Nova Expedition: Testing AI Avatars in New Hire Onboarding

Hi everyone, 

For my Nova Expedition experiment, I created a short Rise microlearning called “Your First 5 Minutes: Your Onboarding Essentials.”

My goal was to use the AI avatars to add value without becoming a distraction or over-using it.

I used the avatar in three intentional moments:

• Opening: seated at a desk for a personal welcome
• Who to Ask: standing in a collaboration space to reinforce support and connection
• Closing: standing in a broader workplace setting to suggest belonging and integration

One thing I wanted to avoid was using the avatar simply as a narrator for every section. Instead, I used Rise interactions for the content that was better explored or practiced, and used the avatar for sections requiring a human presence with a emotional and social message.

I used the AI assistant to create the course outline and the Rise course. Next, I refined it include realistic experiences new hires are likely to face. For example, in the “Who to Ask” section, I changed the interaction from broad support categories into realistic first-week situations. Rather than asking learners to identify categories like “Tech Issues” or “Role-Specific Questions,” the scenarios focused on recognizing situations they might actually encounter and deciding where to go for help.

A few observations from working with the avatar tool:

• I appreciated the diversity in the available characters.
• My first avatar generation used the same hand gesture repeatedly and felt a little unnatural. By the second and third generations, the gestures looked much more natural.
• When background characters were included, I sometimes noticed their gestures moving in sync with the main narrator, which made the scene feel less realistic and slightly distracting.
• I would love to see a version-history option for avatar customizations. The “save character” option is helpful, but saving every variation just in case I want to return to one later could become difficult to manage.

I also found myself thinking more intentionally about backgrounds than I expected. At one point, a generated scene included a metrics-heavy team dashboard. For a new-hire onboarding experience, that felt out of place. I wanted the visual environment to communicate orientation, support, and psychological safety rather than performance pressure, so I shifted toward resource hubs, collaborative spaces, and welcoming office settings.

Course link

I look forward to seeing what everyone else is creating!