Brew & Belong: New Barista Onboarding
An interactive, scenario-based onboarding experience designed to help new baristas practice active listening and customer communication through realistic workplace conversations.
Have you been breaking trust?
My Role
LX Designer
Audience
New hired baristas
Project Type
Scenario-Based eLearning
Tools
Articulate Storyline 360, Canva, AI-assisted ideation
Duration
5–7 minute portfolio sample
“I didn't want new baristas practicing on real customers. I wanted them practicing on Emma first”
Problem
New hires without café experience are often trained on paperwork and drink recipes, but not on the moment-to-moment judgment calls that actually shape a customer's experience. Greetings feel inconsistent because new baristas haven't built the confidence yet. Complaints get mishandled because there's no space to practice before it counts. Rush hour turns stressful because prioritization is a skill, not an instinct. And service stays uneven across the team because no one gets feedback until a customer is already unhappy.
The result is a familiar one for any frontline environment: inconsistent service, avoidable mistakes in the first few shifts, and new hires who feel thrown in rather than set up to succeed.
Solution
Brew & Belong is a scenario-based onboarding simulation that puts new baristas in front of realistic customer interactions — before their first real shift. Learners are welcomed by Greg, the store manager, and paired with Bryan, a peer "barista buddy" who offers optional coaching without ever handing over the answer. From there, they work through branching customer scenarios where multiple responses are plausible, but each one leads somewhere different.
The design is built to:
Build confidence through low-stakes practice, so the first time a barista handles a complicated order isn't in front of a real customer
Reinforce active listening and order accuracy, using confirmation and clarification as trainable habits, not assumed skills
Show, not tell, the consequences of a choice — customer reactions and manager feedback respond directly to what the learner picks
Keep coaching optional and learner-directed, so support is available without interrupting the learner's sense of ownership
The full experience (mapped out below) extends this same approach across a Welcome, Orientation, a series of Practice Scenarios, Reflection, a timed Final Challenge, and a cumulative Performance Dashboard. The sample below walks through one complete scenario from the Practice Scenarios stage: A Complicated Order.
Tools Used
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Articulate Storyline 360
I built Brew & Belong in Storyline to take advantage of branching triggers, layered dialogue states, and slide-level variables — the combination needed to make a scenario feel like it's actually responding to the learner's choice rather than just routing them down a hallway.
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Microsoft Word
Before opening Storyline, I scripted and storyboarded the full scenario in Word — dialogue, branching logic, and on-screen text — so the instructional intent was locked in before any development began.
“There isn't always one perfect response. Sometimes you'll have a few good options, and each one can lead to a different customer experience."
— Bryan, Barista Buddy”
Project Outline
Meet the Learner
Jamie, 19, first café job. Learns best by doing, feels anxious during busy shifts, and values immediate, practical feedback. Jamie is the persona I designed every branch and every piece of coaching around — someone who needs permission to try, fail safely, and try again before the stakes are real.
Mapping the Experience
Before storyboarding a single screen, I mapped the full learner journey to make sure each scenario had a clear job to do within the larger arc.
Designing for the Brand
Brew & Belong has its own fictional brand identity, carried through consistently across every screen:
Colors: Warm Cream, Espresso, Forest Sage, Terracotta, Charcoal
Typography: Poppins SemiBold for headers, Inter/Atkinson Hyperlegible for body text
The palette and illustration style were chosen to feel like a real independent coffee shop — warm, unpolished-in-a-good-way, and distinct from the generic corporate-training look many onboarding modules default to.
Storyboarding a Branching Scenario
The sample scenario, A Complicated Order, puts the learner behind the register as a customer adds modifications to her drink order one at a time — oat milk, half sweet, cold foam — before the learner ever gets to respond. The learner then chooses how to close out the interaction:
Designed for Ambiguity
Deliberately, there's no single "correct" answer highlighted on screen. Confirming the order out loud is the strongest choice, but asking for clarification is validated as a legitimate instinct too — just one that a confident repeat-back usually handles more smoothly. That ambiguity is the point: it mirrors the real judgment calls new baristas have to make, and it lets Bryan's coaching feel like guidance rather than a hint system.
See It in Action
Select View Course to try A Complicated Order for yourself.
Results & Reflection
Because Brew & Belong is a fictional client project, these aren't measured outcomes — they're the success targets I'd design toward and evaluate against if this were a live rollout:
Level 1: Learner reaction survey
Level 2: Scenario decision accuracy
Level 3: Manager observation during the new hire's first week
Target KPIs: 95% completion · 90% correct service-recovery decisions · 20% reduction in customer complaints · increased learner confidence ratings
Building this project end-to-end — without a real client's constraints, but with a real client's rigor — gave me room to make deliberate calls I don't always get to make on assigned work: designing branches with no clearly "best" answer, writing coaching that supports without steering, and holding the visual brand consistent from wireframe to final build.
Let’s Connect
If you're interested in seeing more examples of how I apply learning theory to design, feel free to reach out. I’d love to share additional projects and insights from my work as a Learning Experience Designer.
www.linkedin.com/in/marilu-oliva/
marilu.fabiola5215@gmail.com