The Concept
During my time at Pantheon as a Technical Instructional Designer, I developed courses to onboard new customers to the Pantheon platform. Effective onboarding helped users become comfortable with unfamiliar tools while also reducing the burden on customer and technical support teams.
Terminus is Pantheon’s Command Line Interface (CLI). In plain language for folks who aren't web developers, a CLI is the dark screen you see depicted with code, where users type commands instead of navigating a graphical interface. For those who are really old school (raising my hand here), think MS-DOS!
The challenge was to make a fairly technical topic approachable for newer users without oversimplifying it for those who already had technical experience.
The Process
I started by reviewing Pantheon’s existing Terminus resources, including video training, technical documentation, presentations, blog posts, and other customer-facing content. This helped me identify the essential concepts learners needed while also surfacing common questions, concerns, and useful information that might be missing elsewhere.
I designed the training to make a highly technical topic feel more approachable and visually engaging. Rather than asking learners to stare at lines of code throughout the course, I incorporated Pantheon-branded assets, demonstrations, B-roll, icons, and animations to support attention and comprehension. The visuals also gave me an opportunity to include diverse characters and challenge some of the usual stereotypes around who works in web development.
I used Canva to create and customize imagery, icons, and animations; Camtasia to produce and edit the video; and Audacity to record and edit my narration before bringing everything together in Camtasia.
The Result
This course made a highly technical topic more approachable for users with varying levels of experience. My background in front-end web development came in handy here, helping me translate technical concepts without losing the accuracy more experienced users expected.
As technology rapidly advances, so do the products and learning resources that support them! Pantheon’s platform and training have evolved since I developed this course, but the sample here offers a look at Module 2 of the original Terminus training.