Articulate Storyline

Can You Motivate This Monster?

June 29, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to create a quiz about an instructional design concept. I decided to create a quiz about Dr. John Keller’s ARCS motivational design model.

The Idea

As I brainstormed (heh-heh) how the heck to do it, I thought of the most basic concept of motivation, which is to spur the learner on: Provide him with a jolt of electricity, if you will.

The next thing I knew, Boris Karloff was staring at me as I carefully wired him up to car batteries. You just never know where a challenge will take you.

The Interaction

The idea is that you choose an appropriate design option for each of the four areas: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. I made them appropriate to this learner, pulling more from Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein than Mary Shelley’s classic novel, but it’s all about keeping me entertained.

Feedback Screen

You get feedback whether your answers are correct (motivated monster), or incorrect (unmotivated monster). I included some quick tips in the player with a mini outline of the ARCS model to help explain and/or lead you to the correct answers, too.

So Much More

I’d love to go over the many other scenes and ideas I had for this one, but at some point I have to call it a quick demo and stop.

I’ll also mention that my AA battery > car battery > single battery cable > neck bolt electrical circuit entertains me no end. I think that’s part of what makes these challenges so fun. You do a quick mock-up and it leads to the funniest improvisations.

Try It!

If you’d like to try using the ARCS model to motivate Frank, the interaction is right here.

Sell Like Your Surfboard Depends On It!

June 15, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 8 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to use a template to create a game. It’s actually a free template I created from a German drinking game I made for another challenge – so we know each other pretty well by now.

My Goals

I challenged myself to:

Make it potentially usable for a client.
Stay true to the template.

I’m working on an outside sales training project for a client right now, so a traveling salesperson moving across a game board and working his way towards a big prize (they’ve been known to send their top people to Hawaii) seemed spot-on.

Mai Tai Progress Meter

Waiter, there’s some freight in my drink

The biggest challenge was figuring out when to use company design elements versus game design elements. For example, in the mai tai progress meter the ice cubes were originally little cardboard packages themed for the company.

They still made clinking sounds like ice cubes, which entertained me, plus it was a great blend of company and game elements. But in the end it was a lot more refreshing and rewarding to see ice cubes amassing in my glass rather than pieces of freight. (Who knew?)

Challenge Screen

Realistic Challenges

For the challenges I used background images and realistic situations to add more context and meaning.

See it in action!

You can see my sales game right here, and if you’d like to see what others are coming up with this week, keep an eye on the comments section of David Anderson’s blog right here.

(You can play along too, you know!)

Before & After

By the way, here are some side-by-side comparisons of the template screens versus my finished game screens. Click on any of them for a larger view.

Introduction

Game Start

Game Board

Challenge Question

Feedback When Incorrect

Feedback When Correct

Progress Meter

Success Screen

Video: How to Customize This Sobered-Up Drinking Game

June 6, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

I’ve just taken my original German drinking game created in Articulate Storyline and made it into a free template that I talked about recently. Now I’ve recorded two videos to help you use the template. You can download the free Storyline template here, and I also made a PowerPoint version you can download here.

Video #1: Original vs. the Template

In this video I walk you through the features of the original game, then compare them to the template. Kind of a nice overview. If you’d prefer to see captures of the screens compared, they’re at the end of this post. I created this for the Storyline version, but PowerPoint users can get some useful information from it, too.

Video #2: How to Customize the Storyline Template

In this video I show you the customizable features you can make your own. Again, I created it for the Storyline version, but PowerPoint users can get some useful information from it, too.

Have Fun!

I hope these walk-throughs help as you go forth to create your own games. Enjoy!

A Non-Regulation Spelling Bee

June 2, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 8 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge, with a nod to the latest National Spelling Bee, is to build an interactive vocabulary quiz. It’s a great challenge because you can take it in so many directions.

Inspiration

Intro Screen

I looked at a lot of interaction types, but when nothing struck me I thought I could at least start by choosing characters to work with. That’s when I remembered I’ve got good stock images of children. When I started looking at extremes (who’s the youngest?) then thought about an opponent (who’s the most unlikely?) I suddenly had my theme.

Content

Going for ridiculous words and context sentences was the only way to do it, and the greater the contrast between the participant prompts, the better. Unfortunately, I have far more knowledge of goofball cop humor than little girl references, so I just had to wing it on the kid side.

Quiz Slide in Action

Design

I focused on designing a quick, clean interaction because it’s funnier. I’m pretty happy with it, given the time frame.

Building It

I always have to go back to refresh my memory about how to engineer these things:

Each question slide is actually a fill-in-the-blank graded quiz slide.
To capture the running game scores I created variables for KidTotal and CopTotal.
To add points to their scores, on the “correct” feedback layer I added a trigger that adds a value of 1 to the appropriate KidTotal or CopTotal variable at the beginning of the timeline.
To display their scores, I inserted reference fields on the scoreboards to show the current value of KidTotal and CopTotal.
I also created variables to take you to one of three possible endings based on the final score.
I couldn’t get the text entry screens to refresh after hitting Replay. Those kept holding on to whatever was entered in the prior round. I ended up adding a hidden results slide to create the needed variables so I could add a “reset results” trigger to the Replay button. That worked.

The Result

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I think it’s funny. My clue is when I can’t stop laughing long enough to record audio, but it was pretty late at night, so maybe I was just punchy.

I hope you enjoy it – you can see it right here!

Step Graphics to Success as an E-Learning Designer

May 30, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 19 Comments

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This week’s challenge was to create a step graphic to tell a story or explain a process. It came at the end of a week where I kept hearing concerns from e-learning designers who felt stuck due to lack of skills, experience, usable portfolio pieces, visibility in the field, and/or confidence. So when the challenge hit, that was my topic.

Step Graphic Main Screen

Design

I wanted it to be fresh, direct, and maybe a bit inspiring – so I chose the character, the approach, and the background based on that.

The layout bothered me for a full week. Still does, but I have to let it go. I tried countless ideas with different graphics, colors, fonts, animations, and audio. It started out with more depth (links to resources, etc.) but it was taking too long, so I stripped it down and kept it simple. My concern was keeping the user’s attention focused on an already-busy screen. It seems to work, based on the little bit of user testing I did, so I’m going with it.

The step navigation is simple. I chose buttons with a full set of states, including a clear selected state so it’s easy to see where you are.

Content

I added the intro screen to make it clear that you should probably be (a) an e-learning designer who (b) has these goals, if the content is going to apply to you.

After that, it’s what I do each week for the challenges combined with a little bit of advice based on personal experience.

The Result

Ready to give it a try? Take a look! And if you’re an e-learning designer who feels stuck or wants to learn more and improve your skills, you might want to give the challenges a try. They’ve worked for me!

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