This guide is designed to give you some extra information on how scenarios work and to help you create them. It is a work in progress so please bear with us while we get it right. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let us know.
The Scenario is the overall parent structure. When creating a new scenario it will need a name and a description. This description should be used to explain the scenario and provide background information to set the scene for participants.
The scenario will also need a set of variables which will be influenced by the participants chosen answers. These variables will not be visible to the participants until they complete the scenario and review their scores. There is no limit to how many there can be, but generally it's better to try and keep things as simple as possible.
For example, these could contain values to represent how a character is feeling such as anger, fear, happiness, trust, and patience. All of these could be influenced in different ways by a participant’s chosen answers. Another example could be to represent stats relating to the participant such as health, strength, stamina, hunger, thirst and so on.
By default, new scenarios are not available for participants to complete. When you're happy that your scenario is complete you can edit it and hit the checkbox to make it available. At present there are no constraints on this action, so its down to you to check that everything is complete and working. When a scenario is under construction and not available it can still be completed by admin users in order to test it.
A scenario will be comprised of a set of questions. For each question you can add a long description and a short question text. The description will be displayed above the question text so could be used to provide more exposition or scene setting before using the question text field to ask the specific question which the participant will need to select an answer.
At present, the participant can only select one answer to a question, we will look to bring the option to select multiple answers in a future update. If you need to do this now, there is a workaround at the bottom of this guide.
Each question will also have a reference number, referred to in the app as "Question Order". This is used to uniquely identify questions within the flow of the scenario. Each answer will store the "Next Question Order" value, providing the link to the next question which the participant will see should they choose that answer. This enables branching and a more interactive experience where participants are lead down different paths. Each question in a scenario must have a unique "order" value.
You can change the order of questions after they've been created. This is so you can expand branches or add new branches at any point. The scenario builder view will automatically order questions by their order value, so its worth bearing in mind that this might make some questions appear out of order.
The first question of the scenario should have an order of "0". You will need to set one question to have this order value before the scenario can be attempted.
Depending on the scenario you are building, there could be one or many final questions which act as the end of the scenario. These will be displayed before the final scores. To set an answer as the the end of a scenario, click the "End of Scenario" button on the answer form.When a user selects an answer which ends the scenario, the system will calculate the totals for the attempt and display the summary to the participant.
There are two common ways of ending a scenario. You can either have the final question let the person know that the scenario is over and provide some context for what has happened. In this case we recommend that your "final question" only has one answer which takes the participant to their final scores. The other common pattern is to not let the person know that the scenario is going to end and just take them to their scores. The downside of this is that it doesn't provide any context.
Each question can have as many answer choices as required. Each answer needs three things: some text to describe the choice, the changes to any variables as a consequence of selecting the answer, what the next question in the order will be. The next question and the variables which the answer influences will not be visible to the participant
Question Background: You have a 10.00 am appointment. At 10.00 am, there is a knock at the door while you are working on a different case file.
Question Text: You respond by:
Answer: Ignoring the person at the door until you have finished the work you are doing
Variable Changes (No changes)
Next Question [Question 4]
Answer: Answering the door, explaining that you are finishing up another case, and telling them that you will be with them at 10.15 am
Variable Changes (No changes)
Next Question [Question 2]
Answer: Calling out to come in
Variable Changes (Fear increases by 1 point)
Next Question [Question 2]
Answer: Answering the door and asking them to come in
Variable Changes (Trust increases by 1, Understanding increases by 1)
Next Question [Question 3]
More info coming soon. What would you like to see here?
If you really need to allow the participants to select multiple answers to a question you can write the options in the question description (EG. A, B, C, D). Then provide the combinations in the answer text. (EG. Answer 1: "A", Answer 2: "A + B", Answer 3: "A + B + C", Answer 4: "A + B + C + D", Answer 5: "B + C + D"). Then each answer can influence the variables you wanted that selection to impact.