This is a bit of a rant, but it will give you some context. If you find it too much scroll down to the bold bits.
In my experience, most of the training created by any company is a glorified storyboard with next and previous buttons. So to that end, it's a brilliant storyboard tool, and even better when combined with Articulate Review. Together these two tools eliminate bottlenecks and death by committee style reviews. We've leveraged that notion to focus on quick development in Rise and then we use Review as a platform for quick SME interaction and approval. That workflow alone is worth the money in time savings and clarity. It's also a tool for transparency, as everyone can see and react to everyone else comments, in context.
In my world, a storyboard is a tool to visualize the narrative/storytelling we'll use to deliver the 3 E's. Entertain. Educate. Elevate. If you take time to make a great storyboard this way with a real focus on the learner experience and the narrative you're using to educate them your "storyboard" is excellent training as is.
These time savings by way of constraints gives you more time to focus on some higher level media like linear animation videos to support that content and provide the learners with some modality options in each module. We sometimes toss in some live action character animation for the videos to give it a friendly face and to keep it entertaining as we cover dull content. However, we wouldn't have time for that if we were developing in the traditional tools (Storyline and Captivate) because they have too many options for the average ID. Often the "blank canvas" approach of having control over everything slows the process down and muddies the presentation with a "fill the screen" mentality. Formatting becomes inconsistent in larger groups, and design choices are easy to ignore. So, leveraging the constraints of Rise with regards to format, colors, layout general style guide stuff, allows us to focus on the story, content and some well placed advanced media that enhances the "storyboard".
In short, I agree, I especially like the limitations on the platform to focus efforts and facilitate decision making. If you are taking the training to the next level (for us it's a documentary style video with motion graphics), it's an excellent storyboard tool with a learning curve suitable for Corporate America, and in most cases, it's quality training if left at the storyboard level.
I can tell you love your job! As do I. Your reply is extremely helpful and you hit the nail on the head toward the end as I have run into dead ends by starting with a blank page (recently). So, storyboarding is something that I've become fond of and I am happy to hear that you recommend Rise and Review. I do have a couple of additional questions I hope you (or anyone else reading) could chime in.
Question 1: Have you ever had an idea for how to develop a training but didn't have the proper tools? I am up against that challenge right now and I am not sure where to start. Products like Storyline and Rise are excellent, but what I'm finding is that my company could benefit more from content creation resources like a digital camera, actors, and a script; a designer knowledgeable about typeface and after effects so that the aesthetic of the video can contribute to the narrative. I would love to learn to do all of these things, but again...I am not sure where to start.
Question 2: What meeting format have you used to share your storyboards with colleagues for optimal feedback? In-person, Video, Dropbox...
Q2: For all things Articulate, I share the Rise storyboards with Articulate Review. This allows them to view the storyboard and reply in context, with their names attached to it. I specifically avoid web meetings to review storyboards because it becomes to easy to skim over things. I want them the think it over, write it down and then for everyone else reviewing to be able to see what they thought. It removes a lot of "and stuff" "just do your magic" and other cop-outs.
Q1: I have a lot of ideas about how to build training and I've explored just about all of them. I've landed on the idea of training video production with a documentary film methodology.
I feel sleazy putting my promotional links in here, but it's relevant to what we're talking about. I have a bunch of examples of this method here http://www.cameronstewart.com/
Note: Articulate Storyline is used for Closed Captioning... and that's about it. We had to deliver this in 16 different CC languages and it's the only tool that could handle the code.
You'll see at the bottom of all of my samples a list of what I used to make that video/training module.
In addition to the software, here's what I consider the ideal Corporate America video gear list, as of today. The idea is to be able to put it all in your backpack and get "good enough" video to use. Also, I find Corporate America to be about 10 years behind and that you can delight them with about 70% quality standards in a video. I say that in the most loving way possible btw. Knowing where to draw lines on the LOE (Level of Effort) is important to the bottom line.
I'm on a Mac btw, FCP and Motion (in place or After Effects) costs about $600 total but you could also do this with Premiere and After Effect for sure.
Audio: Yeti USB mic and a quiet room (Edit with Audition)
Video: I used to use a Canon DSLr (60D with a good lens) but I've since switched to using my iPhone X with Moment Lenses.
3 Replies
This is a bit of a rant, but it will give you some context. If you find it too much scroll down to the bold bits.
In my experience, most of the training created by any company is a glorified storyboard with next and previous buttons. So to that end, it's a brilliant storyboard tool, and even better when combined with Articulate Review. Together these two tools eliminate bottlenecks and death by committee style reviews. We've leveraged that notion to focus on quick development in Rise and then we use Review as a platform for quick SME interaction and approval. That workflow alone is worth the money in time savings and clarity. It's also a tool for transparency, as everyone can see and react to everyone else comments, in context.
In my world, a storyboard is a tool to visualize the narrative/storytelling we'll use to deliver the 3 E's. Entertain. Educate. Elevate. If you take time to make a great storyboard this way with a real focus on the learner experience and the narrative you're using to educate them your "storyboard" is excellent training as is.
These time savings by way of constraints gives you more time to focus on some higher level media like linear animation videos to support that content and provide the learners with some modality options in each module. We sometimes toss in some live action character animation for the videos to give it a friendly face and to keep it entertaining as we cover dull content. However, we wouldn't have time for that if we were developing in the traditional tools (Storyline and Captivate) because they have too many options for the average ID. Often the "blank canvas" approach of having control over everything slows the process down and muddies the presentation with a "fill the screen" mentality. Formatting becomes inconsistent in larger groups, and design choices are easy to ignore. So, leveraging the constraints of Rise with regards to format, colors, layout general style guide stuff, allows us to focus on the story, content and some well placed advanced media that enhances the "storyboard".
In short, I agree, I especially like the limitations on the platform to focus efforts and facilitate decision making. If you are taking the training to the next level (for us it's a documentary style video with motion graphics), it's an excellent storyboard tool with a learning curve suitable for Corporate America, and in most cases, it's quality training if left at the storyboard level.
Cameron,
I can tell you love your job! As do I. Your reply is extremely helpful and you hit the nail on the head toward the end as I have run into dead ends by starting with a blank page (recently). So, storyboarding is something that I've become fond of and I am happy to hear that you recommend Rise and Review. I do have a couple of additional questions I hope you (or anyone else reading) could chime in.
Question 1: Have you ever had an idea for how to develop a training but didn't have the proper tools? I am up against that challenge right now and I am not sure where to start. Products like Storyline and Rise are excellent, but what I'm finding is that my company could benefit more from content creation resources like a digital camera, actors, and a script; a designer knowledgeable about typeface and after effects so that the aesthetic of the video can contribute to the narrative. I would love to learn to do all of these things, but again...I am not sure where to start.
Question 2: What meeting format have you used to share your storyboards with colleagues for optimal feedback? In-person, Video, Dropbox...
Thanks again.
Q2: For all things Articulate, I share the Rise storyboards with Articulate Review. This allows them to view the storyboard and reply in context, with their names attached to it. I specifically avoid web meetings to review storyboards because it becomes to easy to skim over things. I want them the think it over, write it down and then for everyone else reviewing to be able to see what they thought. It removes a lot of "and stuff" "just do your magic" and other cop-outs.
Q1: I have a lot of ideas about how to build training and I've explored just about all of them. I've landed on the idea of training video production with a documentary film methodology.
I feel sleazy putting my promotional links in here, but it's relevant to what we're talking about. I have a bunch of examples of this method here http://www.cameronstewart.com/
In particular this one https://www.portfolio.cameronstewart.com/2017/06/30/project-management-academy-training/
Note: Articulate Storyline is used for Closed Captioning... and that's about it. We had to deliver this in 16 different CC languages and it's the only tool that could handle the code.
You'll see at the bottom of all of my samples a list of what I used to make that video/training module.
In addition to the software, here's what I consider the ideal Corporate America video gear list, as of today. The idea is to be able to put it all in your backpack and get "good enough" video to use. Also, I find Corporate America to be about 10 years behind and that you can delight them with about 70% quality standards in a video. I say that in the most loving way possible btw. Knowing where to draw lines on the LOE (Level of Effort) is important to the bottom line.
I'm on a Mac btw, FCP and Motion (in place or After Effects) costs about $600 total but you could also do this with Premiere and After Effect for sure.
Audio: Yeti USB mic and a quiet room (Edit with Audition)
Video: I used to use a Canon DSLr (60D with a good lens) but I've since switched to using my iPhone X with Moment Lenses.
Something like this for a DSLr https://www.amazon.com/Canon-Digital-18-135mm-3-5-5-6-Stabilization/dp/B01BUYJX6G/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1533751772&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=canon+60D&psc=1
Here's the Moment website https://www.shopmoment.com/
To pull off some good bB-roll, I currently use a Movi (gimble) and shoot video, timelapse, Movie Lapse and also just tripod-locked down shots with it.
Here's the Movi https://store.freeflysystems.com/collections/movi
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