It takes a lot of work to look this good.

After all my years of doing this (and they aren't many, but I should know better by now) it surprises me every time the amount energy and effort it takes to sometimes make the simplest thing.

Photo by: T.Parish

I have a presentation I'm doing this week (I'll post it in a follow-up posting here).  It's only a 20 minute presentation.  The planning time, layout, screen capturing, practicing, re-editing, re-practicing, blah, blah, blah it has taken to have this to the quality and look I want it to have has taken roughly 8 hours.

Really!

There were some interruptions in the middle of all that time, but still.  It's this development time that stuns people that never do this kind of work (presentations, elearning, etc).  They often assume 20 minute presentation should take 30 minutes to make.  Or an hour course should take about 2 hours to make.

The reality of it all, is it takes a great considerable more effort and time to design quality work.

If you're every looking for a rough guide of course design times look here:

• How long does it take to create e-learning? - Clive Sheppard (Summary)
• How long does it take to create e-learning? - Bryan Chapman (Slideshare)
• Design Times Ratio - www.langevin.com

Playing in the Word Clouds

Sometimes it's fun to use various word cloud generators to see what kind of key themes you keep going on and on about.  Others may call these your key concepts or topics.

Regardless I gave Tagxedo a try today as I hadn't seen it before.  In some respects I was surprised to see the key words that came out from by blog and my twitter accounts.  I'm not sure they're complete accurate when it comes to actual word usage from the source.  In the Twitter word cloud, I see the word GOOGLES .  Really?  Did I actually tweet that out at some point?  And so much so that it is on there as a bigger word than OPINION?  When did I tweet about Indiana?  Who do I even know in Indiana?

And so the fun begins as a brief look into my past writing years.

Discovery Through eLearning Word Cloud

@Tracy_Parish Word Cloud

Tip:Don't Over Using Characters in Your Courses

I've been using Articulate's Storyline for sometime now and was just previewing a course in which I used one of the Illustrated Characters.  I realized, when going through it, that I had changed her facial expression so many times that she started to look a bit manic.

Tip:  These (or any) characters are great to use, but remember if you are expressing to the learner one component of information, try to minimize the changes to poses and facial expressions unless a dramatic change in the "story" is needed. 

You don't want the person's arms up, down, up and smile, frown, angry all in 3 slides.  There are times when it is warranted to drastically change the poses/expressions, but try to keep the character looking as natural as possible.  This goes for the illustrated and photographic characters.

Not so good:

Better:

Comments regarding this post can also be found in the E-Learning Heroes Community Forum.

Can we really remove all the annoying instructions?

I saw this video a little while ago, and I'm unsure how long it's been circulating, but it is hilarious if you have anything to do with instructional design and development. "What if Mario was Remade in 2012?"

(some language may offend)

Basically it is the actual game footage from (I think) the 2006 version of the game, but every single step and action that is performed by the player is superseded by pop-ups and voice overs instructing the player what to do next.  The player is bombarded with things of which we are becoming complacent.  There are the instruction pop-ups, the click here, click there, the do you want to post your achievement to Facebook, to Twitter, do you want to buy more coins for $0.99, do you want to buy a new outfit for Mario for $5.99.  It is spoofing, and to a great degree, showing how drastically marketing and social interaction has been embedded into all we do today.

What really struck me and continues to haunt me as a designer/developer is the bombardment (this is my word of the day) of instructions given to the player.  I seem to be "forced" into adding this level of instruction into the courses I've been designing lately and I'm tired of it.  (Here comes my rant).  I'd love to hear from other designers how often they too are put into this predicament of having to add in countless instructions to ensure that each and every single learner does not have to use any extra brain power to navigate through a course.  

The argument is that good design does not need all the "Clicky-Clicky Bling Bling" (via @CammyBean).  So how come so often I hear from my clients and beta testers "Oh I didn't know I was suppose to click that".  What has happened to everyone and their sense of exploration?  Why when there are four choices on the screen do they need to be told "Use your mouse and left-click on one of the four blue choices that are located on the right lower side of the screen".

I'd also like to know if anyone has an opinion on how many times do you hear...."Oh I didn't know I had to click there", before you actually decide to resign the activity.  Do you take the first instance as a warning that something is wrong or the tenth?  At what point can you say "it must be the learners" and at what point do you decide "it must be the design".  For me, it is unfortunately all about my learners and I've come to know that they do not like to explore or be adventuresome.

My learners appear to just want to click NEXT to continue.

So my thinking and goal for this year is to move them away from the Mario 2012 version of learning and back to the 2006 version (at a minimum).  I want them to try to explore every pipe to see where it leads.  I want them to try to punch every set of bricks to see if they get a reward.  I'm not entirely sure I'll find a solution and a great methodology to make this shift, but I would be really excited to hear from any of you that would like to join in on this movement.

Can we really remove all the annoying instructions and get our learners to be adventuresome?  It's time we designers/developer revolt and change things up.  What are your tips, tricks, demos you can share that do move design in this manner.