I worked as a contracted Instructional Designer for ADP for 7 months. ADP is a global company that offers industry-leading online payroll and HR software solutions. Depending on the product, they offer a number of different training solutions, which include online learning and instructor-led, classroom training.

I worked in the Enterprise Learning department; a global team made up of 13 instructional designers, 4 senior instructional designers and 1 lead instructional designer. I was brought on board with 2 other contractors to help the team with several projects. My role included:

• Providing instructional design and e-learning development services
• Updating a number of existing activities
• Developing a number of new materials for new software

I developed and updated a huge catalogue of activities which included:

• Job aids
• Brochures
• Videos
• FAQ’s
• E-learning (Storyline and Rise)
• GIF’s
• Assessments
• Simulations

I worked on a number of internal training modules and created assets for iHCM, iHCM2 and GlobalView. Some samples of my work can be seen below.

The Process

The review and sign-off process at ADP was quite intense with many layers of review and remediation. The project stages were: scoping, kick-off, design, production and delivery. Each project was assigned a dedicated project manager, instructional designer (in this case me) and a subject matter expert. Within each stage, tasks were assigned to each person involved. All work was checked by another ID followed by a senior ID. It would take quite a while to sign things off, but it did mean everything was meticulously checked and tested before release. The checking process was brilliant, I got to review other designers work and they got to review my work. We were able to pick up on issues that might have gone unnoticed and swap design ideas.

My favourite project to work on was the software simulation for GlobalView. This was a storyline asset which was designed to look and act like software. These projects were quite intense and involved taking a number of screenshots and short video’s then combining them together in storyline. I enjoyed planning simulations and writing the scripts. Scripts contained the steps that would be shown on the screen to the learner, as well as narrated via audio. I gained valuable experience planning and writing scripts and choosing voice actors. I needed to make sure to include pronunciation guidance for the names of software e.g. iHCM2 as well as tone and emotion.

Summary

I really enjoyed my time at ADP. The work was really varied and I got to work on old projects as well as new ones. I gained some really useful storyline experience while working on several old and out of date projects. Working on these got me used to troubleshooting and dissecting previous work by previous designers. It made me appreciate how important it is to note and label things correctly in a project, as you never know who might pick up your work in the future!

Skills Demonstrated

• Instructional design
• Developing e-learning
• Editing and updating existing materials
• Storyboarding
• Video editing and scripting

Tools Used

• Articulate Storyline 360
• Articulate Rise
• WalkMe
• Camtasia
• Vyond