What do you do when a client has a great idea for a slide in the course they have designed themselves, but has no idea if it can actually be created in their chosen elearning development tool? They wanted a carousel slide… sounds simple right? But they also wanted buttons along the bottom that the user could click if they didn’t want to scroll through the carousel. So not just a carousel… but not just a tabbed interaction either.
In this case, Articulate Storyline was the elearning development tool to be used, but I had some early doubts about how to achieve the required design, and wasnt sure if I could make Storyline do what I wanted it to. So my challenge for the week was to experiment, and see just what I could achieve in Storyline…. Was I reaching for the impossible? Was this out of my skillset?
A lot of trial and error, frustration, and restarts later, and I finally started to get somewhere, making the animation worked how i wanted it to for one layer. A lot of work and effort later and I achieved an end result I was happy with. This slide is part of a much larger module, and forms part of a design sequence. So while it might look odd on it’s own, it works well in amongst the complete build.
The slide is a tabbed interaction at first look. But a closer inspection shows carousel arrows at the side. My end slide works as either a tabbed interaction or carousel, depending on what you click, and you can switch between the two.
The Storyline build for this slide uses a mix of layers, triggers, scroll panels, motion paths, and subtle fade animations to give the end result. There are no variables, and definitely no javascript. This is all created using native Storyline assets and effects. This interaction is probably simple to build for the huge range of amazing content developers out there. For me, it made me think about my build again, and caused me to dust off some skills I havent used much in a while.
It may have been a challenge for me, but it was worth it, and I enjoyed the process, learning something along the way.
Don’t put limits… on yourself… on the tools you use… on the knowledge you have… and what you can achieve.
Try something that pushes the boundaries of what you know, and maybe you will surprise yourself by learning something unexpected.
Keeping it Purple 