Paws and Claws eLearning
Gone are the days of sending out paper leaflets or brochures and even email marketing can become a nuisance to customers. This left me thinking, is there a better way for organisation’s to send out key information to customers in a way that is easily accessible, dynamic and digestible.
An industry in which I felt this would be useful is for providers of insurance, to be able to send out policy information to customers in a format that differs to the traditional PDF booklet.
Therefore, I drafted up a ‘client’ for this brief. Paws and Claws, a provider of pet insurance.
The brief
When a customer purchases pet insurance with Paws and Claws, they like to send out a document of useful information regarding the customer’s breed of dog or cat. This is to help support the customer in keeping their pet as healthy as possible.
They usually send out these documents as PDF’s, via an email attachment, with the customer’s policy. However Paws and Claws feel these are due a redesign and want something that the customer can interact with.
PROJECT DETAILS
Role: Instructional Designer / eLearning Developer
Brief: creation of an interactive, informative document for a pet insurance provider
Date: January 2024.
Duration: 3 weeks.
TOOLS
Articulate Storyline.
Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro.
Articulate Rise.
SKILLS
Instructional design
ELearning development.
Graphic design.
Video editing.
My response to the brief
In order to make the content digestible, I felt it best to split the content into key categories, such as nutrition, healthcare, exercise, training etc. This allows the customer to easily refer back to any specific information they need to know.
The main outcome of this ‘interactive document,’ is to educate customers on key information surrounding their pet, so that they can best support their pet’s health and wellbeing. However, I didn’t want this document to feel like a just a page of text, it had to be engaging and incorporate interactive elements to motivate the customer to read the learning content.
After developing the learning outcomes, I began scoping out the content. I chose to use Labrador as my pet breed and example content for this project. Upon analysing the brief and developing the learning outcomes, I felt the best platform to use for this project was Articulate Rise.
My reasoning behind this was:
It is responsive - meaning the customer can have easy access to the content on any device.
The navigation is simple and easy to use, meaning no complex navigation instructions which could potentially put people off.
It is quick and easy to drop in content, meaning a template could be created and the content adapted to fit each pet breed.
It doesn’t need to sit on an Learning Management System (LMS). The link to the microlearn could be sent out within the email, meaning no need for sign-ins or downloading things.
Interactivity
In order to make this document feel less text heavy and more interactive, I wanted to incorporate a variety of multimedia. When developing the content and ‘matching’ it to interactive elements within Rise, I opted for a mix of video, text and image blocks and image markers. However, the downside with using Rise is its limited customisation. I wanted the interactive document to be in keeping with Paws and Claws branding and colours, which can be difficult to achieve in Rise. Therefore I opted to incorporate Storyline blocks to allow for an elevated level of interactivity and customisation.
Storyline
I used a range of Storyline blocks to allow for fully branded interactive elements. I incorporated the morph transition to create a smooth ‘activity’ in which the customer selects different parts of a Labrador to learn more about the different elements of grooming. As the customer selects a marker on the image of the Labrador, the camera zooms in, once they have read the content the customer selects the ‘x’ icon and the camera zooms out back to the original image. They can repeat this process for all markers.
All Storyline blocks were kept fairly simple and I adjusted the player settings to make the blocks feel seamless amongst the Rise course. Unfortunately, if viewing on a tablet or mobile you get a play button over the Storyline block and a black rectangle. To workaround this, I changed the cover photo of each block to be a snapshot of the first slide. Whilst I couldn’t get rid of the play button, this helped to make the Storyline blocks stand out a little less.
Illustrations
I wanted the interactive ‘document’ to feel as though it was one continuous scroll. Due to Rise having microlearn functionality, I was able to create a scrolling page without needing to select continue or next buttons to move on. I used custom illustration to ‘decorate’ the space around the Rise blocks and make the whole thing feel less blocky. To keep the branding consistent I added custom, illustrated headers in the company font and used decals from the logo to ensure elements of the brand were present throughout the entire document.
Challenges and final thoughts
The main challenge with this build was incorporating the Storyline blocks into Rise, without it interrupting the seamless flow of the microlearn. However with the adjustment or player settings and clear instruction, I was able to minimise the disruption of these blocks opening and closing.
Another challenge came with getting the image sizing right. This interactive document had to be responsive across devices and all content and images needed to be viewable, regardless of the customer’s device. Therefore, this took a lot of trial and error to get image sizing and positioning right. I also had to ensure accessible options or alt text was available where decorative, illustrated headers were used.
Overall I’m really pleased with the outcome and feel it nicely demonstrates how Rise can be used for much more than corporate learning. It can also become a platform for customer facing assets too.
