An air conditioning systems manufacturer needed to train two totally different audiences: service technicians and engineers. Each audience had its own needs and goals. The service technicians needed to hone their troubleshooting skills, while the engineers needed to be able to experiment with factors that affect the performance of the air conditioners. The client wanted both training options available on one CD-ROM.

While working with another vendor who interfaced with the client and developed the graphical interface and system design, we created a program that contains both troubleshooting scenarios and part simulators.

The troubleshooting scenarios provide the service technicians with a wide variety of known problems to investigate. While using the program, they have full online access to virtual versions of all of the tools and instructions they have with them on a typical service call, as well as the ability to take notes, measurements, and to graph test results. The program tracks the time it takes them to identify the problem and how many incorrect decisions were made during the troubleshooting process.

The engineers, on the other hand, have an open-ended, visual spreadsheet for trying out various what-if scenarios. This lets them interchange the many components of the virtual air conditioner to observe the effect of the changes on the unit's efficiency. All resulting variables from each test run are tabulated on a table so side-by-side comparisons of each run can be made. All calculations are performed using a Fortran engine created by the client. The CD-ROM program provides a visual front-end and avoids the need for manual tabulation of the collected outputs.

Director, Photoshop