Three Quick Strategies You Can Use Today To Write Kick Ass Scenario Questions…That Make Adults Think

We all want to write powerful scenario questions. The kinds of questions where our learner reads every single option. Better yet, they’re learning from considering those options.

And, of course, they’re making a compelling decision. One that helps them get better at this type of decision making in their own lives.

The worst thing is to have an option in your scenario that the learner immediately knows is the right answer. They know immediately “Yeah, I know that one’s wrong because it’s the longest option.”

So you want to write questions and scenario options that are powerful, meaningful, and that none of those feel like “throwaways”.

In this article you will learn some of my top tips and practices for:

• crafting meaningful questions,
• making your scenario more valuable as a thinking tool for your learners,
• streamlining the conversation with your subject matter experts when brainstorming thought provoking options,
• and how to use stories to help make the scenarios more compelling for adults to work through.

But first, let’s solidify a couple of things. Namely the anatomy of scenarios. I like to call these “choice moments”.

Let’s dig into what makes up this beautiful little choice moment.

Choice Moment Anatomy

Now the meat of it is three things:

1. We’ve got a setup for our decision.
2. Then options/decisions on how to solve it or address it.
3. Then a consequence.

Choice moment detail from Broken Coworker

Tip: Three works well for the number of decisions. More than three you’re going a little too complex. So if this happens to you, you want to split that up into two choice moments, and each with three ways to handle the situation.

The more options you give somebody the more mental fatigue and analysis paralysis you give them. Exception here is unless your scenario means to reinforce that kind of overwhelm, as in the context demands it. If it does, do it strategically, and in other choice moments stick to three options.

Option screen with many sources from The Lab Interactive Experience

As a side note, I fluctuate between two to three options when I craft my scenarios.

When well executed, and in the right context…two options (or alternate choice questions) can be very powerful. Especially if your story is about people who have to make decisions quickly. That’s a great space to use this strategy.

A fantastic example of the alternate choice strategy from Workplace War Zone by Kimberly Goh

For now we’re going to focus on using the three choice strategy.

A great example of the three choice mechanic from Whose Wedding Is It Anyway by Don Rickard

So the flow is: You have a setup that brings you to this choice moment. After you make a decision on how to proceed, you experience the consequence.

Consequences have nothing to do with “feedback” in the traditional sense.

Consequences are the result that happens from taking action.

Always think Action — > Reaction.

So the consequence of a decision can never be:

“Good work!”

OR

“You did that well!”

OR

“Correct!”

Default quiz feedback screen in Articulate Storyline.

The consequence shows the learner what happens as a result of what they chose to do. You have to be able to imagine that.

So, does this bring up a visual for you?

Judi showed up early to work the next day.

How about this one?

Judi started crying.

Whatever happens, has to be something you’d be able to experience. Focus on outcomes that someone can see in their mind’s eye.

Bonus: If your consequence is compelling and you’ve structured it in the right way, there’s usually no need for feedback!

The consequence of a decision from Whose Wedding Is It Anyways by Don Rickard

Let your learner draw their own conclusions from the consequences. Just like you would if you touched a hot iron it burnt you. Nobody has to go up and say that was “Incorrect”. Nuff said.

Now that we’re clear on the three components of a scenario or choice moment.

Let’s get to some tips!

Options, not too many, but too detailed!

Common conundrum: the options are way too long.

Yep, I’ve seen this many times…options that are so long that they no longer fit the constraints of your question (or screen!)

Now when you’re designing an interactive experience, UX and UI is very important.

The way something looks affects our decision making process.

If it’s inconsistent or visually skewed it takes us out of the experience. The way your options come across visually will impact how someone makes that decision.

Here’s some trouble with writing great choices…let me know if you’ve experienced any of these?

1. Your scenario is complex, and the choices are also complex.
2. The scenarios are dialogue driven. And you can’t say all the necessary things in the allocated space!!
3. The options that are right are always the longest ones.
4. The options are so long that your learner can hardly make sense of what the difference between them truly is.

So the strategy to tackle this problem is simple.

I didn’t come up with it, I borrowed it from video games. And this is especially true in games that are very dialogue and conversation heavy.

The strategy I suggest here, allows your learner to focus on the big picture and key steps. Instead of focusing on the minutiae of specific words. This makes it easier for them to apply and think this way in future situations. They’re learning the key ideas behind the decisions, and then seeing them play out if.

Deus Ex gameplay that shows this principle of grabbing the “ethos” of the action beautifully.

For example if we are talking about delivering amazing customer service:

How do you help this customer?

1. Mr. Smith, you’re being unreasonable, that’s not what I meant, and I’m very sorry about what happened. I completely understand.
2. Mr. Smith, your tone is getting quite condescending. I will not be able to continue this conversation if you continue talking to me this way.
3. Mr. Smith, I can see why you’re upset. I’d be upset too if this happened to me. Let’s see if we can issue a credit to your account right away.

You reduce the specific dialogue (what they should say) to just the gist of the action.

Sample Options:

• Apologize
• Confirm
• Sympathize

One of the things you can do very quickly is put emphasis on the types of actions that are available to each learner in a similar situation.

If the learner clicks “apologize” you might still offer the option to read what that dialogue reply looks like, before they decide to do it.

Takeaway: To emphasize the thinking and key actions, not the details of an action, using “gist statements” is a good strategy.

What you’re doing here is you’re thinking about your adult learner.

Where are they making the major errors?

Are those errors, false beliefs, assumptions represented in your choices?

Are they represented in the language you’re using to describe them?

This also allows you to speed up your draft process, when working with your subject matter experts (SMEs).

You can ask: How do people mess up in situations like this? Do they apologize or they get defensive? or do they do X?

And voila! You have these three options down on paper.

The hardest part can be to come up with valid alternatives, that sound credible, AND teach a lesson. Now you’ve got the big idea behind each choice you can ask for more detail, but now it’s focused.

So, you can ask your SME this: Okay, what does that sound like when somebody apologizes? or what does that sound like when they’re being defensive?

Solid example of options that all look equally valid, yet brief, from Decisions That Matter

You can make this as complicated as you want later on. But upfront, make it simple with these powerful statements about the kinds of actions somebody takes. Especially if you’re not focused on the details you’re focused on the big picture.

Beautiful Together: Scenarios and Storytelling

So first let’s talk about what an interactive story is and how scenario questions fit into the mix. This will give context to what I will be discussing next.

So an interactive story is a framework that at its simplest has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And let’s say you’ve got a target audience (humans) you want to motivate, influence, persuade or inspire..

But, they’re right now looking at the world in a certain way.

We can call this the “old Perspective” and at the beginning of our story we begin with the old perspective. Our target audience has this “Old P”

At the end, when someone’s gone through the journey, and all the decisions, they have a new perspective. So we are working to get our target audience to have this “New P”

So the middle, where the meat of the journey is, we have all these decisions. I call them choice moments, a.k.a scenarios. These are strung together to form a logical sequence of challenges our hero needs to overcome. The work the character in our story needs to do to get the insight/skill they need.

Choice Page from A Millennial Investment Story by John Trupiano

In each choice moment they make a decision on how things are going to work out. What this also does is it makes your learner feel like they’re in charge of that story and in charge of the outcome. This is huge for engagement, and for getting someone invested in the story (and finishing it!)

The decisions mean more because they form a journey, they have impact on the hero of the story, and they create an open loop that someone will work to close. A fabulous way to add extra context, and deep engagement to an otherwise disconnected set of scenario questions.

So, I hope today’s post showed you how to improve the quality of your scenario questions.

Now I want to turn it over to you:

Let me know the one strategy you’re going to take action on first!