Designing training for Mobile App

Hi AileenD

I would not recommend using Storyline 360 for developing mobile content. Storyline 360 publishes content that scales to different device sizes and orientations. Therefore, if an interactive element, such as a button is optimised for desktop (font-size, button size), you will find that the font-size and button size is much too small on a mobile device as the entire slide is scaled to fit the device. The same goes for optimising for mobile. If the button size and font-size are good for mobile you will find they are huge when viewed on desktop, tablet.

You would need to use an authoring tool that is designed for producing responsive content, such as Articulate Rise. What you will find with Rise is that regardless of the device size and orientation, the font-sizes and any interactive elements will remain at a good consistent size for all users.

Using Storyline 360 would mean that the content size is not optimised for some users.

Great question, AileenD! I see that SamHill has already shared some insights.

Virendra, hotneon, Jonathan_Hill—curious if any of you have additional thoughts or tips to add?

I’d like to clarify that this training is focused on how to use the mobile app, not on creating a training specifically for mobile viewing. However, I cannot control how users will access the training. While I recommend viewing it on a desktop, I anticipate that many learners may use their mobile devices, which could present challenges. Given this, a simulation-based training may not be feasible, but I’d love to explore options or see examples of similar approaches.

We launched a mobile version of an enterprise work management application a year or two ago. Because the decision had been made to deploy iPads to the workforce, there was a desire to have training that reflected this environment. (The app also works on mobile phones, but most regular users would be using tablets, so we left that out of the main release.)

To simulate the environment, I built a module that was sized to replicate a tablet. The majority of users in the initial months of the deployment took the training on a desktop or laptop, but it appeared as if it were playing on a tablet. We did receive a good deal of positive feedback about this and would probably choose a similar path if we were given that project again.

One caution to know is that you are restricted to a single screen layout size; in other words, you can't run one story that has more than one screen layout (horizontal or vertical, 16x9 or 4x3). So for our project, I designed the module to replicate a vertical (portrait) oriented tablet. 

Then there were dozens of screenshots and interactions, of course, but that's part of the work.

I would think you could easily take a similar approach and see if you could design a module that would either introduce users to the primary purposes of the software (what we did) and then walk them through what they will likely be doing with it (also what we did - one simple task). I would probably not suggest that you delve into what an advanced user would do; not only would they likely be able to figure it out anyway, it would be a much more limited use case, in my view.

Hope this helps!

Hello! I've built several 'chromeless' interactions in Storyline in 9:16 portrait format that fill most mobile screens quite nicely, but they are not truly responsive. I also tend to use quite a high resolution (at least 1080p) and take care with font and button sizes to ensure readability and operability.

Some of these interactions look pretty good on a desktop monitor, but it really depends on your content and the interface. 

It's more work, but consider building your main course in Rise (which of course is responsive) and then linking to demo interactions in different screen sizes. For instance, a button set with a choice of 'Desktop' or 'Mobile', opening the demo in a new window or tab, taking full advantage of that device's screen size and layout.