Context

Buttoned-Down Design (+Free Storyline File!)

June 26, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 11 Comments

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This week’s challenge is to create some cool button styles. My goal was to keep it quick and do something I haven’t done before. Not hard since I usually give my buttons short shrift.

The Idea

I simply wanted to see if I could figure out how to make something like David Anderson’s cool button example.

So I Did a Version Starting In PowerPoint…

Since it looked to me like cutout shapes were involved, I started in PowerPoint to create them, then essentially animated them in Storyline.

They were fine, but I wasn’t thrilled because they weren’t buttons you could easily copy, paste, and edit.

Then Kortenbosch Shared a Little Something…

Once Jeff Kortenbosch posted his button challenge entry, along with a fabulous how-to video, I decided to see if I could make better buttony buttons like he did – natively in Storyline.

Turns out I could. Thank you, Jeff!

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Check ‘Em Out!

So that’s what happened. If you’d like to see my result – version 2! – you can see them right here!

Download The Free File!

If you’d like to use my updated Storyline buttons, feel free to grab the customizable file. The download page is right here.

Storyline 1 to 2: Passport Makeover Edition

June 24, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 13 Comments

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I was always fond of this little passport how-to I did in Storyline 1, but when Articulate was kind enough to feature it on their E-Learning Examples page recently and people seemed to like it – it got me thinking about how I could update it using Storyline 2’s great features.

Navigation: Before & After

Before: A Tab-Based Layout

After: A Paris-Bound Jet Guides You

One of my favorite features in Storyline 2 is the slider for its ease of use and power to deliver a lot of information in a compact way.

I knew it would be perfect to get the entire application on one screen where the user could see everything from a high-level overview to a mid-level peek to detailed animations showing how to fill it out – simply by sliding the Paris-bound jet down the runway.

The thing is, you could still create this basic design in Storyline 1 (using this layout for a more compact presentation and navigating via clicking or tapping) – but there’s something about the slider that makes things like this easier to ideate, create, and (on the learner end) use.

Updated Animations

John Hancock Would Be Proud of the Signature Animation

The other feature-based update I made was to the animations. In the original I relied on a fade animation to bring in handwriting and typing, but being able to use the new built-in wipe animation improved the look and feel quite a bit, so I was happy about that.

See the Jet-On-the-Runway Slider!

Here’s the updated jet-fueled slider demo, and here’s the original demo for comparison. Enjoy – and bon voyage!

Keeping It Odd

March 14, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 12 Comments

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This week’s challenge is to make up an odd-sounding course title, then design the cover slide. I got inspired by some of the fauna here in South Carolina and went with it.

Our Gators

I love that we get to share this area with the local alligators. Sometimes on our walks we’ll stumble a bit too close to a guy and calmly give him a wide berth, but we all get along famously.

Our Golfers

Since golfers are also rife around here, especially near gator ponds, I considered what an e-learning course about alligator safety for those guys might look like.

The E-Learning Course

Teaching the golfer how to stay safe by showing him the alligator’s perspective seemed like an engrossing way to go. Especially if you realize, from screen one, that you may be dinner. Of course the goal would be to keep both parties safe.

Visual Design

I purchased my well-dressed golfer, but made the alligator out of PowerPoint shapes. For fonts, I liked the chunkiness of Clarendon against the fancy-restaurant deliciousness of Edwardian Script. All in all, I’m pretty happy with it.

Check it out!

Grab your golf clubs and enjoy this tantalizing title slide right here.

Build & Share Your Own Image Library!

March 2, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 9 Comments

I Took This Photo, Added Some Text, and Voilà! My Title Image

This week’s challenge is to create a set of e-learning images to share with other course designers. Recently I’ve been contributing images to MorgueFile via their daily challenges (which I wrote about here), but was excited to put together a full set of related images.

The Setting

I was headed to a nearby island with a friend on Saturday anyway, so I grabbed my camera and spent a chilly afternoon snapping away. This location is often used for group retreats, and I tried to capture as many types of usable images as possible.

Simple Backgrounds

It’s easy to make simple background images. Below left you can see my pictures of wine glasses and some dry plants. On the right are the same pictures after I applied a couple of PowerPoint effects. It’s simple and I love the result.

Left: My Unretouched Images. Right: The Same Images With Simple PowerPoint Effects

Left: My Unretouched Photos. Right: The Same Images With Simple PowerPoint Effects

Scenario Backgrounds

When I create e-learning scenarios, I try to treat them like a movie. I go for the wide establishing shot, the group shot, the two-person shot, the one-person shot, and all sorts of close-ups. I took lots of pics with that approach in mind, where you can easily add in characters. These images are also HUGE, so they’re easy to crop to focus on any area you’d like.

Here Are a Few of My Scenario Backgrounds: Just Add Characters!

Objects & Themes

Recycling? Home? Nature? Recreation? Food Service? I found lots of image subgroups to play with. With a little creativity, they can be used in endless ways.

I Love These Images For Their Great Colors and Shapes

This is a Cottage Where I Focused on Photographing Everyday Objects & Scenario Backgrounds

I Just Love These Recycling Bins – They’re Fantastic Images to Work With

These are Just a Few of the Objects I Found at a Community Dining Hall

Download Them for Free!

Update: I’m not seeing these up on MorgueFile anymore – but if you can find ’em, you can use ’em!

Taking the Sting Out of Medical Training

February 10, 2015 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

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This week David Anderson challenged us to present a bit of medical training. Good thing this e-learning doctor is “in”.

A Quick-Reference App

I liked the idea of addressing something relatively simple – like a bee sting – and if you need that kind of info you want it quickly and on-the-go.

I kept picturing something app-like that would work well on my iPhone, so that’s where the screen size, orientation, and much of the navigation came from.

Speeding Things Up

I’d originally pictured more animations and transitions, but chose to let you get to the information more quickly rather than waste time waiting for extras like that. You’ll notice there’s even a “Skip Intro” option so you can go straight to the remedies.

The Content

All of the how-to images and written information came from Wiki How’s How to Treat a Bee Sting. In my demo I give credit and link to their post in the main menu.

I made all of the pictographs for the intro by creating shapes in PowerPoint and saving them as PNGs that I brought into Storyline as pictures, with a few added shapes I created right in Storyline.

My Bee

The Result

You’re welcome to try it out and enjoy my pictogram bee, too! He didn’t mean to do anything wrong. He’s just an innocent guy putting in a hard day’s work among the flowers.

This works great on my iPhone, by the way. I’m very happy (appy?) with it. I hope you like it, too!