Adaptive Help & Contextual Learning

Universal Creative, the team that designs and builds the attractions at Universal Parks & Resorts, had recently deployed PMWeb, a robust project management system that changed how architects, financial analysts, legal counsel, and outside vendors did their daily work. The system was powerful but hard to learn, and adoption suffered as a result.

As UX Designer, I led the content strategy for WalkMe, the digital adoption platform selected to close that gap by delivering contextual help directly inside PMWeb itself, rather than as a separate tool users had to leave the system to consult. I interviewed PMWeb's subject matter experts, inventoried the existing training content, built four personas, and mapped how WalkMe's tools would fit alongside the video and documentation training Universal Creative already offered.

The result was a content strategy plan covering all seven WalkMe tools, each with its own use cases, writing guide, and success metrics. I built the Walk-Thrus, tooltips, and launchers from the plan, then handed them off to the product team to maintain.

The adaptive help made PMWeb's bid process accessible to more vendors and improved the completeness and quality of submitted bids.

Universal Creative is responsible for designing and building the attractions at Universal Parks & Resorts, which includes four amusement parks and a resort. At the time, the team was also constructing a fifth park and second resort in Beijing. It's a cross-disciplinary group of architects, designers, engineers, financial analysts, legal counsel, and project managers, supported by its own IT department. PMWeb replaced a much simpler set of tools for that entire team and changed processes some employees had followed for years. It was powerful enough to manage budgets, schedules, documentation, and approvals for a project as large as a new theme park, but that power made it dense and hard to learn, and traditional training couldn't keep up with how often the system changed.

The stakes were highest for the external vendors bidding on construction work. There are only a couple of companies in the U.S. building amusement parks at this scale, and the construction process is far more specialized than standard construction. PMWeb's bid, contract, and change-order workflows reflected that: bids required specific legal documentation and a defined structure just to be considered, and a vendor who submitted an incomplete form or got the structure wrong risked being disqualified from the bid outright.

The clearest evidence came directly from users. One architect working with Creative as an external vendor said, during research, that he didn't have time to read through a 60-plus page guide to find the answer to one question. The problem was placement. Help needed to be available inside the task, not in a separate document users had to go find.

Before starting the research, I mapped PMWeb's full project lifecycle, from initiation through planning, execution, monitoring, and close, so I knew where in the process people would need help. Next, I interviewed PMWeb's subject matter experts to define the target audience and their learning goals: close the skills gap, make existing training easier to find, and reduce support tickets and errors. I then ran a SWOT analysis to weigh the strengths of on-demand digital learning against its risks before committing to WalkMe as the approach. Finally, I built four personas based on real feedback from PMWeb's user acceptance testing, which showed how differently an internal project manager and an external architect experience the same system.

Content inventory

The audit turned up 40+ existing training documents across four audiences (All, Vendor, Project, and Finance), tracked for what each one actually included: instructions, screenshots, samples, diagrams, or practice exercises. Most had instructions and screenshots. Almost none had a sample or a diagram, which shaped where WalkMe's tools needed to fill in. View the content inventory ↗

Problem statement: WalkMe was intended to provide PMWeb users with contextual learning and adaptive help accessible directly within the system. Current training methods weren't adequately preparing users with the competency required to navigate PMWeb successfully, which was causing process delays that resulted in missed milestones or deadlines. WalkMe addressed this gap by providing users with relevant on-screen guidance, tooltips, automation, and access to documentation based on their location within the application. Success was planned to be measured through user errors, support inquiries, and survey feedback.

To make sure WalkMe complemented rather than duplicated Universal Creative's existing training, I mapped it against the other channels already in place: instructor-led classes, video, and documentation. View the training ecosystem map ↗

This is the actual deliverable: a specification for each of WalkMe's seven tools, covering overview, use cases, use locations, audience segmentation, naming convention, writing guide, color and typography, and how success would be measured. It gave the product team a clear reference for each tool once they took over maintenance.

The full spec (Foundations plus all seven tools) is linked below.

View Content Strategy ↗

Next steps

• Use the Insights reports (Walk-Thru drop-off, launcher clicks, survey responses) to prioritize which content gets refined first.
• Extend persona-specific content paths, since internal staff and external vendors have very different tolerance for friction.
• Revisit the risks identified in the SWOT, like device performance and connection speed, as usage scales across a larger, more distributed vendor base.

This project was less about designing screens and more about designing a system for learning, one that had to work for an internal project manager and an external architect who only opens the tool a few times a year, without treating them the same way. Grounding the strategy in real process mapping and real user feedback, rather than defaulting to more documentation, is what turned a 60-page guide into contextual help that showed up when and where it was needed.

To comply with a non-disclosure agreement, some confidential details have been omitted or generalized in this case study. All analysis and opinions are my own and don't necessarily reflect the views of Universal Creative or NBCUniversal.