Building Data-Driven Prototypes in Axure
Comprehensive video course created for Pluralsight on advanced UX prototyping
This case study describes authentic workplace learning design. I've handled the typical NDA considerations by adapting details and recreating artifacts, but the strategy and impact are real.
Background
Charles Schwab's The Way We Work team was building their catalog of original learning offerings to support the company's growing Digital Retail organization. As UX Education Program Manager, I identified a critical gap: while our 250+ person design team was skilled at creating great user experiences, they struggled with getting effective and actionable feedback from Product Management partners.
Product Managers need to build skills for giving effective feedback on design and content, and UX professionals need tools for coaching their partners to give them actionable feedback that moved projects forward.
Skills: Instructional design • Curriculum development • Presentation design • Facilitation • Kirkpatrick Model
Tools: Teams • Mural • PowerPoint • Figma • SharePoint
What I created
Rather than create another generic "communication skills" workshop, I designed a hands-on learning experience that challenged participants to reframe conflict as a lack of clarity or alignment and give effective feedback (or ask for what you need from ineffective feedback).
I distilled the key concepts from Dan Brown's excellent book Designing Together: The collaboration and conflict management handbook for creative professionals. Despite containing valuable insights, the book’s information-dense text that can be intimidating and difficult for casual business book readers to extract actionable steps from. My goal was to make those practical insights immediately applicable through structured exercises and clear frameworks.
The learning strategy behind the course
I used a constructivist learning approach, building knowledge through short lecture segments followed by immediate application. Participants received concepts in digestible chunks, then constructed their understanding through polls for quick knowledge checks and hands-on exercises where they applied newly acquired information to realistic scenarios.
In this course, learners learned how to:
- Understand the mindsets required for successful collaboration
- Become a better collaborator by following some basic steps
- Give effective feedback (or ask for what you need from ineffective feedback)
- Reframe healthy conflict as a lack of clarity or alignment
- Practice how to reach resolution to conflict and move the project forward
Each learning cycle followed a consistent pattern: brief concept introduction, knowledge check through polling, then immediate practice in breakout exercises. This approach ensured participants weren't just absorbing information passively—they were actively constructing understanding by testing concepts against real workplace challenges.
Who the course served (and how I designed for multiple audiences)
This was a communication skills class designed for anyone who focuses on "creative projects," which I defined as projects that solve problems by generating new ideas in the form of visual design or writing:
- UX Practitioners: UX Designers and Content Strategists who needed better tools for managing feedback conversations and collaborative conflict
- Cross-functional partners: Product Managers who could learn how to structure their design feedback to be more actionable and less frustrating for their creative partners
I included real scenarios from both UX and Product Management perspectives in the exercises, ensuring that participants from either discipline could see themselves in the content and practice skills relevant to their daily challenges.
Tools learners could use immediately
Two design elements made the course immediately transferable to participants' daily work:
- The Feedback Formula provided a simple structure: what's being analyzed + the objective + how the thing being analyzed does or does not meet the objective. This framework helped participants reframe examples of ineffective feedback (like "I don't like this" or "Can we make it more exciting?") into actionable feedback tied to business objectives. Participants could apply this structure in their very next design review meeting.
- Sample Scripts served as practical "cheat sheets" distributed after each content block. Rather than leaving participants to figure out how principles translated into actual conversations, these scripts showed the concepts in action. Participants could either use the language directly or adapt it for their specific situations, providing confidence for immediate application even before they'd fully internalized the underlying concepts.
The impact
I delivered two sessions to nearly 50 participants total, and achieved strong Kirkpatrick Level 1 (satisfaction) and Level 2 (learning) results. More importantly, participants consistently highlighted the course's practical applicability. We were exploring how to evolve the course before organizational changes shifted team priorities.
Key participant feedback themes:
- "Very applicable and incredibly accurate in describing what creative collaboration is and is not"
- "I really enjoyed the way it broke the process down into stages supported with scripts and example scenarios"
- "The content was excellent. Informative and actionable. Digestible and easy to understand"
One UX Director commented:
“I would say this could be a good (required?) refresher for all our UXers and potentially include a shortened version for onboarding. I’ve recommended it to all my leads!”
Throughout the course, I included examples of hilariously ineffective feedback I've personally received to highlight what not to do. Hopefully, this course resulted in at least a few creative professionals being spared the one-sentence, contextless feedback of "This needs more sizzle."
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