Case study
Benefits Learning Program
Turning a 100-page legal benefits guide into a story-driven program that cuts the time it takes to learn by an estimated half.
Imagine being handed a 100-page legal document and told to explain it to a worried member on the phone. That was the reality for call center staff.
- Role
- Senior eLearning Developer & Learning Experience Designer
- Organization
- Regional health plan in Hawaii
- Audience
- Call center staff and employees company-wide
- Timeline
- 1.5 years, ongoing
- Team
- SMEs
- A writer
- Department leadership
- Built with
- Rise 360
- Storyline 360
- Adobe Illustrator
The challenge
What was in the way
Call center employees have to explain benefits accurately, often while the member is on the line. One of the resources they relied on most was a 100+ page benefits guide written in legal, compliance-driven language, so they were often pulling answers from a document few had ever read in full. They learned piecemeal on the job, which meant inconsistent answers and a higher risk of service errors.
There was also no development process for a project this size, with SMEs, a writer and leadership all involved over a long, multi-chapter build.
My approach
How I built it
Built the workflow first
My philosophy is simple: if the first step feels overwhelming, break it down. I applied this approach to create a six-step production workflow that clarified stakeholder responsibilities, established approval checkpoints and gave leadership a clear view of project timelines. Originally developed for this program, the process has since been adopted across 30+ additional initiatives.
Meet with SMEs, gather content and record footage.
Outline the curriculum, create the content sheet and draft all written content.
Review the curriculum with SMEs and stakeholders.
Build the course in Storyline, Rise and Adobe Creative Cloud.
Review and test the course with SMEs and stakeholders.
Finalize the course and upload it to the LMS or its final destination.
Taught people to navigate the guide, not memorize it
The goal wasn’t to memorize 100 pages of information. It was to build a foundational understanding of the guide and a mental map of where to find answers when employees needed them during a call. Working with SMEs and a writer, we reorganized the material into focused, digestible chapters built around what employees actually needed to know and do on the job.
Turned the guide into an expedition
I framed the program as an expedition. A guide leads learners through the benefits “outback,” each chapter has its own animal, and recurring characters work through real claims in scenarios. Each chapter feels like the next stop on a journey rather than the next 15 pages of legal text.
Illustrated a custom visual system
I designed and illustrated every character, animal and background in Illustrator, giving the program one recognizable identity. Characters reflect Hawaii’s communities (Maile’s lei and plumeria, for example), so learners feel it was made in Hawaii, for Hawaii.
Meet the cast
See the full castSpike the Platypus, Quazi the Quokka, the emus, and more View
Replaced recall questions with gamified quizzes
Instead of plain recall questions, learners play quick games where they find and apply the right benefits information, which is what they do on the job. Try one below.
Results
How it went
- Cut the time needed to learn the guide by an estimated 50% or more, compared with reading the full document.
- Created the first training on the guide. Before, employees knew it existed but had no structured way to learn it.
- Memorable: one employee who completed a full multi-course program said the benefits training was the only part he remembered.
- Workflow adopted across 30+ initiatives, giving the team a repeatable way to plan, review and ship training.