Engaging Professionally in Community Work

Over the last two years, I have developed two interactive digital tours of Bassersdorf, the small town where I live in Switzerland. As a learning designer passionate about storytelling, I saw an opportunity to get involved and know more about the community and its people.

Soon, it became clear that the projects weren’t just about creating interactive, engaging content but more about fostering a sense of belonging and preserving cultural heritage. Through designing and developing these interactive tours, I’ve met very interesting people, many of them living here for generations, who do valuable social, environmental, and historical work. 

Community-related work can be a fantastic opportunity for people transitioning to the field to practice their instructional design and project management skills in a natural context. Here’s a high-level overview of the skills you need to bring for this kind of project:

Project management

  • Clarifying goals
  • Managing stakeholders’ expectations
  • Getting buy-in of subject matter experts and practitioners
  • Setting and keeping milestones

Instructional design

  • Research
  • Information architecture
  • Content development and writing
  • Multimedia integration
  • Experience design

Mobile digital tours

Trail Baltenswil

This tour is named after a neighboring town called Baltenswil. This is a more youthful, playful design since it is focused on K-12, teenagers, and families as users. It’s a very multimedia experience with videos, images, and interactions.

Wassertrail Bassersdorf

Wasser means Water in German. This tour has a very simple but elegant design. It focuses on appealing to young families and older adults. The main components of the tour are pictures of some of the wells in Bassersdorf and quiz questions.

Some technical details

I developed these digital tours in Articulate Rise. I used Canva to create videos and GIFs and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to edit photography and vector images. 

What Stakeholders say

I was looking for an expert who could help me develop a digital trail with innovative ideas and the highest quality standards. Fortunately, I came across Teresa Moreno, and I can truly say that her work has exceeded my expectations. I was impressed by Teresa’s professionalism, expertise, and commitment.

 

From the beginning, she strived to understand my needs and develop a customized solution that met my requirements. Her technical know-how and ability to solve complex problems are truly remarkable. What impressed me the most was the quality of the Digital Trails Teresa developed.

 

Every detail was carefully thought through and the end result was not only functional but also aesthetically pleasing. Her commitment to excellence is evident. She completed the tasks with reliability, efficiency and the highest quality.

 

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with someone with such a high level of expertise.

Jessica Lachnit, Manager in the Municipality of Basserdorf

If you’re a new learning designer who wants to gain real-world experience in learning design and project management. I encourage you to find ways to engage and bring value to your community while gaining real-world project experience. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Connect. Inspire. Change.

Let’s create meaningful learning experiences for people! I love to help other learning designers to find inspiration and thrive.

 

Do you want to know what inspires me and how I design impactful learning solutions?

 

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