Storytelling has been a buzzword in eLearning circles lately – and for good reason. Everyone loves a good story and they are a great way to put new information into a familiar context, provide feedback, and run through possible scenarios. I know I always remember more from a story than I do from a list of bullet points.

This week’s eLearning challenge was to visually tell a story with a photo collage.  The submissions so far have been all over the map in style and use of pictures, so be sure to check them out.  Spoiler: I decided to go the route of presenting a scenario with feedback in a comic book/pop-art style.

So, what’s the story?

Since this challenge was story based, I decided the story was the best starting point.  But I was feeling a little stuck.  The return of miserably cold weather has effectively shut down my brain which was terrible timing since I had a lot going on this week.

So I decided to just create a quick and easy scenario based around how a manager might deal with a major employee error. Why that scenario? Who knows.  It is just what popped into my head.

I came up with four different ways that a manager might respond to a crisis stemming from employee error – blaming, helping, fixing, and ignoring – and went from there.

Winter, Managed. (or: Visual Design)

Without a lot of time to spend on the challenge,  I decided to use the only photographic character Storyline has built-in. She has a ton of great poses, way more than the illustrated characters, so I was able to find a pose that perfectly illustrated her freaking out over a problem, and then each of the four possible reactions.

Once the characters were on-screen, I found that they were really boring.  I mean, it was just a white page with five different images of the same lady, each in her own box.  It was just a little too plain Jane, Brady Bunch for my taste.

Since winter doesn’t seem to want to die, I decided some bright colors were in order.  I started to play around with possible backgrounds and found a really great pop-art like combo of a red and a yellow that I loved.  Text then was placed in white speech bubbles or boxes, just like in a comic.

For fonts I used:

• Segoe Print (my quick go-to for a handwriting-like font) for the speech bubbles.

• Tandelle (a nice, tall, dark, sans-serif font that looked like it might belong in a comic) for the feedback.
  

• I almost went with Stereofidelic for the feedback, but it was just a little too much.

John, Managed. (or: The Finished Product)

Here one image from the finished product.  To see all the possible outcomes, view the demo.  Don’t worry, it’s short and sweet – like winter should be.

 

Like it? Inspired? Got a better idea? Let me know!