I'm building what is in essence a Help file, that you might otherwise build in RoboHelp or Flare. No linear navigation unless user-wanted, no quizzes or assessments. However, I've been given Articulate in which to create this with no ifs, ands, or buts.
All anyone at my client can tell me is that I might want to use the "FAQ" feature in Engage. What I really want is the appearance of an online help system (navigation on the left, interlinking, documents, breadcrumbs, attachments for download, etc, etc).
I'm fairly new to Articulate, so I would appreciate any suggestions (beyond "Use the FAQ tool!") you all could provide about building an online Help / Reference Tool in the Articulate suite.
What kind of help info do your learners need? Is it mostly text-based stuff, like definitions or short explanations of concepts? Procedural steps for specific tasks? Or maybe they need a visual job aid to help them understand the fields or options on a user interface?
Depending on the kind of learning experience you want to provide them with, you might want to explore multiple Engage interaction types. FAQ Interactions are totally cool for some situations, but there are also other lots of other nice options for making the content explorable & inviting & easy to navigate. You mentioned the idea of navigation on the left... the Tabs interaction is great for that. If you're looking for a way to let users explore a graphic (such as a screenshot or diagram or illustration), a Labeled Graphic might be nice. For more linear/procedural/step-based content, a Process or Timeline interaction are great. (You can check out samples of all the ready-made interaction types here... plus we also have a few additional (free) Community Interactions and other Engage-related resources that you can check out in the Downloads area.)
Maybe you could share a small example of the content you're working with, and a little bit about the learners and their needs... I'm sure we could help you brainstorm some cool ideas.
Have you found any drawbacks to using Engage interactions or Studio 09 as an online help tool? I'm considering using the FAQ and the Media Tour and bundling it within Studio. The only other tool I have access to at my firm is SharePoint and the Engage tools would offer more flexiblity.
I would think the glossary interaction would work very well in this case, topics down the left, you can link within each definition and link to documents
4 Replies
Hey Michelle, welcome!
What kind of help info do your learners need? Is it mostly text-based stuff, like definitions or short explanations of concepts? Procedural steps for specific tasks? Or maybe they need a visual job aid to help them understand the fields or options on a user interface?
Depending on the kind of learning experience you want to provide them with, you might want to explore multiple Engage interaction types. FAQ Interactions are totally cool for some situations, but there are also other lots of other nice options for making the content explorable & inviting & easy to navigate. You mentioned the idea of navigation on the left... the Tabs interaction is great for that. If you're looking for a way to let users explore a graphic (such as a screenshot or diagram or illustration), a Labeled Graphic might be nice. For more linear/procedural/step-based content, a Process or Timeline interaction are great. (You can check out samples of all the ready-made interaction types here... plus we also have a few additional (free) Community Interactions and other Engage-related resources that you can check out in the Downloads area.)
Maybe you could share a small example of the content you're working with, and a little bit about the learners and their needs... I'm sure we could help you brainstorm some cool ideas.
Have you found any drawbacks to using Engage interactions or Studio 09 as an online help tool? I'm considering using the FAQ and the Media Tour and bundling it within Studio. The only other tool I have access to at my firm is SharePoint and the Engage tools would offer more flexiblity.
I would think the glossary interaction would work very well in this case, topics down the left, you can link within each definition and link to documents
Thanks Phil, I'll take a look at the glossary interaction
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