Preventing Conflict in Creative Businesses: The ₦10 Million Contract

The instructional challenge was to create a practical learning experience that helps creative professionals recognise project risks and make better decisions before those risks develop into disputes.

I designed Preventing Conflict in Creative Businesses: The ₦10 Million Contract as a scenario-based, self-paced eLearning experience centred on a fictional creative business in Lagos.

Learners follow Amara, a creative entrepreneur navigating a client project involving a corporate client representative, a finance contact and an external commercial photographer.

As project information and communication unfold, learners examine realistic business documents, identify potential misunderstandings and consider appropriate actions.

The experience is designed to connect risk prevention with the decisions creative professionals make during ordinary project delivery.

Instead of presenting business protection as a collection of abstract rules, the module places learners in a recognisable professional context and asks them to apply judgement.

The learning experience combines a recurring scenario, character dialogue, realistic project records, guided decision-making and explanatory feedback.

I was responsible for the instructional design and development of the learning experience, including:

• Defining the performance challenge and target audience.

• Establishing the instructional objectives and scenario structure.

• Developing the fictional business context and recurring characters.

• Writing the scenario dialogue, learner instructions and decision prompts.

• Creating the detailed instructional storyboard.

• Redesigning the original Storyline-oriented concept for Articulate Rise 360.

• Specifying the screen-by-screen and block-by-block learner experience.

• Developing realistic fictional project documents and supporting resources.

• Planning visual environments, character states and supporting graphics.

• Designing opportunities for learners to analyse information and practise professional judgement.

• Preparing production-ready development documentation.

The project demonstrates my ability to translate complex professional knowledge into practical, contextualised learning.

1. Starting with workplace performance

The learning experience was designed around decisions that professionals must make, rather than a list of concepts they must remember.

The central question was:

What should a creative professional notice, ask, document or clarify before proceeding with a client project?

This performance focus shaped the scenarios, resources and learner activities.

Learners are encouraged to examine information critically and consider the implications of their choices.

2. Creating an authentic professional context

I developed a fictional Lagos creative studio and a recurring cast of characters.

Amara serves as the central creative entrepreneur.

Mr Adeyemi represents the corporate client.

A finance representative introduces the financial and administrative dimensions of the project.

Tunde, a commercial photographer, represents an external creative collaborator.

These characters allow the learning experience to explore how expectations and information move between different project stakeholders.

The recurring environment helps learners understand the project as a connected business situation rather than a series of unrelated questions.

3. Using realistic documents as learning materials

A distinguishing feature of the project is the use of a set of 12 fictional but commercially realistic business documents.

These documents were prepared as individual Word and PDF resources and organised into a downloadable pack.

They support a document-based learning approach in which learners examine project information rather than rely exclusively on explanatory text.

The instructional value lies in asking learners to identify what the available information establishes, what remains unclear and what action may be needed.

This supports evidence-based professional judgement.

4. Integrating multiple stakeholder perspectives

Client disputes often arise because different people hold different assumptions about the same project.

The scenario introduces client, finance and external collaborator perspectives so learners can consider how communication, responsibilities and expectations intersect.

The aim is to help learners avoid making decisions based solely on their own understanding of the situation.

5. Scaffolding professional decision-making

The learning experience uses guided analysis and progressively more applied questions.

Learners encounter project information, identify relevant concerns, consider available responses and review feedback explaining the implications of their decisions.

This structure supports learners who may be unfamiliar with formal risk-management approaches.

The goal is not to turn learners into legal specialists but to improve their ability to recognise when clarification, documentation or further advice is necessary.

6. Designing feedback for transfer

Feedback is intended to explain the reasoning behind a recommended action.

For example, rather than simply identifying an option as appropriate, feedback can connect the choice to clearer expectations, reduced ambiguity or better evidence of agreed decisions.

This approach supports transfer to situations beyond the fictional scenario.

The module emphasises applied judgement through scenario-based questions and document analysis.

Learners are encouraged to recognise incomplete information, identify potential risks and evaluate possible responses.

Feedback explains the practical implications of choices and reinforces the importance of clear communication, documentation and early intervention.

The activities are intended to support performance in authentic professional situations rather than simply test recall of legal or business terminology.

This project demonstrates the value of transforming specialist knowledge into practical learning for non-specialist audiences.

My professional experience in legal practice and alternative dispute resolution informed the identification of realistic project risks and the design of decision points.

However, the instructional design challenge was not to reproduce legal training. It was to identify the behaviours that could help learners prevent avoidable problems in their daily work.

The use of recurring characters, realistic documents and guided decisions helped connect professional principles with the situations learners are likely to encounter.

The transition from Storyline to Rise 360 also reinforced an important design lesson: effective instructional design requires flexibility in implementation while maintaining clarity about the desired learner performance.