Mobile

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!

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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Shooting Your Own E-Learning Background Images

August 16, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 8 Comments

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This Articulate challenge is to create your own background images. The idea is to plan your shots, shoot photos, then manipulate them to work in your project.

The Project

I wanted to share a software training piece I’d created at the eLearning Guild’s SolutionFest, but had to change both the branding and the industry before I could. That involved a lot of new development, including new background images and some video. Time for a photo shoot!

My Shot List

I scouted out a nearby business park and showed up with my shot list in hand. I’ll only share a couple of them in this post, but the shots I wanted and got were:

From the parking lot looking back at the office building with my vehicle in plain view in the center.
From the office building looking out to the parking lot with a field in the background.
Looking down the alley of office park building back doors, plus some closer shots of the doors.
A stop sign at the end of the alleyway.
A video focused on the stop sign, then quickly panning down the alley and back.

Image Manipulation

For the still images I cropped and manipulated them to match the style of the rest of the course, which I’d designed to de-emphasize the background to make it easier to focus on the content. Since I developed this in Articulate Studio ’09 it was quick and easy to use the PowerPoint image formatting options. I used a tan color and the “pastels smooth” artistic effect.

Shot #1: From Parking Lot to Building

For this shot I cropped the image so that the vehicle was easily visible between the characters so I could add the company logo to the door.

Shot #1: Original

Shot #1: Used in the Course

Shot #2: From Office to Parking Lot and Field

I wanted this shot to be very simple, with just a hint of parking lot stripes and nothing else to act as a distraction.

Shot #2: Original

Shot #2: Used in the Course

See The Whole Thing!

If you’d like to see the entire demo as I showed it at SolutionFest, which used all of the other shots on my list, you can view it right here. If you’d like to learn more about how I designed this project, all of the details are right here!

The Downside of Leaving the House: A Video Diary

July 17, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 28 Comments

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This week’s Articulate challenge is to create a training video with your smart phone. In my defense, I’ll point out that only the phone was required to be smart.

What Happened

I had the innocent idea of showing how people like me who spend all their time in home offices breathing in more highlighter fumes than fresh air – (which may explain a lot, now that I think about it) – can bust out. I planned to shoot on nearby Hilton Head Island.

When I mentioned this to Dan, in the interest of getting his help filming the drive, he immediately said “and it’s the perfect chance to use this guy!” What happened after that is kind of a blur.

Video Lessons Learned

I used my iPhone with no additional apps and made edits on the desktop in Pinnacle Studio 17 before popping it into Storyline. I learned:

Lighting is never easy.
Shooting in direct sunlight makes seeing the viewfinder nearly impossible.
Shooting in gale-force winds while sand is being whipped at the device will lead to unusable audio, among other things.

The Storyline Piece

Framing the story felt much harder than framing the heinous video for some reason. I ended up liking the time-lapse drive to the island and the layout I designed to view the different video clips. I’d like to use those ideas in other projects.

My favorite part might be the souvenir photo at the end since it sums up the absurdity quite nicely.

If You Must

If you really want to see this, you can check it out right here.

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Does Context Matter? Here’s a Before & After

May 4, 2014 By Jackie Van Nice 4 Comments

Before and After Example: Software Training

David Anderson’s Articulate challenge last week was to create an example of “bad” e-learning, and this week it’s time to turn “bad” into “good”. He wanted short, focused examples – so I chose a couple of screens and focused on context. The “before” is from a client, the “after” is from the lesson I created for the client.

What’s Context?

My first question in every new project is: “How will the learner use this information in the real world?” Then I try to design the piece from the learner’s post-course real-world point of view to show them why they’ll care about it and when where and how it’s going to come in handy. Using effective context can add lot of interest and learner motivation, too.

The Bad E-Learning “Before” – Where’s the Context?

This client had two “before” versions of this training. The learner is a salesperson who needs to know how to use the photo options on his mobile sales device. The first “before” version used the “show me, try me, test me” approach. Both versions were real and both went live.

Bad-E-Learning-Inspired Mimosa

The Show-Me-Try-Me-Test-Me Debacle

How I wish I could show you this one! It was done in Captivate (not Captivate’s fault), navigation was completely locked down, the pace was crazy slow, there was no intro or context, and all you saw was the computer screen with a mouse slowly moving around and the occasional text box popping up with cryptic information. Whenever you thought it was your turn to “try” it, it wasn’t.

It was as satisfying and enjoyable as using a voice-response phone system when the robo operator can’t understand anything you’re saying. I could only make it through two or three minutes of this course before I had to literally hang up on it and figuratively go have a mimosa on the veranda to compose myself.

The “Before” Training

The Slide-With-Animated-Text-Box Version

The other “before” version is still bad, but you’re never under the delusion that your input is desired or needed and you have a little freedom of navigation, so it’s less offensive. As training, it’s just animated software documentation. It’s context-free and a big snooze, jam-packed with information you’d never be able to retain when presented like this.

The Good E-Learning “After” – There’s the Context!

One Little Hitch

In the real course I teach the salesperson to use the camera during the sales process where they really need it. Since I can’t show you anything about their sales process in this example, I had to get creative.

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Plan “B”

Since a manager often takes a new salesperson out into the parking lot to introduce him to the basics of the newly-issued device, that’s the context I used. I knew learners would glaze over when hearing about sexy things like “white balance adjustments”, so I tried to think of a context in which photo adjustments in the parking lot with the manager would have meaning.

I came up with the idea of the salesperson taking practice shots of his manager to show what can go wrong when taking a photo, and then showing him how to make photo adjustments so his manager looks better. (There’s some motivation!) Putting the manager in silly poses added some much-needed humor, too. All together, it brought some context and emotional engagement to a very dry topic.

Before vs. After

Did context help? In reality the client’s salespeople and managers love this course. They find it extremely effective as an introduction to the device, and since it’s made up of many smaller lessons, it’s easy to use as a refresher, too. In case you’re interested, here’s how I designed the course. I even showed it at SolutionFest last year!