The Challange

Following a high number of complaints from citizens about email scams (phishing), local authorities launched an awareness initiative to improve digital safety. Phishing simulations revealed a critical situation, with failure rates around 60%, rising to 80% among individuals with limited digital experience.

To address this challenge, I designed a short, self-paced e-learning experience that helps citizens identify and respond to email scams through simple, practical strategies. The goal was to make essential knowledge easy to understand and apply in everyday digital situations.

My Approach

I followed a structured instructional design process (ADDIE) to ensure alignment between learners’ needs, learning objectives, and expected outcomes.

Design Decisions

Based on the analysis, the following key design decisions where made:

• Create a self-paced, easy-to-access e-learning experience that supports a diverse audience with different needs and contexts

• Keep the experience short and focused (5–10 minutes) to match varied backgrounds, users’ daily routines, and limited attention spans

• Use real-world scenarios to make learning relevant, meaningful, and practical 

• Incorporate storytelling and visual metaphors (comparing a burglar in the physical world with phishing in the digital world) to support understanding and emotional engagement 

• Provide interactive practice with immediate feedback to help learners apply knowledge and reinforce key concepts

• Define measurable outcomes through post-training simulations and user feedback to support continuous improvement

Course Outline

To structure the learning experience, I first defined the key concepts and their relationships through a high-level course outline. This helped ensure clarity and consistency, aligning content and learning objectives before development.

The course outline was created in PowerPoint due to the project’s limited scope, while still enabling clear communication and alignment during collaborative review.

Visual Mockups

To ensure visual consistency and support clarity throughout the learning experience, I defined a simple visual style for the course, including color palette, typography, and image and illustration style.

These guidelines helped maintain a coherent user experience and facilitated collaboration and review. Although there were no specific visual requirements in this project, preparing clear visual mockups is often essential in real scenarios. 

Prototype

Before full development, I created an interactive prototype to test the structure, flow, and key interactions of the learning experience. 

The prototype was developed in Articulate Storyline, with Vyond used to create animated storytelling sequences to enhance understanding and reinforce learning.

It included all sections of the course with reduced content, focusing on validating interactivity, navigation, and overall functionality. Key technical elements such as variables, layers, animations, transitions, and button states were implemented to simulate the user experience.

This allowed early validation of design decisions and helped identify improvements before full development.

Final Product

Based on prototype feedback, I developed the complete learning experience.

The final product integrates interactive navigation and feedback mechanisms, animated storytelling sequences, and scenario-based exercises.

Special attention was given to clarity, usability, and consistency to ensure a smooth and intuitive user experience. 

Implementation

Although this is a concept project, the learning experience is designed to be deployed through a local authorities’ LMS, ensuring accessibility and wide reach across the population.

Evaluation

The evaluation of the learning experience considers two key dimensions: the learning impact and the effectiveness of the development process.

The learning impact is evaluated across three areas:

• Satisfaction, measured through post-training surveys (Google Forms) to understand user perception and overall experience

• Knowledge acquisition, assessed through performance data from course activities (attempts, time, and results) and post-training simulations

• Behavioural and performance impact, evaluated through phishing simulations and real-world indicators to measure how learning is applied and how failure rates decrease

The development process is also evaluated to identify improvement opportunities, considering aspects such as timeline and efficiency, challenges encountered, and the effectiveness of the design and collaboration process.

The goal is to continuously improve both the learning experience and the way it is designed and developed.

Results and Takeaways

The learning experience was well received, with feedback highlighting the clarity of the content, structured approach, and engaging use of storytelling.

Areas for improvement were also identified, such as visual refinement and simplification of some interactions to improve flow.

This project allowed me to gain hands-on experience across the full e-learning development process, while refining my ability to focus on what matters most in each phase. 

Key takeaways include:

• The importance of clear structuring through course outlines and storyboards

• The value of early prototyping to validate decisions before full development

• The role of visual consistency and interaction design in supporting usability

Overall, this project strengthened my ability to design learning experiences that are simple, meaningful, and focused on real user needs.