices silently influence three business-aligned variables — Customer Adoption, Support Ticket Volume, and Stakeholder Trust. These are never shown to the learner. Cumulative decision patterns route them to one of three realistic end states.

Feature Launch Struggles · Mixed Results · Successful Adoption. The focus is cause-and-effect, not scoring. Replay returns learners to the first decision point so they can compare choices without re-reading static context.

This project demonstrates the senior ID skills that don't fit on a tool list: influencing stakeholders through inquiry, designing for business outcomes rather than content delivery, and building clean, maintainable Storyline experiences that survive long after launch.