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Instructional Design Portfolio

Most of what a producer does on the first morning of a shoot is instructional design. The plan lives in a few heads; by call time it has to live in everyone’s, clearly enough that a crew can act on it without stopping to ask. I spent fourteen years in independent film and television doing that: training crews on set, briefing departments, and turning schedules into call sheets people could work from against the clock.

Since 2021 I’ve done the same work on 20 Below, a tabletop roleplaying game. The learners are players, game masters, and the fifteen-person team building it with me. I bring new team members onto the rules, the tools and the way we work, and I run the playtests where new players learn the game at the table. Those sessions are where the design gets its real test. Every place a player stalls, asks the same question twice, or reaches for the book in the middle of a fight becomes a note for the next draft.

The case studies below come from that shipped work: the rulebook, its quick references, and the tools that teach the rules while people play. Each one covers the problem, the analysis, the design decisions and the outcome.

eLearning Samples: Four Rise 360 Courses
Four working courses built in Articulate Rise 360, each opening in the browser: a corporate course on designing job aids people actually use, and a three-course training suite for 20 Below, built to its brand, on bug reporting and triage, playtester onboarding and press outreach. Each was storyboarded first, and each has knowledge checks and a scored final check.
eLearning Development · Articulate Rise 360
Learn C-47 Production Engine: Software Training for New Filmmakers
A free, ten-lesson course that takes film students and first-time producers from a script to a dated shooting order, a call sheet and a budget in C-47, a preproduction app I designed. Every step was walked in the real app, and every screenshot was captured from it by script, so the course can be re-shot when the beta changes. Each lesson moves from why it matters to annotated screens, a guided try-it, a check-your-work screen and scenario questions with feedback on every answer. The same storyboard was rebuilt in Rise 360 with labeled graphics, process blocks and knowledge checks, then exported as SCORM 2004 and tested to completion in SCORM Cloud.
Software Training · Rise 360 · SCORM
Train on the Real Thing
A course for new filmmakers, written against the running app rather than a spec. Every step was proven against the data first, the app won wherever it disagreed with the plan, and screenshots were captured by script so the course can be re-shot. The course found the app’s samples thin, so the app changed: version 0.9.2 shipped because a course needed it.
Software Training & Iteration
Learn VersionPoint: Revision Control Training for Federal Comms Staff
Ten short lessons and a final project for the comms staff who move press releases past subject matter experts. The course teaches VersionPoint, a revision-control app for federal communications offices that I designed: send a locked review copy to one named reviewer, take every edit back as a decision with a reason, keep margin notes out of the copies that go out, and answer leadership from the record. Every step was walked in the running app and every screenshot captured from it by script. A practice page plays the reviewer in Word, so learners run full review rounds on a made-up release. Built in the app’s U.S. Web Design System look, then rebuilt in Rise 360, exported as SCORM 2004 and tested to completion in SCORM Cloud.
Software Training · Rise 360 · SCORM
No Workarounds
A course for federal comms staff, written against the running app. When walking the lessons turned up a real fault, the ruling was always the same: fix the app, then teach it. Six fixes shipped before the course went live, a page in the course plays the reviewer in Word, and the SCORM test caught a defect in my earlier Rise course too.
Software Training & Iteration
Your First Day as a PA: A Branching Scenario
A production assistant’s first shooting day on an indie feature, from fourteen years of running sets: the call sheet, the radio, holding a lockup out of frame and out of the actors’ eyelines, the chain of command, calling a safety hold, and wrap. Choices move three meters, two branches recover from mistakes, set maps show where to stand, and a debrief ends with a printable one-page job aid.
Scenario-Based Learning · Job Aid
Reading a Call Sheet: Job Aid and Micro-Course
Everyone on a set gets the call sheet; most new people read one line of it. Eight find-it tasks on a full call sheet, asked as a grip, an actor, a PA and the 2nd AD, teach the rest, and every wrong tap explains the part tapped. The same sheet then becomes the annotated job aid and a printable PDF. An optional part for ADs and producers asks the learner to catch four errors in tomorrow’s draft before the crew sees it.
Performance Support · Job Aid
Set Safety Orientation, with a Four-Level Evaluation Plan
Compliance training for everyone on a shoot: crew, cast and background. Seven short lessons each end on one rule, a hazard hunt on a top-down map of the set mixes eight hazards with two correct set-ups, and a scored check explains every answer. The evaluation plan measures all four Kirkpatrick levels and is built around behaviour on set, with a 1st AD set-walk checklist and a near-miss count that should rise before it falls.
Compliance Training · Evaluation
Before Call Time
Fourteen years of training film crews, turned into three online samples on one fictional production: a branching scenario, a call-sheet job aid and a set safety orientation. Three learning jobs matched to three formats, facts checked against industry sources, and an evaluation plan built around behaviour on set.
Scenario, Performance Support & Evaluation
One Storyboard, Two Deliveries
A three-course training suite for players, playtesters and the team, storyboarded from tools that had already shipped. Where the facts ran out, ten rulings filled the gaps, and two became new features. It was built in Rise to the game’s brand, then rebuilt from the same storyboards as free pages on the game’s site.
Training Design & eLearning Development
The Rung That Made Players Worse
Retiring a Skill tier that made low-Attribute learners worse than no training at all. Playtesters raised it and exact odds confirmed it. It came out without taking value away anywhere else, every saved character was carried across, and players got a way to rebuild.
Learner-Centred Rule Design & Iteration
The Rules You Don’t Have to Remember
Performance support at the table: one Roll dice window that reads a single roll three ways, a character sheet inside the virtual tabletop, and a GM’s tracker that talks to it, all on one set of rules code. Measured before and after: 36 roll buttons became 5, and two rolls became one.
Performance Support
One Page, One Question
Twenty-three quick-reference sheets built as job aids: one question per sheet, the numbers computed before anything was drawn, and every sheet kept in step with the rules. Drawing them caught four problems in the rules themselves.
Job Aids & Reference Design
Learning the Game by Building a Character
The Character Creator as a new player’s first lesson: fourteen steps in the order the game needs them, what the GM granted asked first, mistakes greyed out with the reason beside them, and every choice explained where it’s made.
Guided Onboarding
A Rulebook You Read vs. a Rulebook You Reach For
Separating “learning” material from “in-the-moment lookup” material to cut task time under pressure.
What the Book Doesn’t Tell the Person Running It
Designing decision-support content for facilitators running live sessions — a different job than the participant-facing material.
One Spider, Checked Three Ways
Turning “the GM’s call” into a rule players can learn and plan around: depth without excess crunch, tested on four benchmark learners, from Fragile Frankie to Maxed Maggie, and then made the standard for every venom.
Rule Design & Iteration
One Chapter, Taught Two Ways
One rule written once and applied two ways, for map players and theater-of-the-mind players alike. Sequenced simple to complex, tested on five benchmark learners from Fragile Frankie to Maxed Maggie, and grounded in real-world walking data.
Dual-Audience Design & Sequencing
Making Two Invisible Systems Visible
Documenting an undocumented visual system and an undocumented tool architecture — and the real bug that surfaced along the way.
Visual & Technical Systems