Helping a ceramic studio turn mistakes into moments of trust
Customer Service Recovery Experience
Project Context: This project was completed as a freelance engagement with Fire Me Up during my transition into corporate learning and development. The studio owner supported my professional growth by allowing me to design this learning experience in exchange for portfolio rights. All content has been adapted for portfolio presentation with the client's permission.
My role: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Graphic and UX Designer, xAPI Implementation
Tools Used: Articulate Storyline 360, Adobe Creative Suite, Visual Studio Code, JSHint, Veracity LRS, MindMeister, Google Docs
Results:
Reduced customer loss from broken pottery incidents
Empowered staff to handle recovery independently
Tracked behavioral data to identify coaching opportunities
When something breaks in a pottery studio, more than just clay is at risk.
Picture this: A new instructor is carrying a customer's freshly glazed bowl to the kiln. It slips. It shatters. The customer isn't there yet, but they will be — in an hour, expecting to take their project home. What happens next determines whether that customer ever comes back.
For Fire Me Up Studio, this scenario played out too often — and the outcome was always the same. Staff would panic, avoid the customer, and leave managers to clean up the mess. Frustrated customers. Lost business.
A franchise-ready business model at risk. The studio needed to change the script.
To design effective training, I needed to understand what employees were really thinking when pottery broke.
Working with the studio manager and experienced instructors, I identified the real barriers:
Fear of confrontation. Staff worried the customer would be angry or demand a refund they couldn't authorize.
Uncertainty about next steps. Should they offer a discount? Replace the item? Apologize and move on?
Lack of accountability. Without a clear process, it was easier to avoid the situation and hope someone else would handle it.
These weren't knowledge gaps; they were confidence gaps. Employees needed a safe space to practice making tough calls before facing a real customer.
We built the training around the question employees asked most: "What do I do when I break someone's work?"
Working with a subject matter expert, we mapped out every decision point in a recovery scenario:
Acknowledge the mistake immediately: Don't wait. Don't hide.
Assess the damage: Can it be repaired? Replaced? Remade?
Offer solutions: Provide the customer with options, not excuses.
Document the incident: Update inventory. Record what happened.
Follow through: Ensure the customer leaves feeling heard.
Each step became a decision point in the scenario. Employees would choose how to respond — and experience the consequences of their choices in real time.
Meet Kaolin
To reduce the pressure, we gave learners a lifeline: a mentor named Kaolin. At any point in the scenario, employees could ask Kaolin for advice.
She'd walk them through the situation and offer guidance, just like a real manager would. This safety net made learners more willing to engage with tough decisions rather than guess or give up.
We also tracked how often learners used the mentor. If someone kept asking for help on the same type of question, the data revealed a coaching opportunity.
Making Mends
We turned the broken pottery into a visual metaphor for progress. At the start of the scenario, learners see a shattered piece.
As they make correct decisions throughout the recovery process, the pottery begins to mend. By the end, if they've handled the situation well, the piece is fully restored.
This visual reinforced the message: mistakes can be fixed. Recovery is possible. You just have to take the right steps.
Just the right touch
The studio aesthetic needed to feel authentic, not corporate. I designed custom scenes using the studio's brand colors and real elements from their space — kilns, pottery wheels, and shelves of finished work.
I created animated dashed-line paths that guided learners through the story, moving them visually from one decision point to the next.
When employees chose the wrong response, the path looped them back to try again — a visual reminder that recovery means learning from mistakes.
The studio didn't just want training — they wanted insight.
Using xAPI, I tracked every decision learners made:
• Which questions did employees answer incorrectly most often?
• How frequently did they use the mentor for help?
• Did asking for help improve their performance on later questions?
This data gave managers a clear picture of where their team struggled — and where to focus coaching efforts. For instance, if most employees struggled with offering solutions to customers, the manager knew to role-play that skill in team meetings.
At the end, employees earned proof of completion.
Using JavaScript, I built a certificate generator that pulled the learner's name and completion date into a custom PDF. Employees could download, print, or email it — and the studio kept records of who had completed the training. This small feature created a sense of accomplishment and gave the studio documentation for their franchise training requirements.
Once the project was fully developed in Storyline and reviewed by the client, I moved to the next phase of customizing the experience by implementing xAPI and JavaScript.
The result? Staff stopped avoiding customers — and started recovering them.
By giving employees a safe space to practice tough conversations, we built their confidence. The scenario didn't just teach them what to say — it showed them the consequences of their choices and gave them a path to fix mistakes. Managers reported fewer customer complaints and more proactive follow-up from staff.
Employees felt empowered to handle incidents independently instead of waiting for someone else to step in. And the studio gained visibility into where their team needed support, using data to refine their coaching and improve the experience over time.
Effective learning design isn't about information transfer — it's about behavior change
This project taught me that employees didn't need more rules to memorize. They needed practice making decisions under pressure, with the freedom to fail safely. By designing consequences into the experience and giving learners agency, we created training that actually changed how they showed up at work.
The visual storytelling also reinforced the emotional stakes: when pottery breaks, relationships break too. But both can be repaired with the right actions. I'm proud that this work helped the studio turn their biggest operational pain point into a strength — and gave their team the tools to turn mistakes into moments of trust.
What’s next? After revisiting this project after a few years, what I would do is provide additional recommendations to help support employees were to create a quick reference job aid that includes the procedures and sample language employees could use. As well as adding a transparency statement on the site and studio forms.
What I plan on doing…
I want to take the data that I have in the LRS that was pulled from the project users' experiences here and leverage Claude to aggregate the data and show me some themes and suggestions. Next, my goal is to use Tableau to showcase the results that Claude procured.
Additionally, I want to create a few “associates” through different prompts in Claude to go through this learning experience and provide feedback and feelings to see, depending on where they were in their employee journey, and their sentiments.
Stay tuned!