interactive museums

2004.04.01

Dr. Orey presented Home Depot's online training software, used to train associates in their duties working for Home Depot. The software is used on computers in stores, and distributed online.

The software was made in Flash. It has a very cartoon-ish feel to it, which allows it to both give a good deal of detail and not get bogged down in trying to look extremely realistic.

Dr. Orey told us that the software initially took 800 hours of development to create a single hour of instruction. Home Depot has mitigated that cost by creating reusable animations such as each character in the software. The entire course is basically reusable, with only content modifications necessary.

The software portrays a competition between Home Depot and 'Slowes', and structures the instruction toward this competition. After introducing this scenario, the instruction begins. It has a very linear flow, sending the user through a series of steps. The instruction was adapted from a video, and it shows.

The software continues through modeling customer/associate interactions, such as helping the customer and cross selling. Afterward, there is multiple-choice assessment to see how well the understood, and to reinforce what they learned. At the end of the instruction, there is a post test. The post test is contextualized into the competition with 'Slowes' over customers, complete with graphics indicating gaining or losing customer loyalty.

There are a few weaknesses with the Home Depot training software. It is very audio dependant, so that users must have good listening skills to gain knowledge from the training. Additionally, there is little interaction for the user.