Learn. Show. Repeat.

Category: Show Your Work

  • My Experience as a Design Thinking Newbie (part 1)

    This is the first in a series of posts documenting how I’m applying a design thinking approach to a project I’m working on.

    “Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that focuses heavily on involving users of a solution in its design” (Boller and Fletcher, 2020).

    This definition comes from the book ‘Design Thinking for Training and Development’ by Sharon Boller and Laura Fletcher. It’s the first (that I know of) that frames design thinking in the context of learning and development. It’s a valuable source of ideas and templates and if you’d like to incorporate design thinking into your projects, get your hands on a copy of this book. The overarching framework that’s used tweaks the ‘traditional’ design thinking model.

    Why use a design thinking approach?

    There are two things that attract me to using design thinking for L&D projects. Firstly, it’s user or human-centred, meaning that the needs of end users are the focus. The aim is to create solutions that solve a problem they are having. Some would say that this is what L&D should always be doing but sadly many learning teams are focussed on content. Secondly, solutions are developed based on research and data and in an iterative way with end users. It’s the opposite of the ‘order taking’ role that many learning departments are stuck in.

    My experience with design thinking

    I’ve been aware of the practice of design thinking for a few years now. I’ve read about it and watched videos on it. But knowing about something and using in the real world are two different things. For this reason, I’m a newbie to the application of design thinking tools and techniques. This project is the first time that I’ve been given the freedom and support to use an approach like this for a L&D project. I’m using the book as a guide as I move through the various stages in the approach.

    The request

    The initial request for this project was to improve the onboarding experience for new starters and their managers. Rather than coming up with ideas up front, the design thinking approach means to come at the project from a place of curiosity. I need to uncover the problems being experienced which will show what needs improving. This involves asking lots of questions. The one which is guiding this part of the project is: What is the current onboarding experience for new starters and managers?

    Getting perspective

    In the ‘traditional’ design thinking approach the first step is to empathise with end users but Boller and Fletcher refer to this as ‘getting perspective’. I like this phrasing because it emphasises finding out other points of view in order to see a bigger picture.

    There are three essential questions to consider at the beginning:

    What problems are we trying to solve? | What does success look like? | How will we measure success?

    For this project, the answers to these will come once we have more perspective.

    First steps

    In my organisation, we have people spread across all areas of mainland Australia. Some of our workforce is office based, others are mostly in the field, some are a combination of these. Many people are still mostly working from home. To reach people and to find out more, I created a survey.

    Now I know surveys can be problematic (this was even mentioned in the book). But I tried to minimise this by having a good mix of ‘free text’ questions where respondents can provide more detailed information. I used Microsoft Forms as the survey tool with an option for people to leave their name so that I can contact them to discuss their experience further. The purpose of these ‘interviews’ is to flesh out survey responses in more detail and help to create new starter and manager personas.

    In the next post, I’ll discuss more about my approach to data gathering, conducting interviews and creating personas.

    Photo by Anika Huizinga on Unsplash

  • 5 books for all learning professionals

    A few years ago, I wrote a blog post where I shared 5 books every eLearning professional should read. I still stand by those suggestions but I’m adding this new selection for all learning professionals. The reason I’ve selected each of these books is because they’ve contributed to the evolution of the way I work.

    Here they are in no particular order:

    Innovative Performance Support by Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher

    This book first introduced me to the five moments of learning need: New (learning something for the first time), More (expanding learning), Apply (when actually doing something), Solve (when problems arise) and Change (when learning a new way of doing something).

    Gottfredson and Mosher also provide lots of ideas on performance support resources appropriate for each need. This book expanded my thinking beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and to consider different learning needs at different times.

    Practice and Feedback for Deeper Learning by Patti Shank

    One of the great things about Patti Shank is her evidence-based approach to learning. This book has five strategies and 26 tactics based on research that are proven to promote deeper learning and application form instruction.

    Millennials, Goldfish & Other Training Misconceptions by Clark Quinn

    I didn’t realise how many myths and superstitions existed within the learning field. In this book, Quinn outlines each claim as well as a counter argument (based on evidence) and what to do when you’re confronted with one of these myths and superstitions.

    Driving Performance Through Learning by Andy Lancaster

    This is a terrific book that spans all activities and roles of modern Learning and Development teams. It covers everything from diagnosing needs, performance consulting, using data to track impact, leveraging technology, facilitation, social collaboration, curating content, coaching and supporting a more self-directed learning approach. There’s also lots of references so you can dig deeper.

    Design Thinking for Training and Development by Sharon Boller and Laura Fletcher

    This is my most recent purchase and I was keen to get my hands on a copy as soon as it came out. I only came across human-centred design or design thinking a couple of years ago. This is the first book that I know of where the techniques have been adapted and applied to creating learning experiences.

    This book has clear explanations and actionable ideas that I now use to scope, design and deliver solutions to address workplace performance problems.

  • Taking up the Challenge

    At the beginning of this year I wrote a to-do list of activities to develop my digital skills. One of the areas that I wanted to work on was my visual design skills so my list item was to participate in the Daily UI Design Challenge where each day for 100 days (except weekends) you receive an email prompts that gives you the ‘topic’ for the day.

    Well it’s now June and I’ve finally started.

    I’m using PowerPoint to create my designs for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s a program I have easy access to. Secondly, it’s a design challenge and I wanted to see what I can produce with what I have.

    Here’s a few of the designs that I’ve created so far:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5007″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5008″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5009″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5010″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5011″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5012″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Essentially the designs are combinations of shapes and text boxes. I’ve played with their colour, transparency, outline thickness (called weight) and alignment. I’ve added shadows and even used the edit points’ feature in PowerPoint to manipulate regular shapes into something different.

    While I’m hoping to improve my design skills over the 100 days, I’m already finding that in completing each challenge I’m thinking more about how a person might interact with what I’m designing. Is what they need to do obvious? Does it make sense? Would it be easy to use? I think these questions are also applicable to digital learning design and we need to talk to users to find out and refine and improve.

    There are lots of people sharing their designs on Twitter via the hashtag #DailyUI and also on a site called Dribbble (which is a good place for design inspiration). I’m enjoying the chance to be more creative, experiment and play with design so am looking forward to the next Daily UI email. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]

  • 4 Ideas for Combining Text and Images in eLearning

    E-Learning Heroes Challenge #152 – Combining Text and Images in E-Learning. The brief: This week, your challenge is to share an example to demonstrate how text and images can be used in e-learning.

    For this challenge I shared four simple ideas that were all created within Storyline. Click the image below to see what I shared for the challenge:

    Click to view demo

     

    Slide 1: Text coming out of the image

    For the title page, I wanted the text to look like it was coming out of the skyline and to create this effect, there’s actually two of the same images placed exactly on top of each other. However, the image at the front has been cropped:

    Cropped image

    In the timeline, the complete image is at the bottom and the cropped at the top:

    timeline

    Placing the text box in the middle creates the effect that it’s coming out from behind the buildings but really it’s just coming out from behind the cropped image. There’s a ‘Fly In’ animation on the text with the duration set to 3.5 seconds and coming in from the bottom (set in Effect Options).

    Slide 2: Text overlay 1

    This slide full screen image with a rectangle shape containing some text) placed to the right. The shape has a ‘Fly In’ animation (1 sec duration and coming in from the right). I also made the shape slightly transparent by right-clicking on it, selecting ‘Format Shape’ and adjusting the transparency to 25%.

    Slide 3: Text overlay 2

    On this slide, I coloured the background pale grey, and positioned my image at the top of the slide. Then I added a rectangle that slightly covered the image and didn’t completely fill the space at the bottom. The text itself sits in a text box on top of the shape and I applied a fade animation (1 sec duration). From the ‘Effect Options’ dropdown I chose ‘By Paragraph’ which makes each paragraph of text appear separately.

    Slide 4: Question

    This slide wasn’t built using a quiz slide (but it could be) which meant I needed to create everything from scratch. I started with my background image and added two new states – a correct and incorrect:

    correct and incorrect states for background image

    For each of the new states, I went to the ‘Format’ tab and increased the brightness by 10% and recoloured the images:

    format tab

    Then I added four rectangles, one for the question and one for each answer. For the demo, Option C is the correct answer, so I also created a state for each option:

    answer states

    Lastly, I added a layer that contains a button to replay the demo (the trigger is to jump to the first slide when the button is clicked) and also prevents another answer being selected (go to ‘Layer Properties’ and tick the box next to ‘Prevent the user from clicking on the base layer’).

    Then I needed to add triggers to each answer option to make it all work:

    answer triggers

    So that’s how I created each of my slides for this challenge. There were lots of other creative ideas shared by community members in this challenge and you if have ideas, please share them in the comments area below.

    All images used in this demo came from Death to the Stock Photo.

  • How I created a Custom Quiz-style Interaction in Storyline 2

    Recently a friend of mine contacted me as he had an idea for an interaction he wanted to create in Storyline 2 and needed some help with building it.

    He wanted the interaction to work like this:

    • A question with five answer options.
    • Two of the five answers were correct.
    • Only a maximum of two answers could be selected.

     

    He also wanted a ‘submit’ button and once clicked, then he wanted:

    • Feedback for each answer to be shown.
    • An indication of which two answers were correct.
    • To still see which two answers were originally selected.

     

    With a bit of experimentation and a few prototypes I was able to create something that met his needs and this post is about how I got there.

    Originally I thought about using a freeform question slide but as I didn’t need to worry about scoring so I went with a regular slide.

    I started by inserting a place for the question and the five answer options on a slide and I also created a ‘selected’ state for each answer option. Next I created a submit button and set the initial state to hidden – my idea was to change it to normal when two answers are picked (or become selected). I’d also need to make the other three un-selected answers become inactive once the second answer had been chosen. I abandoned this idea when I realised all the triggers I’d need to make it work.

    My next idea was to create a layer and place the submit button on this own layer. The reason I did this was because I remembered that in the layer properties there’s a setting where you can prevent the use from clicking on the base layer (click in the box to turn on the setting):

    Slide layer propertiesUsing this setting would take away the need to come up with triggers for making the un-selected answers not work as once this layer is showing nothing on the base could be clicked on. But I did need to figure out triggers to make this layer show – which was after the second answer was selected – based around the state of my answer options. So with 5 answer options there’s the following 10 selection combinations:

    1 and 2, 1 and 3, 1 and 4, 1 and 5, 2 and 3, 2 and 4, 2 and 5, 3 and 4, 3 and 5, 4 and 5.

    So my 10 triggers to show the layer with the submit button on it (based on the state of the answers) were variations of this:

    Show layer trigger

    Note: In this trigger, the order the answers are chosen doesn’t matter so choosing answer 1 then answer 2 is the same as choosing answer 2 and then answer 1.

    Once the layer with the submit button is showing, users are not able to click on the base layer and select any other answers (in hindsight, the way interaction is set-up means that you can’t change your answers once you’ve picked two). The trigger on the submit button is to show another layer that contains the feedback, which answers are correct/incorrect and it still shows the selected answers on the base. I positioned the answers on this layer showing which are correct/incorrect directly over the answer options on the base which means the selected state showing.

    As this is a prototype I haven’t focused on the slide design, it was more about seeing if I could achieve the functionality he wanted. Click on the image below to see a demo and if you’d like to download the .story file click here.

    quiz style interaction demo