A Field Guide to Your Inbox - E-Learning for Amazon

Needs Analysis

Assessed need within Transportation Logistics Team for robust training on automatically generated emails that begin to populate inboxes from a new hire's first day.

Based on feedback gleaned during focus groups with recent Trans. Logistics new hires, I learned that the different categories of emails were mysterious, poorly explained, and a source of anxiety due to the ambiguity surrounding them.

Learning Approach

Proposed creating e-learning as an interactive, story-based course. Course would (a) help new hires identify and explain different types of automatically-generated emails that appear in their inbox; and, (b) create inbox rules to establish an organized, well-managed inbox.

Course would include a sorting activity, in which learners would be challenged to sort emails they have learned about into different folders of a simulated inbox.

Storyboard

Developed storyboard in Microsoft Word, drawing from existing material on team wiki and gaining additional insights through working session with subject matter expert. 

Handed off storyboard to contracted e-learning development team to build out course in Adobe Captivate.

E-Learning

Finished course engaged learners through a variety of modes, including animated videos, text, knowledge checks, and audio effects.

Screenshots of title screen and animated video introducing learner to the world of the inbox.

Explanatory text providing overview of course/course objectives.

Field Guide

The course then introduces the field guide to the learner's inbox, associating categories of emails with different "mail monsters." These anthropomorphic representations of email categories are intended to build strong visual associations with different categories of email, to make it easier for the learner to recall the nature of different emails. 

The pages of the field guide identify the type of email, its purpose, and the most common required action to take on it.

Sorting Activity

The learner is then presented with a sorting activity, in which they must sort emails into different folders in a simulated inbox. This activity asks learners to look at a subject line and the preview text contained within an email, and recall what they have learned about different email categories.

At the end of this activity, the learner is given feedback about which emails they have sorted correctly, and which they have sorted incorrectly. The course provides guidance on why their correct decisions where correct, and why their incorrect decisions were incorrect.

Finally, the course provides a brief tutorial on how to make inbox rules in Microsoft Outlook.

User Feedback

Users of this course commented on its originality and engaging nature. Users enjoyed the story-based nature of the course, and found the visual design and overall metaphor of the course fun and helpful as an approach to the subject matter.

Users commented that they felt better prepared to handle the volume of emails that would appear in their inboxes from day one on the Trans. Logistics team. 

Users reported that they used the rules suggested in the course to quickly set up their inboxes and keep them managed from their first week on the job.

Many members of the Trans. Logistics team who joined prior to the development of this course reported that they did not get their inboxes well-organized until after several months on the job; part of the reason for this was a lack of insight into the purpose of the emails they were receiving.