How I Made This Progress Meter in Storyline 360
Including a progress meter in your e-learning course is a great way to give learners visual feedback about how far along in the course they are. Progress meters can take many shapes and forms, but typically you’ll see a bar near the bottom of the slide that fills up as the learner moves forward in the course, like in the animated .GIF below. Click here to see the interactive version. It’s particularly useful to include a progress meter in longer courses, so learners can estimate how much longer they’ll need to finish the course and can then decide whether to finish up or come back later. Orienting learners also helps prevent them from feeling lost or overwhelmed due to having no clue as to where they are in a course. Thanks to slide numbers in Storyline 360, you can create a custom progress meter like the one above by adding a single trigger. Let me quickly walk you through how I created mine. 1. Insert & Format a Slider If you want the progress bar to appear on all your slides, you’ll need to put it on your slide master. To do that, open the view tab and click Slide Master. From there, open the insert tab, click Slider, and select one of the slider options. For this example, it doesn’t really matter which one you choose because of the formatting options you’ll apply later. Next, go ahead and insert a thin rectangle that’s the same length as your slide. This rectangle will be what fills up the progress bar as the learner advances through your course. With your rectangle selected, choose the fill color you want and select No Outline. When you’re happy with the formatting, right-click on the rectangle and choose Export Shape as Picture. Save your rectangle to an easy-to-find location—like your desktop—and give it a name that’s easy to identify. Then, click on the rectangle in your project, go down to the timeline, and click on the eye to hide it. We’ll use it again later, but for now we want to make sure it doesn’t get in the way. Now, select your slider, open the format tab, click Thumb Fill, select Picture, and browse for the rectangle you just saved. The next step is to adjust the size of your slider until the rectangle (or thumb) is entirely off the slide, as shown in the animated .GIF below. If you’ve set it up correctly, the rectangle (or thumb) should be completely off the slide. The part of the track that's on the slide should be empty but take up the entire width of the slide, like in the screenshot below: Once your slider is the right size, you’ll format it to look the way you want. For this example, you’ll choose No Outline for the thumb border ... … and No Fill and No Outline for the track fill and border. Next, unhide that rectangle you used to create the slider thumb. You’re going to use this rectangle to create the outline of the progress bar. For this example, get rid of the fill color and add a gray contour, so it looks like the screenshot below. Then move your slider and rectangle to the bottom of the slide and line them up. You want the rectangle to be slightly taller than the slider thumb—as pictured below—so you might need to adjust the height of your rectangle. Once your rectangle is the right height, center it on your slide. Finally, click on your slider, open the design tab, and change the end value to 100. 2. Create a Trigger Now that your slider is all set up, you’ll need to add a trigger to make it show your learner’s progress. Here’s what the trigger should look like: Note that the object should be the name of your master slide, so it might be different than what you see above. 3. Insert a Hotspot Next, you’ll want to add a hotspot to prevent learners from clicking on the slider and changing its position manually. To do that, simply open the insert tab, click Hotspot, and select the rectangle. Then, right-click on your hotspot and uncheck Show Hand Cursor on the hover option so learners don’t think there’s something to click on. If you’d like, you could stop here! Your progress bar should now be fully functional. However, if you want to take it further, move on to step four. 4. Add a Hover State (Optional) To take your progress bar to the next level, add the exact percentage of the course that’s been completed to the hover state for learners to see when they hover over the progress meter. To do so, open the insert tab, choose Slide Number, and click More in the drop-down menu. Then select Progress through project (or Progress through menu, if you’re using the menu order to number your slides) and click on the place you’d like to insert it on your slide. The percentage will appear in a textbox, like this: From there, you can format the text—change the color, for example—and move it to the exact spot you’d like it to appear, like I’ve done below: To make the hover state work, you’ll need to add a trigger since there’s a hotspot preventing the learner from interacting with the slider. Here’s what that trigger should look like: And that’s it! Now your learners can see how they’re progressing through your course. Here’s what the end result looks like. Keep in mind that this isn’t the only way to create a progress meter. Feel free to get creative! Want to download my file to better understand how I've set everything up? Pop on over to this page. More Resources Want to learn more about the slide number feature? Check out this article for ideas of ways to use this feature and this tutorial for a step-by-step guide on adding slide numbers to your project. If you want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360, why not start a free 30-day trial? And be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).How I Designed This Immersive Scenario on Prioritizing Tasks
Recently my fellow instructional designers Sarah Hodge and Madison McCartney and I teamed up to prove that there’s always more than one way to present course content. Each of us created a mini-course on prioritizing tasks, using the Eisenhower Decision Matrix as our starting point. In this article, I’m going to walk you through how I got from this: … to this: View interactive version | Download template Without further ado, let’s get into it! Setting the Scene Since I created this project as an example, there’s no real target audience, much less learning objectives. But to make it feel realistic I set some basic parameters to guide my design thinking. Here’s what I came up with: Audience: Novice e-learning project managers Learning objective: Be able to identify tasks, classify them as important and/or urgent, and prioritize them accordingly Coming Up with the Concept Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of great e-learning examples in the E-Learning Heroes community, but a few really stand out to me. One in particular is this time management game by Phil Eagles. I love the way he took a series of simple multiple choice questions and made them into a scenario that feels real and meaningful. And since time management is so closely related to task prioritization, it’s the first thing I thought of when I started brainstorming ideas for my project. I wanted to create something similar—but put my own spin on it. Because I wanted to create a totally custom and immersive scenario, Storyline 360 was the perfect choice for this project. I decided to simulate a desk and let learners identify tasks and prioritize items for themselves. The idea behind this was to emulate real life—where learners have to identify tasks and decide which ones to do first—while also following one of the key principles of adult learning by giving them control over their learning experience. Refining the Scenario Once I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, it was time to iron out the scenario details. I wanted to give learners enough opportunities to practice prioritizing tasks without it feeling repetitive. I included a few different types of tasks—since that’s what it’s like in real life. In the end, I settled on a total of six tasks, including a few emails, a couple of text messages, and a Post-it. As I started to build out my scenario, I ran into some challenges. One of the main issues was that my slide was getting overcrowded. To overcome this challenge and help learners focus on one thing at a time, I divided the process of task prioritization into two parts: Step 1: identify and analyze the tasks to determine how urgent/important they are Step 2: prioritize the tasks based on their level of urgency/importance For step one, I used a series of toggles so the learner can decide if each task is urgent and/or important. Based on their answer, I provide custom feedback. This is how that turned out: For step two, I made a simple drag-and-drop interaction so the learner can decide where each task belongs on their to-do list based on its level of urgency and importance. Here’s what that ended up looking like: Because this project was intended for adults who may have previous experience with the Eisenhower Decision Matrix, I made the explanation walk-through optional, as shown in the screenshot below: Is this how I initially envisioned my project? Absolutely not. To be honest, I don’t think I really had a clear mental picture of what it would look like. Some people can map out their entire project before they even open up the authoring app, while others do better jumping straight into building and get inspired along the way. Both methods are totally fine as long as you always keep your learners’ needs at the center of your design. Designing the Graphics As someone with no formal graphic design training, I can be challenged to come up with ideas for the look and feel of my courses. To find inspiration, I usually start by checking out the examples and templates on E-Learning Heroes as well as the Content Library 360 templates. Even if I don’t find exactly what I need, I usually come across something I can use as a starting point. Personally, I find that starting with a template is less intimidating than starting from a blank slide. And even if the final result ends up looking completely different than the original template, having something to start with helps me channel my ideas and inch closer to a place I feel good about. So, once I knew that I wanted to create an immersive scenario, I headed straight to E-Learning Heroes to look for templates I could use as a springboard for my design. A quick search for “desk” led me to this template, which I thought was perfect: Download Template After opening the template, I made some adjustments and played around with different color options. Here’s what my first version looked like: There’s nothing wrong with the way this looks, but—as I mentioned earlier in this article—it was at this point I realized there wasn’t enough room on the slide to allow learners to both identify and prioritize tasks in one spot. Splitting the activity up into two parts gave me more screen real estate to work with. Around this time, I also decided I wasn’t sure about the mint green wall and wanted to give white a try . . . . . . but I wasn’t totally sold on that either. I also felt lukewarm about the way the desk looked and decided to incorporate some texture. This is what the next version looked like: Wondering how I created the wood texture? I did a Google search for “flat design wood,” inserted one of the images I found onto my slide master, and then used the curve tool and shapes in Storyline 360 to achieve a similar effect. This is what it looks like behind the scenes: I was pretty happy with the way this looked, but when I started adding other objects to the screen, I realized they didn’t stand out enough against the dark blue background. That’s when I settled on the design you see in the final version: I went through a similar process for the other slides in my project, so I thought I’d share the different versions with you as well. . . . and here’s the final version. You’ll notice that in the final version I pulled in the computer screen from the previous slide to tie it together a bit more. I also changed the size of the boxes to make it all fit on the screen. As I was working on my core content slides, I also started to pull together my title slide. Since my other two slides used a flat design style, I wanted to stick with something similar. I found this simple slide template in Content Library 360 and used it as a starting point: I didn’t want to include characters, so I deleted those and changed the color of the background to match the dark blue I was using at the time. After taking out the characters and changing the color, I felt like the slide was too minimal. It was missing something, so I sat and thought about how I could incorporate more visual interest. That’s when I had an idea: what if the title slide was a view of the desk from above? And since we’re talking about prioritizing tasks—and many people write their to-do lists in a notebook—I thought that might make sense and look nice. So I went back to E-Learning Heroes for some inspiration and ended up finding this spiral notebook template: Download I imported it into Storyline 360 and made a few adjustments to make it all come together. Here’s what it ended up looking like: As you can see, graphic design isn’t always a straightforward process. It doesn’t necessarily go from zero to perfect in one fell swoop. In many cases it’s an iterative process involving incremental changes until you’re happy with what you’ve got. So the next time you’re feeling stuck and unsure about your design, try doing what I did and search E-Learning Heroes or Content Library 360 for a template you can use as a starting point. Then, make small changes here and there. Eventually you’ll get to a place where you feel good about your design. More Resources Hopefully you’ve found this inside look at my design process interesting and insightful! Remember, it’s okay if your first draft isn’t perfect. Design (whether it’s instructional or graphic) is a process, and it often takes trial and error to get it to where it needs to be. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! If you enjoyed this article and are looking for more insight into what goes on in the minds of instructional designers as they’re creating courses, be sure to check out these articles: How I Designed This Personalized Decision Matrix How I Designed This Interactive Dial Matrix A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How I Designed This Gamified Quiz Want to try building your own immersive scenario in Storyline 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.
