The Barista Blueprint

"The Barista Blueprint" is a concept eLearning project designed as an onboarding experience for new baristas. After completing this training, learners will be able to confidently prepare a variety of coffee drinks, guide customers with care, recommend with purpose, and deliver a complete, high-quality café experience from start to finish during their shifts.

Audience: Newly hired baristas at BeanCraft Coffee House

Responsibilities:  Instructional Design, Scenario Design, Script Writing, Visual Design, eLearning Development, Generative AI Integration 

Tools Used: Articulate Storyline 360, Freepik AI Suite, Canva, ChatGPT, Google Docs

The problem

BeanCraft is a newly opened café aiming to build a strong reputation for excellent coffee and warm service. However, with an inexperienced team lacking both knowledge of the different coffee drinks and what makes each unique, as well as the skills to confidently guide customers, there’s a risk of inconsistent service and dissatisfied guests—making it harder to establish the café’s desired reputation.

The Solution

To address these challenges, I designed an interactive onboarding eLearning experience in Articulate Storyline, organized as a custom menu. The first two modules build essential foundations—one focused on understanding different coffee drinks and what makes each unique, and the other on developing confident, customer-focused communication skills.

Learners then move into a realistic practice scenario where they can apply both sets of skills: engaging customers in conversations, uncovering preferences, and recommending drinks with confidence—all in a safe, risk-free environment.

My Process

For this project, I was inspired by Tim Slade’s instructional design challenge, which originally focused on beer knowledge and customer service skills, with content and visual resources provided. Instead of using those resources, I reimagined the project in a new setting—coffee knowledge and barista–customer service skills.

I researched and wrote the full script, using only the style guide from the challenge. All visuals, including the logo, setting, and videos, were created from scratch with the help of AI tools, which required prompt refinement and editing to ensure consistency.

I then developed the full eLearning experience in Articulate Storyline, designing two interactive knowledge modules followed by a branching scenario that allows learners to practice customer interactions and see the consequences of their choices in real time.

Style Guide

Visual Mockups

With the style guide in hand, I began creating the visuals for the project. I first used ChatGPT to generate character images, but it was difficult to keep the same look for each character across different poses and expressions. To improve consistency, I switched to the Freepik AI suite to create the coffee shop setting, characters, and videos. While Freepik provided better results, it still required careful prompt refinement and selective editing to ensure the characters’ appearance stayed consistent across various scenes and backgrounds.

Full Development

After creating the visuals, I moved into Articulate Storyline to develop the interactive learning experience. The first two modules were built as tab interactions, allowing learners to explore topics in any order for greater flexibility. I chose this format to present one piece of information at a time, helping to reduce cognitive overload in line with Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning.