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The Benefits of Sharing Your Work: A Reader Checks In

August 30, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 5 Comments

I’m so lucky I get to do work I love and share it here, and I’m delighted when readers tell me it helps or inspires them. Unfortunately I never know exactly how it’s been helpful, and sometimes that curiosity drives me a little bit crazy. If I knew that, after all, I could do more of it!

Zifang Su

Enter Zifang

Zifang Su is an instructional designer in Adelaide, Australia who recently sent me this message:

Hi Jackie – Just want to say thank you for your awesome site! Your blog posts about your design process really help me in looking at another instructional designer’s perspective and design thoughts and process, and as a result I’ve changed some of the ways I’ve done things as well. Thank you! Cheers, Zifang

Aha! I perked up, wondering if Zifang could give me some specifics about how she’s changed what she does. So I asked! She was very kind and sent me four specific examples (beautifully organized, of course) of how she’s changed the way she approaches instructional design. Here they are:

Code of Conduct Training

1. Using Stories and Scenarios

One of the things that struck me when looking at your portfolios and some others, plus the course I’m taking at the moment and some books I’m reading, is that using stories and scenarios can be really effective. Looking at the examples helps me to see how topics can be presented in a fun and engaging way.

2. Design of Courses

I love seeing the examples on your portfolio because they all look very different! Frankly, it’s incredible to me that someone can design all these different looking courses. Currently, my courses look very similar – but that has something to do with the restrictions placed on me at work (i.e. the online course must look similar to the powerpoint slides…). So I’m using the designs as inspirations for work-in-progress – essentially reducing many many dot points and chunks of texts and using graphics instead.

Can You Motivate This Monster?

What do I think of Storyline?

A Radiantly Delicious Template

3. Use of Colours

Your portfolio uses great colour schemes. I tend to be ‘traditional’ in the use of colours, e.g. black, blue, grey etc. but contrast works great (e.g. the CCAF design) so I’m reading about the use of colours, as well as experimenting on using brighter colours for my courses.

A Model Smart Enough to Teach Itself

4. Sketching for Design Stage

I’ve tried using storyboard templates but found them stifling and it seems like I’m spending more time typing than actually designing. I then came across one of your examples, where you showed some sketches that you did for design and I thought yep, that’s a more flexible way to do it. So now I spend my design time sketching and showing it to my team rather than trying to fit things into a storyboard template.

Show Your Work: E-Learning Messiness By Me

What I Learned

I can’t tell you how grateful I was to get this feedback! It told me what sorts of things have been most helpful and exactly how it helped change another ID’s work. It may not sound like much, but this was huge for me and will help me going forward.

I’ve also learned that even the things I think might be too silly or messy to share can have value in helping someone grow, learn, and be successful. It encourages me to ignore the editorial voice in my head that’s always saying “you’re not going to post THAT, are you??” and motivates me to keep sharing all of the the potentially silly, messy results of my own learning process right here.

Thank you, Zifang!

You can be sure I’ll keep track of Zifang from now on, and if you’d ever like to share what’s been helpful to you here or if you’d like me to talk about a particular topic, just let me know! Zifang dropped me a line using this Contact form.

Ker-thwack! Fighting Harassment Comic Book Style

August 26, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 5 Comments

Select Image to Launch Demo

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!

Select Image to Launch Demo

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.

Select Image to Launch Demo