Jackie Van Nice

It’s Pantone Color-of-the-Year Bingo!

January 7, 2016 By Jackie Van Nice 8 Comments

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This week I took on two Articulate challenges: One featuring bingo, and one featuring Pantone’s new color(s) of the year.

The Idea

Pantone has been choosing a color of the year since 2000. I wanted to look back at all of them and make a game where you try to match each one with its name. Add the seductive allure of bingo and it’s “go” time.

The Inspiration Layout (Click to See Original Game)

The Design

Layout

David Anderson had supplied a few inspiration pieces in the bingo challenge, and I liked the way the LA Times laid out their Academy Awards bingo game. There was room on the side to add more info – or in my case quiz questions – in a nice, clean way.

Color Quiz Question

Colors

Since Pantone’s current-year colors are Rose Quartz and Serenity – and since featuring them was part of the challenge – I only used shades and tints of those colors to build the game. The only other colors are the subjects of the quiz questions.

Quiz Question

To keep it as sleek as possible, I only posed one question at the beginning. That sentence, along with the easily recognizable bingo layout, explains the entire interaction and doubles as the question for each quiz choice.

Quiz Bluffs

Unfortunately, I found Pantone’s idea of cool color names to be a big snooze. Too bad, because that meant my bluffs needed to be pretty middle-of-the-road too. (Though I worked in a few to keep myself entertained.)

Sometimes It Takes a Spreadsheet

Building It

It’s built in Storyline 2 on one slide with roughly a gabillion layers. I used a spreadsheet to keep the details of each color (name, year, Pantone number, RGB and hex values, where I used them in the grid, etc.) easy to find. It also helped enormously when tracking each one and creating triggers.

Ready to Color Your World?

Give it a try! I predict a colorful Pantone “Bingo!” in your near future.

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What People Love & Hate About E-Learning: Interactive Graphic

December 11, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 6 Comments

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This week’s challenge is to create an interactive graphic based on a recent Articulate survey about what people love and hate about e-learning. So I did!

The Idea

The Original Infographic (Select Image to View)

Above all, I thought the biggest advantage of the interactive graphic would be to add a main menu so the user could quickly scan topics and jump to the details. It can be a struggle to scroll through a long graphic – especially on mobile devices – so the quick jump would be a plus.

The other thing I noticed was that even though the original infographic talks about love and hate, I wasn’t seeing much hate. So my other idea was to graphically represent that imbalance.

The Design

Ultimately I ended up designing it around two things: The idea and image of a scale to illustrate the imbalance of positive and negative survey results – and the idea and image of e-learning devices. After falling in love with a red vector scale, I let it determine part of the color scheme and most of the overall design aesthetic. That’s a pretty good scale.

I put the content detail on slide layers and let e-learning devices have a hand in presenting them.

The Influential Scale

Details On Layers

Helpful Hands

Weighing the Results

If you’d like to see my interactive version of the survey results, you can enjoy them right here. And remember – if there’s something you don’t love about e-learning, you can be the change.

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The Illustrated Man Gets Conversational

December 7, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 10 Comments

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This week I combined two weekly challenges into one: One about showing conversations, and one about branching scenarios. Clearly a marriage made in e-learning heaven.

The Idea

I wanted to show simple in-person conversations that are clean, clear, and creative – then structure them around a branching scenario.

The Design

I had no idea what would happen in this one, so while waiting for inspiration I started to pull in some of Storyline’s built-in characters. I’d never designed with them before, so this felt somewhat radical. Luckily, that process sparked a story.

Conversational Color

The Conversations

I eschewed bubbles, boxes, and lines and simply placed the character’s dialogue next to the character. I also like to color-coordinate their text color with their clothes. It adds interest and helps distinguish who’s saying what.

Simple Location Indicators

The Settings

I stuck with one simple geometric background throughout and only tossed in the most minimal props or location indicators as needed. It helps keep you focused on the action.

The Branching Scenario

I kept this simple but not too predictable, since that’ll kill curiosity in a heartbeat. The feedback for each choice is to show you the results of your decisions, rather than telling you what’s right or wrong. Only when you get to the end of one of the branches will you get a nice little message all wrapped up in a bow. After all, we still need a training objective – er – I mean – resolution to the story, right?

See the Results of Your Decisions!

I’m trying not to give too much away about this one – but I like it a lot and hope you do, too. If you’d like to get to know an illustrated man* a little bit better, have a look right here.

*It’s not Bradbury’s, but his is sure good, too.

Santa Likes Switching Things Up, Too!

December 6, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 11 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to come up with creative ways to use buttons, toggles, and/or switches. I’ve had this one in the works so long that it finally morphed into a holiday challenge!

One Flat Angel

The Idea

I wanted to use switches to make a customizable greeting card that gives you a good number of options to play with.

The Design

For the visual design I wanted to keep it flat and simple, so that was pretty easy.

For the functional design I went with 3-way switches since I wanted there to be two options for every category – in addition to being able to start with and choose a neutral position. Making it a 3-way toggle seemed too confusing from the user perspective, so I went for the clarity of a switch instead.

State Changes Let You Customize the Background

It’s All States: I built the entire interaction on one slide with no layers. Everything that moves, changes, or plays does so in response to a state change.

Free Images & Music: The freebies I used this week are from flaticon.com, for the little switch icons, and audionautix.com for the music.

The Jolly Result

If you’d like to customize your card, be prepared for audio and give it a try right here! Happy holidays!

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Making A Simple Voiceover Portfolio

November 9, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 6 Comments

This week’s Articulate challenge is to put together an e-learning voiceover (VO) portfolio. I don’t do voiceover-only work, but I’ll do VO if a client asks me as part of a design and development project. Can’t hurt to have a few samples!

Voiceover Samples

E-Learning Demo: Game Voiceover

My favorite sample is the Kid vs Cop Spelling Bee I created for a challenge, and it’s what I sound like late at night when I can barely stop laughing long enough to record – in case you have a need for that.

Cop vs Kid Spelling Bee: Select Image to Launch Demo

E-Learning Demo: Sales Voiceover

This intro is the start of a product sales training course to debut a new product line and get staff excited about learning more.

Product Sales Training: Select Image to Launch Demo

E-Learning Demo: Compliance Voiceover

This in the intro to my favorite sexual harassment course.

Sexual Harassment Compliance Training: Select Image to Launch Demo

Audio-Only Demo: Podcasts

Here are a couple of audio-only podcast challenges I completed. They’d give you the best idea of what my voice usually sounds like.

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David Anderson’s Questions:

1. How would you describe your voice?

The workplace-approved descriptions I can pass along are “expressive”, “reassuring”, and “professional” – and I even got a “velvet voice” not long ago. I’m good at capturing and conveying mood and tone.

2. What’s your recording setup like?

I use an Audio-Technica AT2020 desktop USB mic – seen in this post where I describe my setup and offer some recording tips. I either record directly into Storyline or Audacity – it just depends on what I need.

3. What types of audio editing do you offer?

I remove distracting breaths and ambient noise – but I’ve recorded and edited my voice for a long time and know that if I use too much of a noise gate or overdo post-recording noise removal that I can quickly lose the qualities in my voice that give it the character that people (including me) want. If the end product just ends up sounding like a computer-generated voice, there’s no point in me recording. So I take it easy on noise removal.