In this ongoing freelance project, I’m designing and developing a course for a local artist in which she teaches learners some of the fundamental skills, tools, and techniques for creating vibrant fiber art.

The final course includes 13 demo videos with 3 studio learner videos, totaling about 1.5 hours of video. The teaser video below includes footage from several course segments, and is a demo of the teaser e used by the artist on her social channels to promote the course and sell early-bird registrations.

Course Teaser video. Responsibilities: script writing, directing, project management, post production.

ANALYSIS

The client’s chief goals are to build her income while supporting her followers in the art community to gain new skills in round weavings – an art form for which she has gained an impressive following and reputation. After discussing with her some potential ways to break her goals into smaller parts, we together developed a syllabus that operated on actionable deliverables for users.

I also conducted an initial analysis of the artist’s social media user base to develop learner personas representing the potential market for the course. These personas influenced the pacing of the course, and humanized the audience for the artist, who was initially unsure of how to talk comfortably into the camera.

Learner persona: Destiny. Destiny purchased the course as a reward to herself for completing a major project in her work as a UX designer.
Persona: Destiny
Learner persona: Michelle. The persona includes two photos depicting a young college-aged girl. Michelle purchased the course to do an art course 'afar' from her best friend while they both attend college separately.
Persona: Michelle
Learner persona 3: Rosa. The image includes two photos of Rosa, an owner of an organic plant nursery whose daughter purchased the course for her.
Persona: Rosa

DESIGN

Using branding standards from the client’s own company materials, I developed an initial mockup in Adobe XD, showcasing an engaging use of color, negative space, icons, still photos, and placeholders for video and content.

A screen grab of the aesthetics mockup I developed for the client in Adobe XD.

A key design element in this course was to incorporate a ‘studio learner’ who would be coached live through all of the steps described in the course. Having a real learner in the room for the artist to coach prompted her to explain and troubleshoot steps she would have otherwise overlooked as a seasoned expert.

Filming on location in the artist’s home took ~8 hours.

DEVELOPMENT

The videos for the course were shot on three cameras and produced in Premiere Pro. Supplemental handouts (pictoral guides to techniques, shopping lists, and labeled still photos) will be developed in Canva and Adobe Illustrator.

The final course is in development in Articulate Storyline 360. The course will hosted on a password-protected page on the artist’s website, using her existing commerce-enabled website to allow users to purchase the course for self-paced use.

EVALUATION

The most important evaluation for this course will be return purchases of future courses. We will also measure engagement by monitoring users’ contributions to a photo forum we will include using a web block in Storyline that pipes in a digital photo gallery. Users will be able to add their own images of their finished projects. Finally, we will monitor the use of the course hashtag for engagement over time.