Telecommunication Field Technician WBT

This is a project that taught me very quickly how a high-precision production teams works. The trial-by-fire environment taught me a great deal about production, and these are skills that I still use today.

I came on to this project as an ID after it was underway and they were crunching to get content done on time and on budget. I developed content for three courses during the 7-month contract: Transmission Lines, Base Stations, and Antennas. Courses were designed for field technicians troubleshooting cellular equipment and performance.

I worked with SMEs for core content and filled in the rest with research from trade books and sites. I developed an outline then storyboards which I reviewed with a client that lived in a different state, so we did everything over the phone. Boards went through Alpha, Beta, and Final stages of approval. Once approved boards went to a graphic artist for animations and illustrations, and a developer who built them in HTML. Audio was recorded remotely as I listened and approved in real time over the phone. WBT again went through Alpha, Beta, and Final reviews. QA edits were made in a text box that wrote to single document for IDs, graphic artists, and developers to go through and complete.

The lessons themselves might seem a bit dated visually, but they used, at the time, efficient and cutting-edge design principles that are still very common today. Branching, simulation, looping menus, step-by-step, animation, conversations, characters, question boxes, and interactive screens kept learners engaged through the content. The style was an interesting blend of cartoon and technical accuracy that made it very easy to quickly convey cellular concepts, such as communication between phones and antennas, base stations, and transmission lines.