In yesterday’s post I shared a Storyline theme that could be used as a course starter for construction related learning (Elearning Challenge #183). I wasn’t completely happy with it for a couple of reasons. The mobile experience wasn’t awesome and the nails didn’t display as “hammered”. So, today, while on hold with Microsoft support (long story with a happy ending), and inspired by Maslow’s quote, I decided to revisit the theme and see if I could hammer, saw, or sand this slide into shape
The slide needing extra love is the menu slide.
Here’s what I wanted the user to experience, on all devices:
1. User clicks the hammer to access a content slide.
2. On click of the hammer it changes state to Down and hit a nail. When the nail is hit the sound of a hammer hitting a nail plays, and the nail changes state from up to down.
3. Then hammer then returns to up position and slide jumps to the correct slide.
This all has to happen in about half a second.
Here is the new version and the trigger notes are below.
Trigger Set-up
1. Added hammer in normal state and down state (x4). This actually took a lot of time because there is no way to pivot a graphic. Not hard, just fiddly.
2. Added nails in normal and down state (x4). Again, not hard, just fiddly. Made fiddlier because the hammers had to intersect with the nails.
3. Added audio (media) – I ended up adding four identical instances of the audio but with different labels to keep them straight. I did this because some of the triggers linked to the audio weren’t working correctly. Using 4 separate audio objects seemed to work better.
4. Set to “when revisiting reset to initial state” in slide properties.
5. Labeled everything so I didn’t mix up the four content sections.
6. Set up the triggers for each of the four content sections.
a. Change state of Hammer X to state down when user clicks Hammer X
b. Play media, Media X when Object intersects – Object Hammer X with Nail X
c. Change state of Nail X to Down when Object intersects – Object Hammer X with Nail X
d. Change state of Hammer X to Normal when Media X completes – This is so the hammer returns to the up position while on the slide. The nail stays down until the slide is revisited.
e. Jump to slide X when Media X completes
7. Test, test, test and then test on another device or two.
Well that was fun – seriously – it was fun and clicking the hammers and pounding the nails is just plain cathartic. Of course there is always more that could be done but that will have to wait for another day.