SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, whenever you're thinking about a story, a learning, or something that is going to be benefiting people, try always to frame the learning problem. So framing the learning problem is trying to understand the system that you're working with, not trying to do something that would replace the system. System is the organization, the norms, the constraints, the forms of feedback, the liabilities, the pressures. Try to simulate something that is close to it so people can interact with it. If something gets completely alienated from reality, they're not going to be able to, well, feel that they're part of it. And since they're not part of it, well, they're not going to have any ownership towards it. So the more you frame towards a system, not replace it, you will get your endeavors cleared up, well, feasibly.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from. Today we're gonna be diving back into story. Now, a couple weeks ago, we were talking about story, and that's great, right? It's always good to talk about story because stories they are the threads throughout our lives. But we want to talk specifically about learning and design and using stories. How do we actually get into actually applying these things? Because there's a bunch of ideas about stories, and we learn a lot from watching movies and TVs and comic books, and again, all good, but how do we actually do it in the work that we're doing and we're asked to do every day? So, our guest today is Mo Ash, and we're gonna welcome Mo. Mo, welcome to the Visual Lounge.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

So, Mo, why don't you do us a favor? Tell us a little bit about your background as how how are you in the position you're in? What are you doing? What kind of things should we know about you?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Um, well,

Moe's Background & Journey to The Catalyst

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I am uh A, I'm in Cairo, Egypt. So I'm pretty far away from where you are. And uh I've been in LD in general 18 years now. So not a lot, but it's significant in a way or another. I have been um I've been working in human resources, shifted to working in the UN, left the UN, went into LD, went into consultancy, and now instructional design. And right now I own a company called The Catalyst. We're focused on instructional design and building gamification systems and game-based learning products. That's what I do. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Well, and I'm so glad that you're here. So I'm I'm guessing in your experiences, you've had to use story a fair amount in a variety of ways. So, what if you're starting to kind of classify like how how should we be starting to think about where story could be applied? What would you say?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

If I'm going to be looking at the larger scheme of things, to me, any learning program synchronous, asynchronous, is actually a story. From the moment a trainer starts to get in and engage with the people, he is building up, she is building up a hook. They're building up the exposition of a story and then building up with all of the lessons to a specific climax where they will be doing the application and then reinforcing all the way to the closure or the ending where the training is set, done learning objectives are uh carried out. If we're doing this from an e-learning perspective or an asynchronous perspective, whether that's a video or an e-learning, I am trying to immerse the people in an environment of my own creation, and I'm taking them in a scaffolded fashion from one point to the other. And why am I saying one point to the other? Um, more than

Framing Learning as a Story (Freytag's Structure)

SPEAKER_00 3:32

150 years ago, there's a guy called Gustave Freitag. He has something called the universal story structure. So we start off with an exposition or an introduction where the characters and the main uh aspect of the story is being introduced. In that case, it could be an introduction, it could be the beginning of a case, it could be the beginning of a problem. And then we have a rising action where the tension starts to build. Here I am giving people probably uh an intro to foundational knowledge. I'm building up to why do we need to solve that specific problem, the needs, the pressures, the constraints, anything that is related to the training or the learning that we're building up. And then a climax where the main aspect that would relate to the learning objective is presented, and I know how to solve it and I know how to uh uh work with it. Then a following action. I reinforce, I give further data, I make sure that they can do this in a variety of ways or a diversity of different forms of application. And at the end, as Gustave says, du nou or um a closure where everything is set and we're done, training is over, or e-learning is over, video is over, and I know what I need to know. That's it. That's that's basically the overarching concept of things.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Well, thanks for being on the show then. We're done, right? No, I just just just kidding. Uh no, I actually I I I I've not heard this approach before. I like I'm familiar with the the pattern, right? Um, but when I think about it, typically I think about stories, and we there's lots of story examples out there. You can read novels, you can read classic stories, whatever it might be. Um, but I I love that you're breaking down that kind of learning journey, following that path. Um do you think from a perspective of like as an instructional designer, as a creator, um, my guess is most people are not doing that, right? They're not thinking about it that way. But what do you think the benefit of following that pattern for learning is from, say, if you're a newer designer, or maybe you're just trying to uh refresh your design process? What's what are the benefits you get out of that?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Well,

The Benefit of Story Structure & The 4 Story Forms

SPEAKER_00 5:39

the benefit is that I know the overarching structure, but that structure is not really set in stone, it's not holy. For example, you could start with the climax, you could end with the climax. It really depends on how you're going to be stitching things. For example, we have different types that we could work with or utilize. For instance, one of the ones that I could talk about is something called defeating the evil. So I have an evil that I want to defeat. That evil could be the KPI that I want to achieve, it could be that annoying manager I want to deal with. So here, overcoming evil is one of the classic story arcs. Even though we can usually predict the ending, it usually involves a lot of drama along the way. The drama here, it could be presenting challenges, it could be presenting issues to the learners to deal with, a branching scenario, even a sort, uh hotspots where they could be interacting with different challenges, um, sorry, not challenges, obstacles related to how to achieve something. So based on this, I should be putting into consideration what is the company's biggest challenge, or who's the company's arch nemesis, or we use this as something to achieve a target of sort. We use this narrative to train learners on what threats they're facing and how to how to face it or how to overcome it. There's also another one called Rags to Riches. I love rags to riches, where someone that knows nothing, starting off, we could do this in a compliance training, we can do this in a video where I'm taking people through the holes of the company. And I did this by the way, I don't mean to promote, but we did this using Camtasia at one point, where we've mounted a GoPro, we let them get introduced into the company, meet different people, and at the end, we took the story where people could see how that employee leveled up in understanding, and the more they understand, they're getting better at getting acquainted with the rest of the employees, knowing how to ask certain questions, dealing with them. It was a series. So it was all using a GoPro edited on Camtasia, and we did it. So, yeah, a little bit of promotion going on here. But anywho, here the protagonist has a humble beginning, they fight their way to the top. This is a life journey paved with struggles. So, here there's a lot of rising actions and a lot of climaxes that we need to overcome as we go. It's not single climax, but different climaxes leading to our dunement or our closure. So it's a simple narrative, could be used to describe a character who started off from nothing, but through tenacity and thirst for knowledge, ended up rising all the way to the top. That's that's another way to put it. Another one could be the quest. I love quests that could be a big one when we're doing gamification. So you're doing kind of like a DD, you're collecting, you're gaining knowledge, you're gaining applications of different formats, and then you end up with a big case, or you end up with a you struggle. And that struggle is the a chunk in the learning module that would lead you to understand and know what to do with the next challenge or the next portion that would need your efforts to it. So you're collecting on the way, it's a journey, and we could be for doing this in in uh in a visual uh in a visual way, where putting up like props on uh on on the side of the story. Now you have this, now you have this, now you have this. And as you go, all of the collections are reinforcements to you to know what you have been working with. Okay. Um, this quest is highly suitable to use when you're completing a learning module. And from someone that is going from novice to expert, as they experience the thrill of how to well overcome all of the issues in the content itself. The last one that I'm going to be talking about is um no, it's the the rebirth. I love the rebirth. The rebirth is where you use the main character or the main issue as someone that did something extremely awful, like a bad manager, and how that manager is going into their road of redemption. They used to do a lot of wrong um behaviors, they used to take a lot of wrong decisions, and now how we can correct each and every one of those as we go forward. We're still using Gustav Freitag, but we're mixing and matching between the rising, the falling, the rising, the falling, the different types of climaxes, huge climaxes, small climaxes, till we end up with a closure. So those are the types, in a way or another.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

So you you give me, it's a lot of food for thought here. And I and I love and love that you've been able to roll these out and present them in such a way that I I think it I can see how these could be applicable. I imagine, though, that there's organizations who, you know, we know in learning development, there's always a backlog, there's always more things to do. The time pressure to get things done is, you know, it's for considering it's sometimes it's critical nature, it's got to be done really quick. Sometimes it's like, man, uh, yeah, get it done, but like it does it really have to be done tomorrow. Um, but I imagine there's organizations who would there's someone out there saying, I I love these, I would love to use these, but it feels like the lift to get from the idea of like taking one of those concepts, turning it into something actionable, and then getting my company to buy in to letting me tell the redemption story of a manager feels like it might be hard. Um, and it is like value, there's value there, but like what would you say to that person who's like, I man, Mo, I really want to this would be cool, but I just don't think it's gonna either it's not gonna work for my company, it's not gonna lurk for my audience, uh, you know, and I just don't know if I can put invested time in it.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Well, there are a couple of things that I should be considering here. Number one, are you here looking

Making the Business Case for Story-Based Learning

SPEAKER_00 11:47

for um a knowledge dump? So what are you what are you asking for? You want me to to get people to answer a couple of quizzes and to answer things that they memorize? Okay, so you want only a knowledge transfer, which is not really training, but I mean it's a it's a minor form of application. I'm gonna tell you that number one, stories will be able to let people anchor an experience, and every time they're trying to do an I'm sorry, to carry out an answer, they are relating back to the experience that they went through because people do not remember knowledge, they remember those parts of the story. Number two, when I'm doing this, I need to know the constraints in the company, the pressures in the company, the norms of the company, and all of the specific type of um processes, the invisible rule book that you wouldn't tell me. I would want to get to people to immerse them in something that they can relate to. If I cannot do that, I could give them something that could look good, look nice, but I cannot guarantee that they will be able to use it on the job. I'm not going to be using people by name, I'm not going to be using characters that are a replica of real life, but I'm going to be showcasing something that once the employee is in it, like I can see myself, the employee, not the bad manager. The employee they can see themselves. Oh, okay, I can I can use this. That kind of interaction, I can copy-paste it. If this happened, the first part, which is anchoring the experience, can actually come and be manifested. It can happen. Last but not least, the time it would take me to do this in a training will be a lot. And I mean physical training or asynchronous training of sort. It will be a lot, but I might not be able to guarantee the same experience as someone that can go and enjoy a video or a visual and take decisions and actions as they go into that video. They're going into their choose their own adventure. They're going into their own choose their own adventure, a rebirth, uh, a rackster riches. Oh, I am excited. My curiosity is actually being built. And to be completely honest, the cost of doing something like this compared to a training program is a little bit less. Because a training program, I would need to get people off the floor, off the work, off something to attend. And what I'm gonna get evaluations that will be passing 85-90%, but that's not gonna guarantee something. But even if the completion rate of the story is not huge, all of those that went through it would definitely remember it and would definitely start to talk about it in the hallways, and that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that caucus rather than I'm looking for the completion rate to be supreme. I want them to chat amongst themselves because those chats will be part of the uh the chit chat that is happening between their colleagues and what they're going to be uh trying to relate to the next time a problem happens or the next time an issue arises.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Well, I, you know, I'm thinking as you're speaking about these things, I'm just kind of thinking in my head about about stories that are, you know, like, and not maybe from a learning perspective, but like yeah, there is a shared kind of live, it's not quite a lived experience, but it's a shared experience. When if you've read a book, a story, and I've read a book and a story, like, and then we come together and we talk about that, right? Like there's this this shared thing, or as uh as a role-playing game, right? Like I've I've played Dungeons and Dragons. I think I've been pretty clear on this show that about that. But like uh when I have those experiences, even though it's it's it's story, right? We're we're improving the story together, um, we do have those moments of connection that I think go beyond just that you learned a fact or an item or you could click on the right thing. So I do, I do love that. Um I imagine though, as people start to think about, okay, I could apply story here and there. Do I imagine it goes one or two ways? They either try to go so far into story that it's like so comp becomes so complicated, or maybe they don't put I could see where you like, oh gosh, you just need to push a little bit further because I've seen some half-hearted attempts at stories in my career that's like, yeah, there's a story there, but it's not a good story, it's not interesting, it's like even if it is real-ish characters, it just like feels it falls flat because it feels fake. How how do you address those kind of that kind of spectrum of like getting people to get to the the happy middle place?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Number one, it goes back all the way to the boring part, which is learning analysis. And in learning analysis, I always ask,

Finding "A Day in the Life" & Minimalist Design

SPEAKER_00 16:44

offer me a day in a life, picture me what's happening there, and I want to know quotes, I want to know words. For example, we're not in Kansas anymore. You would relate to it right away, okay? Me and you, we've been to the to the wizard of oz, okay. We we we watch we watch this together, and I I want those words that can can can can um trigger, nudge people to relate, give me that form of relevance. That's number one. Number two, we're learning designers. So, designers, we work on how we can be as minimalist as possible rather than dumb. Learning design is about how to skim and take af uh take take take off all of the excess, not try to put much. If you're doing the opposite, well, you need to go back to school, but anyway, uh, yeah, we we need to be looking at this from a minimalist perspective first. So when we're doing minimalist, hold on. That part of the story that we're mentioning, are we doing it for the show or actually taking it from a day in a life? And if it's a day in a life, is the jargon that I'm using, the terminologies that I'm using, the data that I'm using, are they essential, or it's going to be creating a cognitive load? I storeboard based on this, I create that factor, and then I go back to that SME that told me about a day in life. Does this make sense? Should I add more data? Should I add more events? Or this is something that can be reasonably relatable to what's happening in your organization or what's happening with you, even if it's a fictitious story, even if it's a story about a bunch of dragons. Is this the kind of dragon that you would find floating around in the company? Okay, I I want a replica of this. And at the end, I don't want to be

Real Trade-offs, Not Utopian Choices

SPEAKER_00 18:35

giving people during the story utopian choices or options to choose from. I want to take something out of their life where they could do a trade-off. If you do this, you're getting consequences, but also you're safe because your company encourages speed over, well, compliance. So here you're being speedy, but you're going through those consequences. You're compliant, but you're going to be losing that. I want to do this, so now it's not a story. Now it's actually almost a game. As if we're going through a game where I'm making trade-offs and I'm dealing with everything that is getting presented to me. Those are the experiences that I want to create and put in the form of a video or even an interactive e-learning.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Yeah, I I love that idea that uh you just mentioned about trade-offs, right? That like real life is messy, real life is challenging, real life rarely gives you the optimal opportunities. And and I think that's that's realistic and that's important for training, right? Because how how do you start to learn to deal with these harder choices if everything is like black and white, this is right, this is wrong, and you never have to deal with the, like you said, speed versus compliance is a great example because you know, if you've if you've dealt with those, well, what you're gonna make trade-offs. Um, you know, even even things and decisions I think about like in the software world, right? Like uh, and we should always be leaning towards the idea of like, hey, we should be more accessible, our content should be accessible, but people are having to make those trade-offs, right? If I have to spend X amount of time on this, and then what's the consequence of doing that? But if I don't do that, what's the consequence as well? And kind of whether it's financially, morally, whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

We've all been through those uh trainings and sales. I mean, I've created trainings and sales where the answer that I should choose is almost unrealistic. I mean, or it's written in a way to like it's begging me to click on it because it's the only correct answer. The other answers, I would never do this. I would never do something absurdly wrong this way. But even when we're doing branching scenarios or we're trying to use hotspots on Camtasia so we could choose what to do, I should be putting answers that are well almost all the same. But there's one trick, one thing that needs me to think to cognitively get it right. If all answers are seemingly correct, but I should be taking my time to weigh, or the the the the consequences are absolutely unrealistic, or the consequences are yeah, that happens. I am definitely, definitely immersed into that story. Otherwise, people will be going through click click after click click click click. I'm done.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

So let me ask you this. Uh, because you brought up like this idea of like, you know, there's getting people to think. And I and I think that's really important. That's that's what learning's about, right? It's not just about it. There is a level of knowing, but then we get to higher levels of thinking and whatever. Um, but um I'm curious for you. Uh think about a scenario, right? Like the sales one where maybe you got these four choices and three of them are are not the best choices, but there's one that's better, but they're close. Should people like it feels like in learning development, sometimes we punish people for wrong answers, right? Well, you're not gonna pass. You're gonna have to do whatever. Uh, but it feels like from what you're saying, is maybe maybe that's like, yeah, it's not the right answer, but how do we help someone gain learning and opportunity from wrong answers? But it feels like we're like, whatever you do, don't choose the wrong answer. Does that does that resonate with you?

Why Punishing Wrong Answers Backfires

SPEAKER_00 22:19

If I'm punishing, yeah, it is because if I'm punishing someone to do the wrong thing, yet I'm not offering them feedback, I am reinforcing from a learning standpoint to only do the right thing each and every time, then there's no room for mistake. It's it's even on a subliminal level, you're giving them the order, you're nudging them towards that, you're offering that false type of compliance. So I want you to comply by doing the right thing, but I want you to also do a choice that could be so tempting, it has something wrong in it, and discover why it's wrong. I don't like to do in my branches, I don't like to do in any assessment of sort to condemn people that they've done something wrong. I always have to give a rapid form of feedback, whether visual or written, and offer them a hint. I'm not going to spoon feed them the right answer. I'm just going to tell them, okay, this is what you did. That might be the consequence. You still have a choice to go back at it again. If it's mediocre, I'll give them sometimes since if it's mediocre, I'll give them the feedback and let them move forward. If it's wrong, like absurdly wrong, then I'm going to give them the feedback and ask them, okay, take another go, try again. This is offering them more chance, more autonomy to build the learning curve. Because from a constructivist standpoint, a simulation, an accommodation of learning happens only through failure. But if I'm going to fail and offering room for risks in a learning program, I need to give them room to bounce back and lift off from that failure. If you're only going to be condemning them, then you're just pushing them to do unethical behavior. Like, I'm going to call up my friend. What are all those answers that are required? Because, well, it's going to affect my target. It's going to affect my KPI, and they need the completion rate. Oh, they need me to finish this. But if it's something that I'm interacting with and it's giving me room to, well, work it out, I'm just going to continue on on my own because it's becoming a more plausible challenge, or I dare to say, a more fun challenge. You know how much I hate that word. But it's a more well fun as an achievement kind of fun challenge to interact with.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yeah. Well, I think about uh, you know, what story would be would be better if the the hero of the story was always perfect and never made mistakes, right? None. None of them would be better because we we like C.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

I mean if I may say something about this. One of the things that I do explain in the storytelling that

Batman vs. Superman - Why Flawed Characters Work

SPEAKER_00 25:04

why do people love Batman? Batman is relatable. The only difference is that he has more money, okay? But Batman is really anyone can be Batman, anyone can be Vishilandy. And another thing, Superman, when the comics was actually presented, it was good and then it failed miserably by TC. Why? Because Superman was an Isaiah, Superman was godlike, he was omni. So they had to introduce later kryptonite. If there's no kryptonite, there's no Superman. And that's the thing. If it's utopian, people get bored because, well, there's no curiosity. It's expected what's gonna happen eventually.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah, yeah, you you know the answer, right? They win. And that's like, okay, great. And we do we still want Batman to win, but the possibility has to be there that Batman doesn't win or Batman does eventually die. And that's you know, whole other thing going back to comic books and stories. Mo, this has been look, I man, I I always I'm the luckiest guy in the industry because I get to learn at the feet of so many wonderful people like yourself. This has been an awesome conversation. I've enjoyed it uh so much. Um, I want to give you a chance.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Well, thank you. I've been learning from you for years, by the way, just for you to know.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Well, well, thank you. I I I appreciate that. But I want others to be able to learn from

Where to Find Moe

SPEAKER_01 26:30

you or connect with you. How could people what's the best way for people to reach out or connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Um, pretty simple. Just reach out to me on LinkedIn. And if there's something business that's gonna benefit the company and the people that work here, you can reach out to me at uh our company's website. That's basically the catalyst experience.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Perfect. I love it. Uh, everyone should go reach out to you, Mo, and work with you because obviously you know what you're talking about, especially comes to story. Uh gets me pumped. I, you know, think about okay, what's the story that I get to how can I weave this into my next project? But what we like to do at the end of every show, uh, Mo is we ask our guests for their final take. So,

Moe's Final Take

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Mo Ash, what is your final take?

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Well, whenever you're thinking about a story, a learning or something that is going to be benefiting people, try always to frame the learning problem. So, framing the learning problem is trying to understand the system that you're working with, not trying to do something that would replace the system. System is the organization, the norms, the constraints, the forms of feedback, the liabilities, the pressures. Try to simulate something that is close to it so people can interact with it. If something gets completely alienated from reality, they're not going to be able to, well, feel that they're part of it. And since they're not part of it, well, they're not going to have any ownership towards it. So the more you frame towards a system, not replace it, you will get your endeavors cleared out. Well, feasibly.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Perfect. Love it. Thanks, Mo. I appreciate you joining me in the visual lounge.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Appreciate you, and thank you again for having me here.