Hyland · Learning experience
Privacy Week
My work at Hyland making privacy training memorable through interactive comics, a custom mascot, games, and an original album.
They said compliance was boring. So we gave it a cape.
A global event. A Hyland experience.
Data Privacy Week is an annual international privacy-awareness initiative, not a Hyland-only event. At Hyland, we used the week as a focal point to centralize and standardize privacy training. My part was creating custom learning experiences and a communication plan that made the material more memorable, easier to consume, and more enjoyable.
A comic book you could complete
We created a full interactive training experience in the form of a comic book. People could click into its sections to explore the material. As they completed each section, its artwork changed from black and white to color: progress became part of the story, rather than another checkbox.
The custom mascot connected the experience across formats. A familiar face gave serious privacy concepts a playful, recognizable thread.
More than one way in
Alongside the training, I created activities including a word scramble and a crossword, plus an original eight-song album. People could engage with the same ideas through a story, a puzzle, a real-world scenario, or a song. The formats changed; the creative identity held them together.
A privacy quiz that led by example
I built a reusable, role-based flash-card application with a custom backend for automatic completion metrics. The design avoided asking participants to enter their names or email addresses into the quiz.
At the end, participants received a unique completion code. They could email that code to our team as proof of completion, letting us connect the result to the person separately from the quiz. That separation was deliberate: a privacy-learning experience should model the behavior it teaches. The completion code was not a claim of anonymity across the entire process.
Getting the experience in front of people
Creating the materials was only part of the work. I developed a communication plan to reach people in multiple ways and tracked participation. I introduced the upcoming Privacy Week experience at a company-wide Monday morning meeting, with all of Hyland's approximately 3,600 employees invited.
Building on it, year after year
We received encouraging feedback each year and continued expanding the experience. The interactive training drew a turnout we were pleased with. The lesson for me was that a serious subject does not need a monotonous format: a strong creative thread can make useful training feel like something people want to explore.
Privacy Week: the album
Explore Privacy Week 2026: The Album →
The 2026 album brought privacy ideas into eight original songs. Music extended the same mascot-led identity beyond the training itself, giving the concepts another way to stick.