1. Sandboxes: Building Safe Places to Explore & Make Mistakes
Learning 2018

2. Our Problem Multiple audiences
Technical Developers – write code all day
Don’t want to be told what to do
Technical Manager – manage coders, can write some code
Think they can code, but need to be successful
Buyers – Business level decision makers
Don’t waste their time explaining things they don’t care about
Product is “powerful” – so not easy to learn in 7 minutes
Not all of the benefits are obvious until you play with them
Explain the audiences, even different types of developers (Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, etc)
“Powerful” = complex (shhhh!)

3. Learn/Play/Build Model
Initially designed as a progression
Learn = videos and courses – more structured
Play = activities and exercises – guided, but open for exploration
Build = unstructured and open – links to additional support

4. Quick Video/Demo View the InterSystems IRIS Experience site

5. What have we learned? 71% would prefer some guided steps
Most people did not know what to do in our empty sandbox
80% didn’t need examples in their domain (moderately prefer, don’t care)
All over the place on starting preference
Start with Play, and learn as you go if needed
Some like structure and want to learn and be successful
Start with Build, but quickly go backwards to figure out what to do
People say “I just want a sandbox to play”, but when they get there, it is empty and there is nothing to play with. They wander around a bit and then typically get lost and give up.
So we needed to give them options to quickly/easily do something to help them get going.
Two different personas
Need to use the product (and don’t know it), so willing to start at learn and progress (will invest time)
Developer/Evaluator – very technical. Wants to get hands on as soon as possible. Assumes they should start in the sandbox, so just give them small steps to get going, but then get out of their way. They will come back and learn as needed.

6. What is next Building “QuickStarts” for Build
Get going on a topic in 5 minutes
Faster intros
More info on their choices
Why pick one over the other?
How long will they take?
What knowledge is required?
Using xAPI to track activity within sandboxes
May change names of steps to match common terms

7. Discussion and Q&A What models have been successful for you?
What other free-form experiences do you design/incorporate?
What elements are key to making a “safe place” to learn?
How do you balance guidance and safety with space to experiment?

8. Feel free to play with our experiences
Thank You!
Feel free to play with our experiences
learning.intersystems.com