🎬 I Let Learners Pick Their Own Guide — And Then the Course Got Weird (in the Best Way)

Okay, so. Variables.

If you're anything like me, variables showed up in your Storyline life somewhere around the time you thought, "I've figured out triggers. I've figured out conditions. I am basically an instructional design wizard." And then a variable walked in and said, "Hold my coffee."

For this week's challenge, I wanted to do something more than a name field and a personalized "Good morning, Shannon!" on slide two. I wanted variables to actually change the experience not just decorate it.

So I built The Director's Cut. And it got a little out of hand. In the best possible way.

The Concept

The learner plays a creative director facing three high-stakes instructional design decisions giving feedback on a training script, reviewing a course design, and navigating a stakeholder who wants a two-hour course turned into a twenty-minute video (we've all been there).

Before any of that happens, the learner does two things:

1. Picks their Director Style — The Visionary, The Pragmatist, or The Storyteller
2. Enters their name

And here's where it gets fun. That style selection doesn't just slap a badge on a results screen. It determines which AI avatar guide travels with them through the entire course — and that guide sees the same scenario the learner does, annotates it in their own voice, reacts to their decisions, and delivers a personalized closing message at the end.

Three completely different course experiences. One build.

What's Actually Under the Hood

Let me walk you through the cool stuff, because there's a lot of it.

🎯 A Persistent HUD Strip

At the top of every screen sits a heads-up display — navy blue, Company branded — showing the learner's name, their Director Style badge, three progress dots that fill as they complete each module, and a five-star confidence meter that builds in real time based on how they rate themselves after each decision.

It updates live. No page refresh. No Storyline variables. Just localStorage doing its thing across Code Blocks.

🎭 Three AI Avatar Guides (Built with Articulate AI Avatars)

Meet Casey (The Visionary), Jordan (The Pragmatist), and Morgan (The Storyteller).

Each one has a completely distinct personality. Casey challenges you to find the big idea. Jordan wants your evidence. Morgan is looking for the human being in the room.

And here's the part that made me a little too proud of myself: the learner picks their style on the intro screen, and that single choice determines which of the 33 recorded avatar videos loads throughout the course. Intro, module openers, debrief reactions, closing message — all personalized. All automatic. All from one variable.

📝 Annotated Documents with Per-Guide Notes

In each module, the learner reviews a real document — a bloated training script, an approved course outline, a sponsor email before making their call. Four sections of each document are highlighted in amber.

Tap a highlight and a tooltip pops up with your guide's note. In their voice. Reacting to that specific line.

Casey's note on the six-objective course outline: "Six learning objectives. For a four-minute video. This is the problem right here."

Jordan's note on the same line: "Six objectives listed at the END of the video. Objectives belong at the start, and there should be one — maybe two. This list signals a scope problem."

Morgan's note: "Six things to remember. Do you know what learners actually remember? One thing. Maybe two if it moved them."

Same highlight. Three completely different lenses. One variable.

✅ Decisions + Confidence Sliders

After reviewing each document, the learner makes their call Option A (the safe choice) or Option B (the harder, better one). Then they rate their confidence on a 1–5 slider.

Both values get written to localStorage. The debrief video that loads is determined by both the learner's Director Style AND which option they chose — so there are six possible debrief videos per module. Eighteen total across the course, plus three closing videos on the results screen.

I may have created a small spreadsheet to keep track of all this. It was a lot of spreadsheet.

🏆 The Results Screen

At the end of the course, the learner gets a personalized Director Profile card showing:

• Their name and style badge (in their style color purple for Visionary, green for Pragmatist, orange for Storyteller)
• All three decisions laid out with what they chose
• A confidence star rating calculated from their running total across all three modules
• A bold calls counter — how many times they chose Option B
• A personalized signature paragraph that changes based on their bold call count

Then they hit "Hear from your guide" and get a closing video that feels like a genuine send-off — not a generic "great job!" screen.

The Variables at Work

Here's a quick look at what's living in localStorage by the time a learner hits the results screen:

Eight variables. One genuinely personalized experience.

What I Learned (Besides "Maybe Don't Plan 33 Videos on Week One")

A few honest takeaways from this build:

Variables are most powerful when they change the relationship, not just the content. The learner's name appearing on slide five is nice. Their guide knowing which option they picked and reacting to it specifically? That's a different thing entirely. That's the course feeling like it's paying attention.

localStorage is your best friend for cross-block persistence in Rise 360. Storyline variables live in Storyline. If you're building Code Blocks that need to talk to each other, localStorage is how you make that happen. Write from one block, read from another. The HUD strip updates the moment anything else writes to it.

AI avatars change what's possible in personalized learning. Without Articulate AI Avatars, this course would have required either one generic guide (less impact) or three humans on camera (significantly more budget). Having three distinct personalities voiced and embodied by AI avatars — each reacting to the same scenario in completely different ways — is something that genuinely wasn't practical at this scale before now.

And yes, I built this with Claude as my co-creative partner. The architecture, the Code Blocks, the scenario content, the annotation voices, the scripts — all of it was a genuine collaboration. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: AI doesn't replace the instructional designer. It makes the instructional designer dangerous.

Try It

The Director's Cut

Pick your Director Style. Enter your name. See what your guide notices that you might have missed.

And if you're a Pragmatist who chose Option B on all three decisions with a confidence score of 5 every time — Jordan has some thoughts for you. Good ones. 😄

Oh, and one more thing. When you finish the course and get to your Director Profile, there's a little button waiting for you at the end: ↺ Try a different Director Style.

Because let's be honest — you're going to pick The Storyteller, feel very seen, and then immediately wonder what Jordan the Pragmatist would have said about your choices. (Spoiler: Jordan has opinions. Jordan always has opinions.)

All three guides are worth meeting. Go collect them all. 🎬

Built in Rise 360 with Code Blocks, Articulate AI Avatars, and an embarrassing number of localStorage variables. Co-created with Claude (Anthropic) as an AI design partner.