Two Quick Tips for Working with Characters in Storyline 360

As the name implies, Storyline 360 is a great tool for crafting digital stories. Stories—or scenarios—work well for e-learning because they help learners understand how the course material applies to real-life situations.

And what’s one of the most important visual components of a story? The characters! And since Storyline 360 comes with access to all the Content Library 360 characters—more than 100,000 combinations of photographic and illustrated characters, expressions, and poses—it’s never been easier to feature awesome characters in your next project.

And scenarios aren’t the only reason to include characters in your e-learning courses. You can also use a character as a guide or narrator to add a touch of personality and help learners better relate to your content. Richard Mayer’s studies on multimedia learning suggest that including a visual narrator can increase learner engagement, so inserting a character is a good way to keep learners focused on your course (learn more here: Personalization Principle: Speaking to Instead of at Your Learners). 

No matter what your reason for using characters may be, these quick and easy tips will help you save time when working with characters in Storyline 360.

1. Double-Click to Edit

When you need to edit a character, try the “double-click trick”: just double-click on the character to automatically open the Design tab.

From there, you can access all the tools you need to quickly and easily edit your character. What a timesaver!

2. Swap Out Characters with the Media Library

If you just need to swap out a character in one spot, you can easily do that from the Design tab mentioned above. But if you need to replace that same character wherever they appear in your project, save time by making those changes in the Media Library.

Available in the View tab, the Media Library is a central location where you can manage all the assets in your course—including characters!

For example, you can replace an illustrated character and all of its poses with another illustrated character in one fell swoop. Check out the .GIF below to see how that works:

If you’re using photographic characters, there’s no “replace all” option, but it’s still faster to replace individual poses in the Media Library instead of on each individual slide. Take a look at this .GIF to find out how it works:

Give these tips a try next time you’re working with characters in Storyline 360 and see for yourself how much time you’ll save! And if you’re looking for advice on choosing and using characters in your e-learning courses, check out these helpful articles:

• 5 Tips to Help You Choose Characters for E-Learning
• 5 Cool Ways to Use Characters to Engage and Connect with Learners

Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate software? Start a free, 30-day trial and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any comments, please share them below.