Storyline 360

Dining Out in Italy: Do It For the Progress Bars and Badges

April 17, 2018 By Jackie Van Nice Leave a Comment

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This week’s ELH Challenge is to show how to use badges, awards, and achievements in e-learning. I don’t always use a ton of these in my client projects, so this was a nice chance to play.

The Idea

Since showing progress and achievements for their own sake doesn’t do much to connect with learner motivation, I wanted an end goal that would be motivating to achieve and a learning goal that would enable the learner to achieve it.

I decided on a simple language learning demo that puts you in the position of having to use enough Italian to navigate dining out in Italy. Learner gotta eat.

The Design

I wanted this to be simple and intuitive, so I didn’t use any written or audio instructions (with the exception of “Try Again”) or try to flesh out restaurant scenes or interactions in any detail. The focus is on the language and the related progress and achievements.

Italian flag colors

Color-wise I thought about including an Italian flag somewhere, but it seemed like an overused and unnecessary indicator. Instead I grabbed the RGB and hex codes for the Italian flag and used those colors on a largely monochromatic stage throughout.

The Reinforcing Progress Bar

Though I’ve used beer mugs, mountains, mai tai glasses, scoreboards, typography states, and I-don’t-even-know-what-else to show progress – I’ve never designed a standard progress bar. So I thought I’d give it a shot.

Somewhere in David Anderson’s suggested resources this week (I’d point to it but have lost it in the shuffle), Tom Kuhlmann was giving the basics of progress meters. I took away that putting them on master slides isn’t a bad idea and that indicating chunks of progress can be quite simple, which was very helpful and enough to get going.

I have 4 quiz questions in this demo, each equating to 25% progress on the bar. Each question focuses on one small bit of vocabulary. For reinforcement, I embedded that bit of vocabulary directly into the progress bar once it had been used correctly.

The Badges

I added what are basically earned badges alongside the progress bar. Since they’re images that illustrate the target vocabulary in that section, it seemed like another good bit of reinforcement.

My progress bar with embedded target vocabulary and corresponding badge awarded for achievement.

Feedback

There are four ways to figure out whether your answer was correct or not: The look on the server’s face, what he’s saying in Italian, your progress (or lack of it) shown via the progress bar and badges, and whether or not you see the Try Again button.

Since this is more about exposure to vocabulary in context and not every word is meant to be understood, there’s more value to mulling over and playing with the options rather than simply counting something as wrong and moving on. That’s why each question is set to let you play/guess/answer as many times as you’d like.

The Result

Ready to see if you can navigate going out to dinner in Italian? You can give it a try right here. Buon appetito!

Pantone’s Ultra Violet: Best Worn With Sunscreen

April 15, 2018 By Jackie Van Nice 6 Comments

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This week’s Articulate ELH Challenge is to design a template or interaction featuring Pantone’s color of the year: Ultra Violet.

The Idea

The name, of course, made me think of ultraviolet (UV) light, and since it’s part of the light spectrum, a slider interaction to explore it seemed like a good way to go.

The Design

Attitude: One of Pantone’s suggested color palettes to use with Ultra Violet, and the one I used

The Colors

I used Ultra Violet for the titles, labels, other text, and everything in the UV section – but after that I was going to need a range of colors to create a whole light spectrum.

To the rescue came Pantone’s Attitude palette, which had a color I liked for the sun (Citrus), one I could use for the infrared spectrum (Raspberry), and other brights I could use in the visible spectrum.

For the UV spectrum I put Ultra Violet in the middle and used one Ultra Violet shade darker and one Ultra Violet tint lighter on either end.

The Slider

After inserting a sun icon from Storyline 360’s Content Library (love that so much), I colored it using a Pantone Citrus fill, then also used it as the thumb image on the slider.

Ultraviolet details revealed in Ultra Violet

Other than that, it’s a simple slider with light spectrum details I built on layers that are revealed as you slide the sun icon to each section. I also decided to make the larger sun’s arrow “rays” disappear when you’re viewing the layers to give it a cleaner look.

I added an Ultra Violet slider prompt using an arrow marker that shows up after a few seconds. Once you move the slider it’s programmed to remain hidden.

The Result

In the end it seems the ultraviolet spectrum is all about sunscreen for us, but you can view this Ultra Violet result just as well in the shade.

Dialing Up a Delicious Color of the Year

December 16, 2016 By Jackie Van Nice 13 Comments

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This week’s Articulate ELH Challenge is to create an interaction using Pantone’s color of the year, and since I already wanted to do a catch-up challenge about working with dials I made it a two-fer.

The Idea

Green Anole

Chameleon

Greenery makes me think of the green anoles here in South Carolina. They change color to match their surroundings, but it turns out the chameleon has a larger color spectrum than the anole.

So I decided to make an interaction where your challenge is to match a chameleon’s color to his background (in this case Greenery) using dials to adjust the RGB levels.

The Design

Creating a 3-dial RGB interaction took some work, but figuring out how to build it in Storyline 360 was a piece of cake.

Visual Layout

Visual Design

Simplicity was the goal, with the word “Greenery” and the color itself always prominent. I didn’t want there to be anything you’d have to click on or find. The instructions are simple and on-screen, and the only action you have to take is to adjust the dials, which are the functional focus.

I also wanted the chameleon to have a little personality. It’s more fun changing a guy’s color if he’s cute and staring right at you. I purchased a vector line drawing of a chameleon and used Fireworks to change his colors.

Just Some of My 125 Chameleons

My Life-Saving Chameleon Spreadsheet

Functional Design

If I’d realized there were over 16 million possible RGB combinations I’d have started working on this awhile back. Fortunately I didn’t need that many combinations to convey the sense of exploration I was after. I settled on five dial stops for each color, all starting at 0 and ending at 255 with three uniform stops in between. That meant I only had to create 125 chameleons for all possible dial combinations. (Gulp.)

The only way to keep the color combinations straight as I created chameleons and dial triggers was to organize them in a spreadsheet. Nothing but love for a good spreadsheet.

Audio Design

I added some background birds to set the scene, but what brings the interaction to life is the actual goal: Having fly for dinner. To emphasize that, you see and hear him buzz in as the chameleon’s motivation is revealed at the beginning, and again when it’s dinnertime. Dan Sweigert graciously volunteered to impersonate the dining chameleon delivering the coup de gras. (Sorry, little fly.)