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9 Stress-Free Low-Cost Ways to Enjoy the Holidays

December 6, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to come up with some ways to help survive the holidays.

How could you be stressed around this guy?

What’s so Stressful?

To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything terribly stressful at first. After a bit of pondering I decided that money and high expectations might be the biggest culprits – so I came up with some low-cost (largely no-cost) ideas that don’t have to involve much frenzy.

Have a Peek & Happy Holidays!

I dipped into MorgueFile again for the images. I love the ones that look “real” as opposed to slick or professional. Feel free to take a peek at my handy little demo right here. Here’s wishing you nothing but wonderful, stress-free holiday delights!

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My Top 10 Tips for Freelancers

December 1, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 13 Comments

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This week’s challenge is to share your top tips for freelancers. I’ve been a freelancer for more than 11 years now, so figured I’d toss in a few. (And if you’d like to check out My 3-Step Formula for Finding Work as a Freelancer, that’s new too!)

Tip Number One

Why These?

Are these really my “top” tips? Some are. Others address things I see and hear fellow freelancers struggle with all the time.

I hadn’t expected to create a demo, but was lucky enough to find these pics from artist Emily Beeson on MorgueFile, started playing with them, and this is the result.

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See it in Action!

If you’d like to get my freelancing words of wisdom, you can see them right here.

Digital Magazine: Can You Give a Better Speech Than a 12-Year-Old?

November 9, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 10 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to create a demo of a digital learning magazine.

Inspiration

For approach, look, and feel I used Forma Magazine as my inspiration, using Charles Hamper’s suggestion to check out digital magazine samples at ReadyMag.

Content

I decided on the topic of presentations when I found this post by speech coach George Torok who was comparing his experience judging 12-year-olds in a speech contest versus high-level sales and marketing executives giving their own talks. For this demo I wanted simple-yet-interesting content that was easy to explore and browse, so this worked. To make it easier to compare the adults versus children, I organized it into six steps and compared their performance for each one.

Since digital magazines tend to make the most of stunning photography, I found large images that would render well at MorgueFile.

Jump-to-Screen Navigation

Navigation Options

I included two types of navigation to imitate Forma’s:
Screen-to-Screen: I used their approach of having on-screen right and left arrow icons. I also added hotspots on top of the arrows to make them easier to tap if you’re on a tablet. You could just add a trigger to the arrow image, rather than use a hotspot, but the target area would be too small to work well.
Jump-To: I might have been able to create a fabulous slider to imitate Forma’s jump-to navigation, but settled for the speedier option of a slide layer with thumbnails of each screen. It gives you an overview of the content, plus lets you jump around. You can access it via the menu icon in the upper right.

Check it Out!

Find out if a 12-year-old’s speech stands a chance against a high-level marketing executive’s right here!

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Preventing Workplace Violence Holiday-Style!

November 4, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 12 Comments

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Our Protagonist

This week David Anderson challenged us to create a scenario about preventing workplace violence.

The Idea

Addressing the topic of violence comes to me about as naturally as learning Hungarian, so I put this challenge aside for awhile.

While organizing files a bit later, I stumbled across these cute-as-a-button holiday images and decided to challenge myself to use them – exactly as they are – for the challenge. The snowman and gingerbread man would be my characters, and I wouldn’t let myself manipulate or change them.

The Scene of the Crime

The Scenario

Since Christmas trees were part of this set, I opted to have the snowman run a Christmas tree lot and have the gingerbread man pull a heist. The only weapon-like image I had was a hatchet, so it became a hatchet job.

You Make the Decisions

You, as the learner, choose how to respond. In both the positive and negative outcomes you’re given tips to help you successfully cope with the situation before trying it again with different choices, giving you a safe and effective way to learn and practice the concepts.

Try it Out!

Do you know how to handle tough times on a Christmas tree lot? Try it right here and find out! You might even have a little gingerbread-themed fun while you’re at it.

10 Treats (and Tricks!) I Hear as an Instructional Designer

October 28, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 6 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to list 10 things instructional designers don’t like to hear.

IDs with jobs will always have issues to resolve – (let’s hear it for gainful employment!) – and I’m grateful every day that I get to do this work.

Yummy ID Goodness

But there’s very little that comes my way that I don’t like to hear, and most of it is completely positive and makes me giddily happy. So I wrapped up some of the tastiest treats I hear (along with a couple of minor tricks) just in time for Halloween. I also put them into a quick interaction in Storyline that you can see here.

Scarily True

Each of these is real, all of them have come from my clients, and every one of them is completely sincere. I’ve also added some comments below under each one.