Craziest Client Requests
Jan 08, 2015
By
Trina Rimmer
If you put a bunch of fellow e-learning designers into a room it’s bound to happen. Eventually someone shares a “you’ll never believe what this client wanted me to do” story.
From using frowning trash cans for wrong answers to adding laughing babies for correct answers (both actual requests!) sometimes clients ask us to incorporate some pretty crazy features into their courses. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever been asked to do? How did you handle it?
Thanks for sharing your story!
18 Replies
Honest to goodness, was asked to remove all graphics as "they are distracting". Only text. We pointed out why this would be bad, but they insisted. They were paying so they won. Poor poor poor learners.
Tricia, was this work as an employee or as a freelancer?
I worked for a large consulting firm that implemented ERP systems at large corporations. I was part of the Training team of consultants.
I was asked to remove ticks and replace them with exclamation marks. I explained that this is an international sign of a warning or something gone wrong, but they insisted. There were a lot of tick marks so this took hours. After the learner review stage, we were asked to change them all back because the learners thought they had done something wrong. !!!
Jacinta, that made me laugh out loud. I had a similar challenge with a client who thought that the square bullets in the company's branding guidelines were "too severe" and they made us change them all to round ones. Later the branding folks saw the round bullets and freaked out, prompting an eleventh hour bullet-swapping frenzy. Good times.
I was hired to develop an Alcohol and Drug policy course for a client which I did only to be told that I had to remove all images of alcohol and drugs. Instead I was allowed to use pictures of people looking concerned or images of buildings.
I also once did something creative with a progress bar - a series of branded bottlecaps instead of just circles. Client loved it but asked me to use every one of their brand products. As you can imagine, since the whole project was already created, it was a big change. But we did it happily, client asked for it, so no problem. 1 year on, they want it all changed to plain circles.
I couldn't help but smile when reading your story, Nancy, though I'm sure it was super painful at the time. I've definitely worked with clients like that in the past. Did you ever get any feedback on the training afterwards?
clientsfromhell.net
Some crazy requests in there. :)
No I never did (in a way I'm grateful that I didn't ).
I get this same request more often than I care to count. "Can you add [insert flashy animated emoticon dancing widget] pointing to the Next button? We want to ensure learners know what to do."
It never ceases to amaze me that the actionable word "NEXT" somehow escapes a client's understanding of the meaning.
Oh, and once asked to add sequential emoticon smiley faces to an interactive exercise. "We want the smiley faces to start with a frown and progress to a really happy face."
The last face had a giant smile and hearts for eyes.
So flashing arrows pointing to a flashing arrow? Yep, that sounds about right...
I'd love to see that one . It sounds great I say with a cringe.
Bouncing flashing arrows pointing to glowing and pulsing arrows...with the word, "Next" of course.
And yet.. When I did some elearning for a big client on the normal Storyline player, with prev and next buttons, they had the team in their office review it. These are all people in middle management type roles. After they read the first page, no-one knew what to do.
I am so there. I use a Studio player. The training I developed was partially narrated, uses a top tab navigation style for sections and boxes for topics within the sections. In the Navigation tips at the beginning of the course and I say that learners will use the next button to navigation within the topics. Everyone LOVES the training...but, they want the Next button to 'glow' when its time to click it. Really??
I use a very simple version of the Storyline 2 player - just a volume button, previous, and next buttons. I even put instructions on screen to tell the learner to hit the "NEXT" button when they're finished exploring the slide (clickable markers). I tested it out on a well-educated individual similar to the professional learners I was targeting, and he was completely lost. He clicked one marker, then said, "Um, what do I do now?"
Tested it on three other similarly situated professionals - none of whom read the directions that said "Click each of the markers, and when you've visited all of them, click NEXT to move on" and they were all confused.
So, I made a giant pop-up lightbox with the directions that the learner would have to read and click CLOSE before doing the activity. ALL of them clicked CLOSE and then couldn't remember what to do. Added an annoying arrow - boom. They got it.
I guess sometimes you just need an annoying arrow. Meh.
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