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Pitch Perfect: Behind the Scenes of Building an AI Elevator Pitch Coach
When I first started sketching Pitch Perfect, I wasn’t trying to build another chatbot. I was job searching and wanted to see if AI could actually coach me and prepare me for the job interviews. Not just answer questions though, but listen, reflect, and help refine the most human thing we get to do with the interviewers: talk about ourselves. Those experiences became the seed idea for Pitch Perfect, an AI elevator pitch coach designed to help learners and professionals craft a clear, confident 60-second pitch. 🎬 Watch the early…
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Testing Lovable: Lessons from Trying to Build an AI Agent
September 2025 – Experiment Log I went into this test with a clear question:Can Lovable serve as a platform for building an AI-powered chatbot that retrieves answers from uploaded documents? What Worked Clean UI scaffolding: Lovable made it easy to spin up a front-end quickly. Uploading docs and connecting them to a chat interface was straightforward. Chunking/indexing pipeline: For plain text files (.txt), the ingestion process actually chunked content properly (e.g., my ORR refugee policy doc split into four neat chunks). Debugging support: Chat Mode let me peek under the…
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What Hackathons and Failed Prototypes Teach Us About Trust
Sometimes the way we communicate matters as much as the outcome itself. When I heard about the SheBuilds hackathon, I was excited. Alongside 4,000+ other women, I threw my hat in the ring, hopeful for a chance to build something meaningful with a global community of makers. This week, the results were announced, but not in the way you’d expect. I didn’t get an email. Neither did the thousands of others who weren’t selected. Instead, I found out from celebratory posts on LinkedIn by those who made it. First, let…
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Designing for Decisions: A Call Center Simulation Built in Twine
In this interactive prototype, I explored how simple scenario-based learning can support customer service reps in handling high-stakes conversations. Built in Twine as a low-fidelity simulation, the project focuses on decision-making, tone management, and de-escalation—critical skills in any frontline service role. Learners are dropped into a realistic escalation call and must make choices that impact the outcome. The goal is to offer learners opportunities to practice how to respond empathetically, gather details quickly, and guide the customer toward resolution—all in a safe, replayable environment. This prototype was part of my…
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Best AI Video Generators for Instructional Design: How I Use Them as an LXD
Dear readers, As a learning experience designer, I’m frequently asked what design tools I’m using. “What software should I learn to use, Yin?” or “What’s your AI toolkit?” Honestly, we live in an era where we’re spoiled for choice, or to put it bluntly, we’re drowning in AI tools. It seems that everyday, something new pops up in my feed. But how many actually help us design better learning? I’m always testing: avatar makers, 360 video backdrop generators, text-to-video platforms. Prototyping and creating graphics and videos is a large part…
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Degrees of Separation: Why the ID Job Market is Failing Its Most Qualified Candidates
The instructional design/learning experience design job market is oversaturated. This, on top of a field already misunderstood and cluttered by the confusion over titles (read my decade-old post about the misperceptions of ID). There’s a clear disconnect between what hiring teams think instructional designers (IDs) do and how we’re actually trained to do it. The following are a few key factors impacting the field and the hiring of IDs. The Legacy of Graduate-Level ID Training Instructional Design began as a specialization within graduate programs in Education, Educational Technology, and Educational…
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Yin Yak The Podcast Episode 2 Transcript
Episode 2: The Art of Not Having the Answer – On Ambiguity, Emotion, and Expression Guest: Susan Singer | Visual Artist [Podcast theme music fades in] 00:09 Yin: Hi, I’m Yin Kreher—and welcome to Yin Yak, the podcast where curiosity has no borders and learning lives at the intersections. This podcast started in a quiet church hallway. I was standing in front of a painting I didn’t quite understand. An art professor I knew stood beside me. “I’m not sure what this means,” I said, gesturing toward it. He looked…
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When XR Isn’t the Right Hook: A Design Reflection on AR for Email Phishing
As an instructional designer exploring the potential of XR, I recently set out to prototype an augmented reality (AR) learning experience to teach users how to spot phishing emails. The goal? Make email security training more immersive—less “click next,” more curiosity-driven exploration. Spoiler alert: It didn’t quite land. 🎯 The Learning Goal I wanted learners to examine a simulated inbox and interact with individual emails to decide which ones were legitimate or suspicious. Each email had visual cues: dodgy sender domains, urgent tone, suspicious links, etc. Tapping on each subject…
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Why Adobe Captivate Isn’t Enough: A Modern Take on Learning Design
So, you’re looking for an Adobe Captivate specialist? You’re not alone. Those searches dominate my site analytics. Captivate has long been a go-to for interactive eLearning. But here’s the thing: tools are just ingredients. A useful and meaningful course takes more than clicking through slides or dragging and dropping widgets. It requires thoughtful design, storytelling, and an understanding of how people actually learn. Captivate can be useful, but it’s not a magic wand. And if you’ve ever sat through a dull, forgettable training developed with Captivate, you know what I…
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Yin Yak The Podcast Episode 1 Transcript
Episode 1: Muscle Memory Under Pressure – From Ice Rinks to ERs (audio episode) Guest: Julian Cha | Nurse & Healthcare Learning Strategist [Intro music fades in] 00:14 Yin: Hi there, welcome to Yin Yak The Podcast, where curiosity has no borders and learning happens at unlikely intersections. Today’s curious question is: ‘How do we help learners develop the kind of muscle memory that professionals can rely on when it matters most?’ To explore this, I’m joined by Julian Cha. Julian, please tell us a little about yourself. 00:38 Julian:…
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Introducing Yin Yak The Podcast Trailer (Transcript)
🎵 [Lively, curious background music fades in] Hi there, I’m Yin Kreher—and welcome to Yin Yak, the podcast where curiosity has no borders, and learning happens in unexpected intersections. You might know Yin Yak as a newsletter. Well now, we’re going audio—because some ideas? They need a little room to breathe… to wander… and maybe to yak a little too. When I started the newsletter, I wanted to create a space where we don’t just consume information, we sit with it, turn it over, and explore the edges. This podcast…
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From Quad Axel to Surgery: What Figure Skating Teaches Us about Psychomotor Skill Development
[First published in LinkedIn. This is a backup copy.] Ilia Malinin, the reigning world champion and American figure skating sensation, also the self-proclaimed “quadgod,” can spin 1620° in midair. That is four and a half full rotations off the ground. He made history by landing the first-ever quadruple axel in competition. “How does he do that?” is a question both fans and competitors ask with awe. Of course, Ilia is an elite athlete. But I am not here to dissect world-class athleticism. What I’m after is the learning and instruction…