In an earlier post I shared my ideas for organizing triggers and logic, which was simply sketching out how the slide or scene should function, and during that post I mentioned I would actually design a slide/scene based on the document.
As background information for this design, I began my career working in Human Resources, and I still maintain related certifications. While working for a Human Resources Department, I transitioned from a recruiting/hiring function to a training/organization development function.
Here it is: the presentation sketched out on paper, now functioning in Articulate. I hope these two posts and the two slides you’ll see here are truly a reminder that there is no need to over-complicate your processes. You can tackle complex training, design, and Articulate Storyline challenges with easy, simplified solutions.
It is the biggest piece of advice I would offer a new Storyline user- as soon as it is feasible learn to create states, controlling the object’s state with triggers, variables, and other slide logic. Once you do this, you greatly expand your design capabilities.
Even as an experienced used, it can be difficult to keep up with a slide or design that requires multiple triggers and variables to manipulate slide objects, layers, and other features. How can you easily keep track?
My solution is a piece of scratch paper where you can simply reason out what you’ll need to create for the slide’s function. In my opinion, it is much easier to take a few moments to scribble out any ideas on a piece of paper than try to keep up as you begin building your project. It might be a good idea to include this as a step in your storyboarding. (I’ll offer more thoughts on storyboarding in a future post.) You can also use this paper “draft” to keep track of what has been created and is functioning as you build your Storyline file. Further, including the paper draft in any hard files relating to the project mean you also have a document detailing what is created should you ever have to re-visit the lesson.
I’ve included two pictures showing my paper drafts. As you can see I’ve list the buttons, states, triggers, and other reasoning I would need to implement when creating this slide. Stay tuned, and I will build a slide based on off one of these examples.
BONUS- As you may notice in the second picture, my slide object have names (although they are abbreviated on my paper draft). It can be a tedious step in your design, but naming slide objects (Question1, Feedback1, Question2, Feedbdack2, etc) can save time when you’re building slide triggers, variables, and logic.
Come back soon- I’ll have a functioning slide example based on this paper draft!Remember, it can be helpful to name the slide objects you’re working with (Question1, Feedback1, Question2, Feedback2, and so on.)
