Reverse Engineering a Storyboard

Similarly to last week, I am still reverse engineering, but this time it's a storyboard of the same e-learning. Storyboarding is still tricky for me because I am so new to it, but reversing the process for another learning has been helpful. 

What I've Learned

I've personally learned that reverse engineering a storyboard is like putting a puzzle together, except the box was missing a few pieces. Some things just have to be inferred, and some thing's you'll just never know. Despite this, it can really help you think through little details in: 

• • • navigation

    • animation

    • interactivity

    • color choices, and 

    • overall visual effect

This e-learning example called A Support Net from The Open University is a highly immersive branching video scenario. That was a mouthful, sorry. To give context, as the learner, you choose a character to help. I chose the first option, a school girl named Lily who is struggling to settle in at her new school. The scenario follows her general mental state around school, and as the user, you find out that she is very anxious. I've only ever experienced one other learning like this, and it, like this one, was highly memorable. This one really reinforced the point that video is a powerful tool in learning transfer.

What I Liked

This e-learning was highly effective, and the videos were very high quality. I loved the audio quality, the setting of the scenes, the lighting, and the interaction between characters. It felt authentic, and appealed to my empathetic side. I liked the calming background tones, and I liked the personalized feedback at the end of the learning. I also liked that the slide/scene transitions were consistent and simple. My favorite detail of the e-learning was the impact meter that accompanied the learner decisions. That way, despite the lack of feedback until the end, you're never guessing how overall impactful your decision was. 

What I Would Change

While this learning was highly effective and memorable, there were a few small things I noticed that might have been nice additions: 

1. "Next" buttons. With this being a deep branching scenario, you can probably expect learners to go through it a few times. After the first pass, I think it would be nice to be able to skip the videos if you've already seen them. The videos do have a fast forward option, but a next button would save time.

2. Bigger screen for the videos. The videos appear almost awkward on the screen, in my opinion. They aren't quite centered vertically, which doesn't conform to the alignment aspect of good graphic design. I think having the videos take up more of the screen would also look more visually appealing. The videos do allow you to choose full-screen, but that's something you have to do manually for every video.

3. More interactivity. The video plays through, you make your next decision, and it triggers the next video. I absolutely see the benefit in that. However, if you're wanting someone to be able to show empathy and identify behavior that might be indicative of anxiety, it might be cool if the video paused right after a scene and had you click on aspects of the video that were signs of anxiety. For instance, I felt that body language was important for the scenes in this video, so you might click on Lily's face for facial expressions, her body for slouched and timid posture, etc. 

Below I have embedded the Google Slides that I storyboarded within, so feel free to take a look at what I pulled out of the learning.