To Auto Advance or Not?
Nov 01, 2016
Hello community! I need your help settling an internal conflict I have. Ha!
I can't decide if a learner would prefer to click Next to advance each slide or to have the slides automatically advance until action is required on their part. I'm working on several presentations that present opportunities to open a URL or to view lightboxes on certain slides. While some slides with narration/graphics only auto advance, slides that have links or lightboxes are set to advance by user. However, I feel like this mix in navigation causes some learners confusion. For example, the presentation is playing along and all of a sudden it stops and the learner isn't sure what to do until their eyes find the next button. But, with that said, I've always personally hated the mindless redundancy of clicking through each slide.
What should I do?!
3 Replies
Check out this thread here for some useful comments.
Thanks Michael. I read through the comments on the thread. I can see how the decision would be simpler if the presentation was mostly narration or mostly interaction. My presentations are about 70/30. So the presentation may auto advance through several slides and then the learner comes to a slide that requires them to select Next. I think that's why it's confusing because they aren't really expecting it.
Amanda Allen
Personally, I'd stay away from auto advance. In order to give the learner as much freedom as possible I always leave them the chance to advance on their own pace, even if that means they can skip some slides.
As a solution to your specific problem you may want to find alternatives to the repetitive "Next" buttons. You could try different button labels, shapes or something similar. Another good way to go would be asking the learner how they think about the topic on hand.
I realise of course that this is not always possible with the budget or time given, but at least it's something to keep in mind for the future.
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