Zentle Tea
Retail | Product Training | Onboarding
This interactive immerses new employees in essential product knowledge and company history, blending engaging visuals and gamified learning elements.
Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development
Target Audience: New retail floor employees of a tea shop
Tools Used: Chameleon Creator, Figma, Canva, ChatGPT
Budget: Low to Medium
Client: Zentle Tea
Year: 2025
Introduction
- Objective: Create a product onboarding training that is interactive, providing new employees with a solid foundation of Zentle Tea’s products and company history.
- Engagement: I wanted the training to be more than a standard eLearning course, so I included gamified elements, scenarios, and interactive quizzes to keep learners engaged and promote knowledge retention.
- User Experience: Develop an experience that felt seamless, where users could navigate through content easily and track their progress.
Project Goals
I developed an interactive course for Zentle Tea to equip new employees with essential product knowledge and customer service skills. The course offers a seamless, engaging experience that integrates visuals and interactive elements to support new hires in their transition to their roles.
Overview
Brand Development: To showcase my ability to design product and onboarding training with a strong brand voice, I created Zentle Tea, a retail brand rooted in calm, clarity, and ritual.
Zentle Tea’s identity is bold yet minimalist and sensory, a brand that invites you to slow down and savor. So I designed a training experience that felt the same way.
Even though Zentle Tea isn’t a real company, this concept course models real instructional goals:
- Educate staff on core products and blends
- Build confidence in making recommendations
- Reflect the emotional tone of the brand in every interaction
This training shows how product knowledge and brand identity can work hand-in-hand, creating a learning experience that feels like the company itself.
Design Process
Research:
Before starting, I spent time researching and gaining understanding of the tea industry, and identifying the target audience; new employees with varying degrees of prior product knowledge.
Concept Development:
The concept was to design a training that felt fun and modern, with a touch of whimsy to match the branding of Zentle. I used Chameleon Creator to integrate interactive elements like clickable product hotspots, scenario-based questions to situations employees would face.
Wireframes/Prototypes:
I started with a mood board to capture the look and feel of the brand; vibrant tones, fun typography, and a fresh vibe that matched Zentle’s aesthetic. I created wireframes to map out the user flow and built out a prototype to test the structure before finalizing.
The Zentle Tea training UI offers a vibrant, user-friendly experience with playful yet clean design elements. The use of earthy tones and bold buttons enhances readability and navigation, while the Pacifico and Nourd fonts add personality. This responsive design ensures a seamless experience across devices, aligning with the brand's values and enhancing user engagement.
User Interface
I used ChatGPT to generate all the illustrations. I started by creating the Zentle logo in Canva, then used ChatGPT to generate the visual identity by specifying the style and effects I wanted. These generated images became the background for the training. As I progressed with the content, I continued to request specific images from ChatGPT that would complement the material, ensuring each visual element aligned with the content being taught at that moment.
Illustrations
Interactive Quizzes: Throughout the course, employees face multiple-choice questions and drag-and-drop interactions that test their understanding of the products and brand story.
Scenarios: Interactive scenarios allow learners to choose how they would respond to various customer situations, with immediate feedback to help them improve their decision-making skills.
Progress Tracking: Learners can easily see their progress through the course, with visual indicators that show how far they’ve come and how much is left to complete.
Scenarios: Interactive scenarios allow learners to choose how they would respond to various customer situations, with immediate feedback to help them improve their decision-making skills.
Progress Tracking: Learners can easily see their progress through the course, with visual indicators that show how far they’ve come and how much is left to complete.
Key Features
The final training product is an engaging, interactive course that immerses new hires into the world of Zentle Tea. I used Chameleon Creator’s gamification features to create a sense of accomplishment with each step completed, ensuring that learners were not just absorbing information, but enjoying the process. The course includes engaging visuals, quizzes, and scenarios that are both informative and transformative.
Final Product
Balancing Engagement with Learning: It’s crucial to strike the right balance between keeping employees engaged and ensuring they absorb the material. Too much interactivity can distract from the content, so it’s important to focus on engagement in the right areas.
Accessibility: Since it was my first time using Chameleon, I considered accessibility as something to keep an eye on. Some employees might struggle with certain interactive elements, so I ensured that all key information was accessible via alternative text. I learned that it’s designed with accessibility in mind, offering responsive design, and allows for contrast between text and background for learners with low vision.
Accessibility: Since it was my first time using Chameleon, I considered accessibility as something to keep an eye on. Some employees might struggle with certain interactive elements, so I ensured that all key information was accessible via alternative text. I learned that it’s designed with accessibility in mind, offering responsive design, and allows for contrast between text and background for learners with low vision.
Lessons Learned
This project solidified my belief in the power of interactive learning experiences. It also reinforced how important it is to deeply understand the company culture and employee needs to create a truly effective training program.
For the future, I’d love to expand this training with more advanced gamification elements, like leaderboards or achievement badges, to further incentivize learner participation and performance.
For the future, I’d love to expand this training with more advanced gamification elements, like leaderboards or achievement badges, to further incentivize learner participation and performance.
Reflection
