I'm looking for suggestions on how to represent phone conversations. I'm going to use a Storyline Character for the person who is answering the phone, but I'm looking for inspiration on how to represent the caller (who you would not be able to see) without using audio.
you could use a split screen with the main character on the phone taking up 2/3 screen and then in a 1/3 section have just a head shot of another character on the phone and have captions coming on to represent the conversation - maybe like this - characters are just quick samples I had - would have the headshot on the phone as well.
I'll go through the challenge entries later tonight. I know we have some good examples. They may include audio but the design concept was creative and could give you some more ideas.
Hi Meaghan, I used to use a callout and make it look just come out of the handset to stand for another character on the phone, and if you don't have audio, you can put a character in it or use different shapes of callouts to distinguish them.
I'm going to agree with Wendy. I used the same approach in creating a course for mortgage collection agents. One-third of the screen was the customer inputs and hints, the other two-thirds of the screen were screenshots where the agents had to enter the customer's information to search and find the answers to the customer's questions. As the agents answered more calls the scenarios went from answering questions to editing and updating information. I modeled it as a day in the life of an agent, from the moment they sat down at the computer in the morning to logging off at the end of the day. The SMEs and I created a call scenario for the top 20 calls an agent would receive in a typical day. The one point I would like to add is to make it wide screen, give yourself as much real estate as possible to work with.
Another technique I've seen for the caller is using an SL character image with a name (e.g. John Smith or Customer 01) on a smart phone screen. Something like this:
In addition to all of the above, I'd also mention comic-style interactions, which can be either fancy (yes, like Broken Coworker) or quite basic:
You can see a bigger/published example here. I've included two versions of the same conversation: one showing all of the panels at once and the other with forward buttons, revealing each comic panel one by one. Most often I use the latter, to give learners control over text animations.
10 Replies
Hi Meaghan
you could use a split screen with the main character on the phone taking up 2/3 screen and then in a 1/3 section have just a head shot of another character on the phone and have captions coming on to represent the conversation - maybe like this - characters are just quick samples I had - would have the headshot on the phone as well.
Hope that helps
Really like your split-panel idea, Wendy!
I'll go through the challenge entries later tonight. I know we have some good examples. They may include audio but the design concept was creative and could give you some more ideas.
Hi Meaghan, I used to use a callout and make it look just come out of the handset to stand for another character on the phone, and if you don't have audio, you can put a character in it or use different shapes of callouts to distinguish them.
You could use timing and animations so flick between 2 "callers" with their words in speech bubbles.
Or the cartoon style layout similar to the broken co-worker example.
Thank you everyone for your ideas. They have been very helpful.
Hi Meaghan,
I'm going to agree with Wendy. I used the same approach in creating a course for mortgage collection agents. One-third of the screen was the customer inputs and hints, the other two-thirds of the screen were screenshots where the agents had to enter the customer's information to search and find the answers to the customer's questions. As the agents answered more calls the scenarios went from answering questions to editing and updating information. I modeled it as a day in the life of an agent, from the moment they sat down at the computer in the morning to logging off at the end of the day. The SMEs and I created a call scenario for the top 20 calls an agent would receive in a typical day. The one point I would like to add is to make it wide screen, give yourself as much real estate as possible to work with.
Another technique I've seen for the caller is using an SL character image with a name (e.g. John Smith or Customer 01) on a smart phone screen. Something like this:
In addition to all of the above, I'd also mention comic-style interactions, which can be either fancy (yes, like Broken Coworker) or quite basic:
You can see a bigger/published example here. I've included two versions of the same conversation: one showing all of the panels at once and the other with forward buttons, revealing each comic panel one by one. Most often I use the latter, to give learners control over text animations.
Maija
Thank you for your suggestion. It's very helpful for my current project.
Meaghan
They ideas given by Wendy and Maija are great.
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