Project Title: They're Phishing For You!

Remote and hybrid work environments have become normalized.  As companies expand work from home options, many employees rely on email, messaging platforms, and cloud based systems to perform their duties.  Unfortunately, cybercriminals are lurking in the online waters ready to administer a phishing attack on any unsuspecting employee who dares to take the bait.  Phishing attacks are designed to steal employees credentials and gain access to company systems and sensitive information.  These attacks are ever evolving and becoming more sophisticated which makes it hard for employees to recognize them as threats.  This is a top priority problem for many companies because just one malicious link can lead to catastrophe.  Every phishing attack runs the risk of causing disruptions like data breaches, damage to customer trust, financial losses, and ultimately causing halts to the entire company operation.  The challenge is not a lack of information about phishing attacks, but a lack of real opportunities for employees to practice identifying and responding to phishing threats before a security incident occurs.

As you have read above, I always begin with identifying the Business Goal and the Learning Audience.  My job is to move the learning audience  from where they are currently to the business goal, and this scenario based learning experience is the best solution to do that.  The ADDIE framework always guides my next steps in developing a project from end to end.

The Performance Gap in this problem is that employees are making security decisions under real world pressure without assessing phishing indicators and evaluating risk.  Employees don't click phishing emails because they are unaware that phishing happens.  They click because the are trusting and distracted with trying to get other work done.  They see a notification from what looks like a trusted source and they simply respond to it because they are quickly trying to get back to the daily duties they need to complete.  Especially in work from home, remote, and hybrid environments, it can become very easy for an employee to be distracted.  With the performance gap in mind I designed a realistic decision making experience for remote employees operating in high distraction environments.

For every action map I do I usually use a clear simple framework that I have used in the past to solidify goals and clarify action steps.  From my perspective with my background in psychology, I have identified that in every performance gap there are three elements that I see coming up again and again.  The three elements are: recognition, practicing, and reflection.  Learners retain knowledge best when they learn what to recognize, what exactly to practice consistently, and have built in time for reflection.  In order to know what each learning audience needs to recognize, practice, and reflect on I consult subject matter experts.  

Subject matter expert (SME) consultations are critical information gathering sessions for me.  I prevent the conversation from going into a knowledge dump session by redirecting my SME to identify key task and actions employees need.  With my graduate level interview skills and my performance improvement specialist background, I understand the type of questioning that works to actually gather pertinent information that drives behavior change.  Below is the goal and practical steps employees will take to achieve the goal mapped out cleanly in this action map.

After finalizing the actions on the action map and getting approval, I move onto crafting script based storyboards.  I always use real world scenarios that speak to what the learning audience experiences.  The new behavior that the remote employees will implement is the "Stop, Verify, Report!" habit and they will have plenty of opportunity to practice this habit during the interactive examples and questions.

The story of the learning experience is always so much fun for me to create.  I decided to base my story around a hybrid/remote employee named James.  James is a high-performing, hardworking team player but he has a lot on his plate.  He is trying to finish his job duties when he encounters a phishing email.  The learner will follow James through many scenarios where phishing occurs and help to decide what decision James should make.  This type of learning journey is especially effective because the learner will be able to connect decisions made during the learning journey to real world outcomes.  It is also especially effective to have the learner repeat the practice habit multiple times which they will have ample opportunity to do.

 I create my storyboards with clear, concise, short and to the point scripting.  I shy away from long form explanations and theory.  I keep my storyboard focused on practical actions.  The short phrases and practical action steps help the learner to retain knowledge long term and drive real behavior change.

Although my focus is always primarily performance improvement and business goal attainment, the visuals of the project are always of utmost importance.  The visuals can either add to the learning experience or distract the learner.  For this project, I wanted to keep the visuals consistent and clean by focusing on the two most important visual elements: a hybrid/ remote worker and his remote working environment including his laptop and computer screens.    

I always strive to make visual stylistic choices that match the theme of the project.  For example, in projects that are more communication focused I may use callouts or word bubbles to emphasize the communication.  Since this project is primarily about online activity, I did not need to emphasize the spoken elements.  I leaned into focusing on what happens in real life on your laptop or computer screen.  This helps to keep the visuals consistent and help the learner to connect what they are seeing to their lived experience. 

Please feel free to email me personally  for the full learning experience:Laneece2029@gmail.com

In reflecting on creating this particular learning experience, I realized how far I have come.  I now have much more confidence in my skills and abilities as a learning experience designer.  My background in psychology and performance improvement grounds me and gives me direction and as a learning experience designer the application of my knowledge is obvious.  A comfort zone for me is usually projects based on human sciences but even in this tech focused project there are human centered elements that must be highlighted in order for the business to truly achieve its goal.