E-Learning

Ker-thwack! Fighting Harassment Comic Book Style

August 26, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 5 Comments

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I’m so excited! Today I completed the entire first year of Articulate’s E-Learning Heroes challenges – all 48 of them! I started participating about 5 months into the challenge year so there were a lot to make up, but I did it. Before collapsing I’ll share one of my favorites I uncovered back at #11: Comic Style Themes for E-Learning.

Figuring Out the Style

I don’t know much about comic books and didn’t have a clue how to handle this challenge, but figured it out the same way I did the interactive resume one. I searched for comic books on Pinterest, pinned a couple of things, then took in the rest. That made it easy to assess the approach and style and I got the gist very quickly.

How About Harassment?

I thought about courses I’ve done that I could adapt, and harassment seemed like just the ticket. I already had the material and characters in place; I just needed to change the style and ramp up the drama.

Colors & Fonts

The color palette came from the outfits of the characters on the cover. Add in the classic yellow box for narration, and you’re all set. The fonts were free from Dafont: That great title font is Feast of Flesh BB and the paragraph font is Comic Book.

Comic Book Fonts

Before & After

Here are a couple of screens from this harassment course I did a few years back. You can see how I adapted them to the comic book demo. You can also see that the comic book style gave me an acceptable way to make it more personal and cut to the chase more quickly and with greater emotional impact.

“Before” Screen

“After” Screen

Next Time

Given more time I’d have loved to add in music, sound effects, and background images; but as a quick learning exercise I’m pretty happy with it. Fortunately David Anderson promises he’ll have another comic book challenge coming up in the new challenge year. (Ka-zam!!!)

Here it Is!

If you’d like to check out this quick comic-book style demo, it’s right here.

The Challenge of Storyboarding (+ Free Template!)

August 24, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 12 Comments

Visual Storyboard Template

This week’s Articulate challenge is to show how you storyboard and to share some of your favorite tips.

Visit this Storyboard’s download page if you’d like to try it!

How I Storyboard

Most of the Time: Prototype

I normally create a quick prototype in Storyline to communicate my design. You can document what you’d like the user experience to be all day long in a written storyboard, but it never conveys the end result as effectively as a demo.

Some of the Time: Visual Storyboard (Try Out The Template!)

Sometimes I’ll do a visual storyboard in PowerPoint, which works pretty well and most SMEs seem to like working with it.

Almost Never: Text-Only Storyboard

I’ll receive text-only storyboards from clients as a way to give me their basic content, but I don’t spend time creating them myself.

My Storyboarding Tips

Communicate your ideas in the clearest way possible. For me this usually means spending time creating a working prototype rather than documenting how I’d like to build something.
Storyboarding Course on Lynda.com

If you’d like an overview of the different types of storyboards and how to use them, you might want to check out Articulate Super Hero Daniel Brigham’s course on Lynda.com.
Storyboarding Resources on E-Learning Heroes Site

If you’re looking for some free storyboard templates, the Downloads section of Articulate’s E-Learning Heroes site might have what you need.

Happy storyboarding!

Meaningful Comparisons in Action

August 23, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 6 Comments

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Since this week marks the end of the first full year of Articulate’s weekly challenges, I decided to go back to complete all of the ones I’d missed – and there were a lot. I still have two more to complete (almost there!) but yesterday I swung back to Challenge #1: How Would You Show Meaningful Comparisons?

Note the Maps of the US and Germany

Getting Things Into Perspective

In my earlier “virtual tour” challenge I showed maps of the US and Germany next to one another to show the places I’ve worked. They weren’t meant to be at the correct scale – but every time I look at that piece I snicker at how far off it is. So I decided to do a demo to show a size comparison.

Two Countries; One Monochromatic Scheme

My US-German Palette

Two reasons for the red palette: The flag of Germany and the flag of the US. Their only common color is red. What’s interesting is how different the reds are. So I created a palette that includes both of them in an intentional way.
The other reason I wanted to do this was because I’d just completed yet another older challenge using Pantone’s current color of the year and used a monochromatic scheme for that one, too. I liked it enough to try the approach again here.

My Monochromatic Pantone Design

What a Drag it is to Compare

The idea is that you simply click on the map of Germany and drag it to different US states to compare its size. Is it effective? You can take a look at the difference between this and the maps I showed in my virtual tour (see images above) and decide.

My truly brilliant fellow challenge participant Nick Russell suggested that it would be great to have comparative data for each US state come up as you drag the map of Germany over it. It would be, but that’s going to have to wait until I’ve added quite a few more hours to each day and quite a few more days to each week. But it’s a fantastic idea, Nick!

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Enjoy it Here + There’s More on the Way!

Here’s my comparative demo if you’d like to mess around with it. My goal is to complete the whole first-year set of challenges within the next week. With only two to go I’m in good shape – and I’ll keep you posted!

A Radiantly Delicious Template

August 17, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

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This Articulate challenge is about using Pantone’s color of the year, Radiant Orchid, to create a simple e-learning template. I didn’t have a clue about how to approach this, but that’s normal, so I jumped in anyway.

Design Inspiration

I wanted to brainstorm something in this color that would have meaning to me. Whether it’s the vegan thing or that it’s summertime and I get to eat lots of them right now, I quickly came up with purple fruits and vegetables.

I planned to find a character dressed in a similar color, if possible, and got lucky to find one dressed as a waitress. I reasoned she’d probably work at a cafe that only serves purple produce, and the rest is history.

Color, Tints, and Shades

I stayed pretty true to the palette. The only thing I did that was slightly different was to make the player color relatively transparent, and the hover states on the menu items are also slightly transparent.

I tried to order the fruits and vegetables to mirror the shade differences on the menu items. They’re both darkest at the top of the screen and lightest at the bottom.

See it in Action!

Feel free to take a look at the radiance right here, and don’t let the waitress get you down. She hasn’t eaten her vegetables today.

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Shooting Your Own E-Learning Background Images

August 16, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 8 Comments

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This Articulate challenge is to create your own background images. The idea is to plan your shots, shoot photos, then manipulate them to work in your project.

The Project

I wanted to share a software training piece I’d created at the eLearning Guild’s SolutionFest, but had to change both the branding and the industry before I could. That involved a lot of new development, including new background images and some video. Time for a photo shoot!

My Shot List

I scouted out a nearby business park and showed up with my shot list in hand. I’ll only share a couple of them in this post, but the shots I wanted and got were:

From the parking lot looking back at the office building with my vehicle in plain view in the center.
From the office building looking out to the parking lot with a field in the background.
Looking down the alley of office park building back doors, plus some closer shots of the doors.
A stop sign at the end of the alleyway.
A video focused on the stop sign, then quickly panning down the alley and back.

Image Manipulation

For the still images I cropped and manipulated them to match the style of the rest of the course, which I’d designed to de-emphasize the background to make it easier to focus on the content. Since I developed this in Articulate Studio ’09 it was quick and easy to use the PowerPoint image formatting options. I used a tan color and the “pastels smooth” artistic effect.

Shot #1: From Parking Lot to Building

For this shot I cropped the image so that the vehicle was easily visible between the characters so I could add the company logo to the door.

Shot #1: Original

Shot #1: Used in the Course

Shot #2: From Office to Parking Lot and Field

I wanted this shot to be very simple, with just a hint of parking lot stripes and nothing else to act as a distraction.

Shot #2: Original

Shot #2: Used in the Course

See The Whole Thing!

If you’d like to see the entire demo as I showed it at SolutionFest, which used all of the other shots on my list, you can view it right here. If you’d like to learn more about how I designed this project, all of the details are right here!