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Making Learning Memorable with

GRAPHICS ANDVISUAL DESIGN

61 TIPS

R IDEAOUR IDEAOUR IDEAOUR IDEA

i61 Tips for Making Learning Memorable with Graphics and Visual Design

© 2014 by The eLearning Guild. All rights reserved.

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ii61 Tips for Making Learning Memorable with Graphics and Visual Design

61 Tips for Making Learning Memorable with Graphics and Visual Design

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

About Our Tipsters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Seven Tips for Finding Inspiration and Nurturing Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Eleven Tips for Visual Design and Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Eleven Tips for Keeping Things Simple, Consistent, and On-brand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Nine Tips for Using Graphics and Text Effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Eight Tips for Using Fonts and Color Effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Four Tips for Supporting Learning Through Intuitive Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

Eleven Tips for Testing for Quality and Ensuring Instructional Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28


Introduction

Dear Colleagues,

How can you make your learning deliverables appealing, effective, and truly memorable? While high-quality content and instructional design are the foundation of any effective learning deliver-able, good graphics and good visual design help attract learners to your content and can make that content both more understandable and more easily remembered.

But here’s the challenge: Most of us aren’t trained in the visual arts and don’t have unlimited access to the talents of visual artists. So how then can we successfully and consistently select and create graphics and visual designs that will enhance and support our content and instructional designs?

Fortunately, while it can take years and even decades to master the visual arts, you don’t need to be a master artist to create visually appealing, effective, and memorable learning deliverables. With some inspiration, creativity, and application of basic visual principles, you can dramatically improve your learning deliverables’ graphics and visual design.

For this eBook, we asked 12 learning professionals—a few experts in the visual arts, but many who have just mastered some of the basics—to share their tips for making learning memorable with graphics and visual design. These tips address such topics as finding inspiration and nurturing cre-ativity; the basics of good visual design and layout; the importance of keeping things simple, con-sistent, and on-brand; using graphics, text, fonts, and color effectively; supporting learning through intuitive interfaces; testing deliverables for quality; and ensuring instructional integrity.

I hope you are informed and inspired by the tips in this eBook, and use many of them to give your content the visual treatment it deserves and needs to be enjoyed and remembered by your learners.

Sincerely,

Chris Benz Director of Online Events, The eLearning Guild


About Our Tipsters

Sarah ArkinsInstructional Designer Availity

Sarah Arkins, an instructional de-signer at Availity, is a teacher who has a lot of experience working with other instructors and technol-

ogists. Sarah’s understanding of instructional design and learning is both academic and experiential. She has been standing in front of students while teach-ing in higher education and doing software training for the past 12 years, which makes her a uniquely informed designer of instructional materials using various methods. Sarah holds an MFA degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Cassandra CloudInstructional Systems Design Specialist Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Cassandra Cloud, an instructional systems design specialist at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corpora-tion (FDIC), has created engaging

workshops and online training for high-tech compa-nies and government agencies, including Time Warner Cable and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). She currently creates regulatory training and bank-ing simulations for the FDIC. Cassandra holds an MEd degree from George Mason University in instructional design and technology and a BA degree in graphic design from the University of Maryland.

Laura Wall KlievesVice President, Duarte Academy & Marketing Duarte

Laura Wall Klieves, the vice presi-dent of the academy and marketing at Duarte, has years of client pre-

sentations under her belt, so she has learned first-hand how to engage an audience and move them to action. The daughter of a retired elementary school teacher, Laura’s unrequited love is teaching, so lead-ing the Duarte Academy comes naturally. Since Laura joined Duarte in 2010, the Duarte Academy has grown from a one-day workshop to four workshops and an award-winning six-hour eCourse, all based on Nancy Duarte’s three best-selling books.

Don LevyFounder, Consultant, and Educator Smith Brook Farm Consulting

Don Levy, the founder of and con-sultant and educator with Smith Brook Farm Consulting, has been at the forefront of the entertain-

ment industry’s digital transformation throughout his career as a senior executive in animation, visual ef-fects, digital media, television, and movies. Don spent 17 years at Sony Pictures Digital Productions where he was instrumental in the studio’s visual effects, ani-mation, post-production, and digital entertainment (games, mobile, online video, digital marketing) busi-nesses. Marketing positions at Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros Television, and more than 25 feature-film assignments, preceded his Sony tenure. He also teaches entertainment marketing.


John-Carlos LozanoCreative Director SweetRush

John-Carlos Lozano, the creative director at SweetRush, is the driving force in exploring and developing higher levels of custom interactivity,

simulation, and gamification in learning for a long list of clients including Bridgestone, Petco, and Bank of America. With a dual degree in graphic design and illustration/animation, John-Carlos sets the bar of quality, never accepts status quo, and constantly pushes his team of artists, designers, and animators to reach higher.

Linda MahnkenSenior eLearning Instructional Designer Esurance

Linda Mahnken is the senior eLearning instructional designer for Esurance. Linda has worked in the eLearning instructional design field

for over 10 years and is passionate about learning new theories, exploring new technologies, creating engag-ing content, and helping people learn. She holds a master’s degree in instructional technologies and has applied her knowledge to solve training challenges in a wide range of sectors, including corporate training, university-level cyber courses, and K-12 educational software.

Margaret MillerSenior Technology Training Consultant University of Minnesota

Margaret Miller is a senior technol-ogy-training consultant in the office of information technology at the University of Minnesota, where she

designs, develops, and facilitates learning experiences for faculty, staff, and students on technologies for web publishing and project management. She manages training projects, serves on project teams as a training representative, and leads instructor teams through the instructional-design process to produce training deliverables.

Ryan OrcuttAssociate Creative Director Duarte

Ryan Orcutt, the associate creative director, joined Duarte in 2004 as a graduate of Chico State’s School of Communication Design. His 10-year

tenure has allowed him to help some of the world’s most influential speakers craft, visualize, and deliver some of today’s most compelling and persuasive sto-ries. A natural visual thinker, storyteller, and designer, Ryan’s skill lies in his ability to combine all three. He’s a true believer in the power of presentations and a well-studied student of the Duarte principles.


Dorian PetersAuthor Interface Design for Learning

Dorian Peters is a designer, author, and specialist in user experience for learning and wellbeing. Her books include Interface Design for Learn-

ing, and Positive Computing. She currently directs online strategy for the faculty of education at the Uni-versity of Sydney and is also a member of CoCo (the Centre for Research on Computer Supported Learning & Cognition). A founding member of the Elearning Network of Australasia (ElNet), she has designed for Carnegie Mellon, Cambridge University, Westpac Bank, and BMG/Sony Music. She writes regular articles on design for publications such as ACM Interactions, UX Matters, UX Magazine, and A List Apart.

Jacques RayeLearning Developer Zip Ed Tech

Jacques Ray is an instructional designer at Zip Ed Tech. Jacques has been developing instructional design and eLearning projects in

Southern California for the last 10 years. He is par-ticularly interested in new and creative ways that eLearning can become more effective by exploring the science of how people learn. Jacques holds a BA degree in communication and an MA degree in communica-tion management from the University of Southern California.

Enzo SilvaSenior Instructional Designer Success Factors, an SAP Company

Enzo Silva, a senior instructional de-signer for Success Factors, is an avid learner and instructor who worked in the language-learning field for

many years in his home country of Brazil. Enzo is involved in learning mediated by social media, virtual worlds, and games. He currently resides in the greater Atlanta, Georgia area.

Steve YacovelliSolution Architect/Catalyst SweetRush

Steve Yacovelli is a solution archi-tect/catalyst for SweetRush. Steve has worked with such great organi-zations as The Walt Disney Com-

pany, IBM, Tupperware Brands Corporation, George Washington University, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foun-dation, and Bellsouth-AT&T. A published author, Steve holds a BS degree in public relations, an MA degree in educational policy and leadership development, and an EdD degree in instructional technology and dis-tance education.

ONLINE CONFERENCESTwo Days. Ten Sessions. Real Learning.

November 13 & 14: Making Learning Memorable

with Graphics and Visual Design

This online forum will explore how we can make learning memorable by making it look good.

December 11 & 12: Essential Non-core Skills for

Learning Professionals

This online forum will explore the essential-but-non-core skills you need to succeed.

Read full descriptions online at www.GuildOnlineForums.com

Upcoming Programs The eLearning Guild’s Online Forums are two-day online conferences that offer 10 live, interactive, 75-minute sessions on the newest tools, strategies, and trends in learning.

• Learning—Watch Live and On-demand

• Expert Speakers, Quality Sessions

• Current and Relevant Content

http://bit.ly/olf119info | +1.707.566.8990LEAAARRN MMOOORE

November 13 & 14, 2014

Making Learning Memorable with Graphics and Visual Design

Join this Online Forum as we explore how to make learning memorable by using good graphics and visual design.

Looking for more tips on graphic design? Join our November Online Forum!

T H U R S DAY, N OV E M B E R 1 3 F R I DAY, N OV E M B E R 1 4

• Harness the Three Visual Building Blocks of Engagement

• From Drab to Fab! An eLearning Makeover with Adobe Captivate

• Learning Maps: A Discovery Tool for Learning Resources

• Don’t Let Bad Design Happen to Good Training

• Visually Representing Information—a Session for Those Who Aren’t Graphic

• Thinking Visually: Communicating Ideas Through Visual Design

• Adobe Illustrator—Tips & Tricks

• Visual Communication, Creativity, and Learning

• eLearning Development for Limited Speakers of English

• Optimizing the Graphic Interface for Memory, Engagement, and Learning

How to Attend...

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live event, plus the recordings of all 10 sessions, for 12 full

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Seven Tips for Finding Inspiration and Nurturing Creativity


When you review the work a graphic designer has mocked up for you and you see something you don’t like, resist the urge to immediately state your opinion. Instead, ask questions to un-derstand why the designer made those design choices. This opens a dialogue with the graphic designer, and it’s likely you’ll learn about factors that went into that decision that you were not aware of.

Linda Mahnken

Sketch your course ideas on paper! On paper, you’re not limited by the capabilities of each tool, so you can focus on the best way to represent the content of your course.

This is from one of my early sketchbooks. They are all different ways of representing the same content for a website.

Cassandra Cloud

If you don’t already use Adobe Illustrator as a prototyping tool, consider it. It has an amazing organizational system (layers and align), you can create multiple versions on a single document (art boards), you can import a photo of a sketch to start from (template layer), and save-for-web features in the application allow you to export your prototype as individual parts from the whole design.

Sarah K. Arkins

There are many ways to represent an idea. Don’t get hung up about not having a particular tool, image, or font—be creative with what you have.

Cassandra Cloud


Research to gain inspiration. Consider this famous quote by Picasso: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Every artist is influenced by others. Seeing what others have done, and their re-sults, can be a great source of inspiration and can even help you avoid mistakes. These days tech-nology can help make this a lot of fun; create a Pinterest board or Evernote notebook of ideas. For the time it takes, you’ll be greatly rewarded with a flood of new ideas.

John-Carlos Lozano & Steve Yacovelli

Grids are the underlying invisible structure of all of our page designs regardless of format, dis-tribution, or technology. Grids dictate priority, proportion, and organization. We often take this foundation of our designs for granted.

Sarah K. Arkins

Get inspired by others. No design is completely new. Graphic designers and other artists pull from hundreds of years of art history and innovation. If you find a design you love, identify ele-ments of it you can use in new ways.

Cassandra Cloud

Eleven Tips for Visual Design and Layout


Line ‘em up! One of the easiest ways to improve the look of your slides is to line up the elements using a consistent grid. Divide your slide up into an array of squares, say five squares by four, and then consistently place items to line up with those squares. See magazine and websites for inspiration.

Laura Wall Klieves & Ryan Orcutt

Use visual cues to improve memorability in animation. Research in multimedia learning has shown that visual cues—like arrows and color-coding that help guide the learner’s attention to the right points at the right time during an animation or video—improve information recall. Just use them sparingly, or it will backfire.

Dorian Peters

Embrace whitespace: Whitespace is the part of your slide that does not have any content; it is like the oxygen of the presentation. If you use it all up, your audience will suffocate. So leave a little breathing room. In fact, leave a little bit more than you think you need and let your presen-tation breathe easy.



Here’s a new way to organize your guides in Adobe Illustrator: Instead of using the View | Guides |hide/show/lock menu options, create a new layer—in the example, I call mine “GUIDES”—and then drag the Guide sub-layers into the “GUIDES” layer to keep them organized. From the layer panel you can hide/show or lock them in place.

Sarah K. Arkins

Bring order to information. Effective design serves as a visual translator for complex information. Using size, color, and location of elements, you can highlight important concepts and reinforce key points. Bring order to information, and lead learners in the direction you want them to go.


Design is making choices. Make lots of small, considered choices at every step. Sarah K. Arkins

Have fun—no matter how serious the subject, there is always a place for good design. It works like a frame. Often, the more serious the topic, the more valuable the design element.

Don Levy


Since text is used to convey content to your learners, it can be easy to overlook as an important part of the visual design. Font choice, color, size, and the spacing between lines of text all make a visual impact.

3convey contentto your learnersit can be easy to overlook as an important part of the visual design. Font choice, color, size, and the spacing between lines of text all make a visual impact.

SINCE TEXT IS USED TO

Linda Mahnken

Line is the foundation of all design. Never underestimate the inclusion of a single line—consider its weight, its direction, its quality and color.

Sarah K. Arkins

Use contrast. Ever looked at a slide, and not known what’s important? Contrast helps draw at-tention, create drama, and set hierarchy so your audience understands your message.



Lead the eye: Help your audience see what you want to share. Arrange the elements on your slide using scale, position, size, shade, color, or proximity to guide your audience’s eyes to the place you want them to look.


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http://elgd.co/ls15-graphics http://elgd.co/eco15-graphics

Eleven Tips for Keeping Things Simple, Consistent, and On-brand


One point per slide: If your slide has several groups of bullets, a chart, and a timeline, chances are you are trying to say too much on one slide. Break those onto separate slides (slides are free, after all), or better yet, eliminate non-crucial information and only show the most important point.


Simplify and abstract your images to make them more memorable and better for learning. Re-markably, people are just as good at recognizing objects in line drawings as in photos, and more importantly, they remember the line drawings better.

Three graphics of the brain at various levels of abstraction. Credit: From the book Interface Design for Learning by Dorian Peters.

Dorian Peters

If you are creating eLearning with the visual look and feel of your company’s brand, save time by asking your marketing department’s creative team for the brand style guidelines. You’ll get quickly up to speed on the color codes, fonts, and nuances around tone and messaging. The cre-ative team may even have elements—such as buttons and proprietary fonts—that you can use in your eLearning project.

Linda Mahnken


Simplify. No one wants to read a poorly edited story, and no one should have to suffer from a poorly edited design, chart, or table. Remove any images, text, or colors that aren’t necessary and ensure the most important elements can be easily identified at first glance.

These images are two takes on the same course activities slide. The image on the left is cluttered with decorative images, multiple text colors, and no clear grid. The one on the right organizes this information into a table, uses a limited color palette, and removes all unnecessary ornamentation, allowing the location of course activities to stand out.

Cassandra Cloud

Look for ways to be lazy! Identify elements across your project with the same characteristics, set up styles for those elements, and then re-use those styles over and over. For example, if your Adobe Captivate project has slides with titles, you could manually set the size, font family, color, weight, and spacing of each title on each slide, but why work that hard when you can be lazy and get the same results? Set up an Object Style for the first title and then apply it to all your titles. This is the easy (and “lazy”) way to create a consistent look for all the titles in your project.

Linda Mahnken

Be consistent. Graphics and visual design are supposed to add clarity, but the opposite happens when randomness replaces a consistent flow of ideas. Unless you are teaching the art of confu-sion, visuals and graphics work best when they make their points in the context of a design flow.

Don Levy


You don’t always need complex graphic editing tools to represent an idea. Sometimes explain-ing the connection between two things can be as simple as drawing a line between them.

Relationship

Concept 1 Concept 2

One of the points of illustration is that no words are needed to connect the two concepts. In other words, this is enough:

Cassandra Cloud

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Not every word requires a picture. Learning may be more memorable with the fewest number of visual images or cues; the imagery becomes more impactful because there is so little of it.

Don Levy

Once you’ve defined the visual design for buttons, text colors, backgrounds, and layouts for one project, you can save time on future projects by re-using these same elements and settings. For example, if you are using Adobe Captivate and have set up Object Styles for all your titles, subtitles, body text, and quiz questions, you can export these styles and use them in your other projects. Be an eLearning hero by sharing these exported styles with your fellow developers, too, for a consistent look and feel across multiple projects.

Linda Mahnken

Guide learners with consistency. Consistent navigation and repeated tasks help learners gain in-formation; changing elements midstream creates distraction and disengagement. Be consistent with navigation, feedback, and graphical assets within your interface.


Avoid motion sickness! Animation is a great way to dynamically communicate ideas and guide a viewer through ideas. However, it can be an overused technique. This includes transitions, es-pecially the fancy ones. Consider the value of adding motion to your graphics. The result can be powerful, especially when the introduction of the moving image captures the viewer’s attention precisely because it stands out in an appropriate context. Overuse and risk motion sickness!

Don Levy

Nine Tips for Using Graphics and Text Effectively


You can communicate ideas and concepts very well through the clever use of visuals instead of text. A well-chosen graphic can often replace several paragraphs of written explanation. If you use them well, graphics also have the advantage of being language-neutral, which removes the need for translation in non-English versions of the course.

Jacques Ray

A visual representation of a process helps learners see the big picture and relationships be-tween tasks and concepts. One of the requirements we had with the design of the learning map below was it needed to fit on a single page. We wanted learners to see the process at a glance.

Margaret Miller


Tell a story with data: Don’t just project your Excel chart on a slide and hope for the best. Guide your audience through your data to the conclusion you want them to arrive at by reducing the visual strength of the background, axes, and contextual data, and emphasizing the part of the data you want them to focus on.


Since images communicate without words, they may communicate things you didn’t intend—or miscommunicate what you really mean. Carefully consider how your audience might misinter-pret each image. For data-driven images, simplify your visuals until your key points stand out.

The image to the left above was presented to NASA prior to the Challenger disaster. It shows results of various O-ring damage tests by temperature. Unfortunately, the key point (that the O-rings fail in cold temperatures) is obscured by other visual information (the rocket-shaped drawings). The image to the right above is the famous “Surgeon’s Photograph” of the Loch Ness Monster. The photo was captured in April 1934; it has since been revealed to be a hoax.

Cassandra Cloud

Use visuals to reward progress and show mastery. Research shows we are intrinsically motivated by a growing sense of competence, so make sure you’re showing your learners as their mastery increases. You can do this through progress bars, celebrated achievements, level-ups, status up-grades, data visualizations, or in many other creative ways.

Dorian Peters


Think outside the cliché. While it may be tempting to insert that handshake-in-front-of-a-globe image for your global partnership slide, take time to brainstorm other, less overused imagery. An original, well-thought-out graphic will cause eye popping instead of eye rolling.


Images can remind you of how you felt as a child or bring back the joy you felt when you first held your own. They can take you to a place you’ve never been or return you to a place you’ve long forgotten. Use this power purposefully to connect to your audience, but don’t abuse it.

These images are from Gratistography (a website that offers copyright-free images via a creative commons license) and Unsplash (a Tumblr blog that offers copyright-free images via a Creative Commons license).

Cassandra Cloud

Don’t treat text like a four-letter word, even though it is. The simple use of text can be a power-ful provider of clarity, the ideal helper to reduce ambiguity. Use text sparingly and avoid enor-mous blocks of copy, particularly in print too fine to read.

Don Levy

Emotion hooks memory: Emotionally charged information is more memorable. However, add-ing emotional imagery will distract when it isn’t sufficiently linked to the learning, so always consider the learning objective. For example, adding an image of a head injury to a health and safety module might distract learners when the goal is remembering procedure, but it will make the safety message more memorable when the learning objective is attitude change.

Dorian Peters

Eight Tips for Using Fonts and Color Effectively


Yes, there are lots of great fonts out there. It doesn’t mean that all of them need to be in your presentation. Avoid the “ransom note” effect of using too many fonts. Choose one, maybe two. It is best to avoid crazy fonts and stick with clean, simple ones for maximum impact.

YES, there are lots of great fonts out there. It doesn’t mean THAT ALL OF THEM need to be in your presentation.

effect of using too many fonts. CHOOSE ONE, MAYBE TWO. It is best to avoid crazy fonts

and stick with clean, simple ones for


Select fonts for readability. When text is harder to read, it is not only frustrating, but learn-ers perceive the content itself as being more difficult. So use simple screen fonts at minimum 10-point size (12 or higher is better) and reserve more decorative fonts for large headings.

Dorian Peters

Color is a powerful connector. It organizes information; it increases memory. We have physi-ological, psychological, and emotional responses to color.

Sarah K. Arkins

Color-code to improve memorability in static graphics. Assign unique colors to different ele-ments in a graphic to improve learning and retention. Just make sure each color is easy to distinguish from the others, avoid using more than six different colors, and in consideration of color-blind users, make sure color isn’t the only way to glean the information.

Dorian Peters


Colors can feel cool, warm, or neutral. They can set a tone that’s serious or playful. Choose colors that reflect your overall message, and use them consistently.

• Warm colors (above left) tend to be approachable and feel more welcoming and arousing—these are the colors of a nice day on the beach. However, when overused, they can also feel loud or overpowering.

• Cool colors (above right) tend to recede and feel soothing or relaxing—these are the colors of a rainy afternoon. However, when overused, they can also feel cold or clinical.

• Most color palettes combine warm and cool colors to make use of the advantages of both—though any color palette will lean more heavily one way or the other. – Are you using a neutral background or a warm one? – Are cool colors used to break up a warm palette, or is it the other way around? – A good color palette will be one that speaks to your message

(for example, don’t use cool colors to speak about an exciting summer camp or warm colors to describe the first day of winter).

• Since many ISDs will be reluctant to create their own palette unless they are building from their corporate palette, they can choose from dozens of color palettes available on kuler.adobe.com

Cassandra Cloud

Be conscious of your font choices. A handwritten font sets a different tone than a more formal one. For instace:

Cassandra Cloud

Color is information—don’t overdo it. Research shows that the overuse of color will lower a learner’s ability to remember content. Like all visual elements, color is information, so don’t splash it around willy-nilly. Use it sparingly on learning activity and content screens or it will add to cognitive load.

Dorian Peters

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HERE IS A SMALL SAMPLING OF GRAPHIC DESIGN RESOURCES FOR GUILD MEMBERS

95+ Archived WebinarsHere are three graphic design-focused webinars

1,200+ ArticlesHere are four of 55+ graphic design-related articles

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LEARN MOREhttp://elgd.co/dl14-graphics

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Choosing a specific color palette goes a long way towards setting the look and feel of your eLearning. Once you’ve chosen a set of colors, customize all aspects of your eLearning within that color palette, including buttons, backgrounds, text, and borders. For example, rather than using generic buttons that come with your eLearning software, create your own customized buttons that use your chosen color palette.

Linda Mahnken

Four Tips for Supporting Learning Through Intuitive Interfaces


Use familiar user interface patterns. When designing for a particular device, take advantage of its native navi-gational elements. So, make sure you have a strong understanding of how users already interact with that de-vice and have your design follow suit, rather than creating new methods of interacting that will confuse them.


Give the learner control. Autonomy is an important motivating factor in learning. Adult learners want the abil-ity to explore and guide their own learning paths based on what is interesting and relevant to them. Create a unique and successful learning experience by building options into your user interface that empower learners to make their own choices.


Incorporate visual feedback. “Where to next?” “Did I do that right?” Humans need and crave direction and feed-back. Visual feedback, such as rollovers, clicks, and highlights, fulfill this need by demonstrating that something has happened. Combine visual feedback with written feedback where appropriate.


Define and explain the rules. We know how important it is explain the learning objectives and evaluation cri-teria up front in a course. The same thing applies to user interface; you should define and demonstrate how to navigate the course—in other words, the rules. Setting expectations at the onset of the course allows learners to more easily adapt to their learning environment.


Eleven Tips for Testing for Quality and Ensuring Instructional Integrity


Take your own course. After spending many weeks or months rewriting paragraphs, reposition-ing graphics, and testing navigation, often the last thing instructional designers want to do is to take their own courses. This is a mistake. Relying on quality assurance colleagues to grasp the full purpose of your course and to make needed changes can lead to unexpected results. Qual-ity assurance colleagues are focused on errors and corrections, not the larger purpose of your course. Only the course creator can accurately determine whether or not a course has attained its original purpose. So take your own course. Put your mindset into that of a student, and make a fair assessment of your course development goals.

Jacques Ray

Your subject is your star—graphics and visual design are supporting players in the presenta-tion of information and ideas. Find the balance where the graphic presentation focuses atten-tion on the key points.

Don Levy

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Eliminate flash for flash’s sake: Just because your presentation software allows you to add crazy animations, transitions, and sounds, it doesn’t mean you should use them. Often flashy effects meant to jazz up a presentation end up becoming a distraction for your audience. Just say “no” to pointless flashiness.


Design to meet the needs of your learners. During the initial phase of your project, get to know your audience by understanding what motivates them. Find out what will engage them from a content perspective and a design perspective. This research will greatly inform your creative and user interface decisions, which will put you on the path to smart, effective design.


Design for experience. Memorable learning comes from remembering the experience of learn-ing. Sometimes we try so hard to teach that we forget that learning is something that happens naturally.

Don Levy

Test early versions of your visual design on your intended audience. You can learn a lot by tak-ing your design out into the field on an iPad or other mobile device. Can testers navigate the design successfully? What roadblocks do they encounter? What questions do they have? Are they delighted with the design or are they confused by it? It is so powerful to see with your own eyes how testers interact with your design. Let them tell you what they like and don’t like, and if the design makes sense to them.

Margaret Miller

Conduct user testing. Gauge your audience’s experience by seeing how learners perceive and interact with your design. User testing will guide you in making informed improvements to your design, resulting in a more effective user experience.


Could someone develop a basic understanding of your lesson if they could not hear a word of explanation? Graphics and visual design do not negate the need for more details. In fact, the best focus attention and invite deeper exploration and engagement. Turn off the sound. Ignore the talking points. See if the images make any sense without those details.

Don Levy


Test your design more than once and in different contexts. When we were developing the de-sign for our learning maps, we discovered purely by accident that the name “learning map” was not meaningful to our audience. At the time, we were testing a landing page design that hap-pened to have a link to a learning map on it. It was a revelation to hear multiple testers indicate they did know what a learning map was and they would not click on it. We never considered that the name of the learning map might be a problem. We were so happy to discover it early on in the development; if we had not been diligent to test all aspects of the design, including the pages leading to the learning maps, we might not have discovered the issue with the name. We ended up changing the name to “self-help guides.”

Margaret Miller

Every picture tells a story. Facts are forgettable, but a good story may never be forgotten. Good design begins with a clear understanding of the story you are trying to tell. Once you determine the story, it will inform your graphics and visual design.

Don Levy

No matter what new clothes we put on the traditional instructional design process, ADDIE is still relevant and rocking it with the new kids on the block.

The basic phases and processes established in our field can help designers create anything their imaginations allow! You should also systematically apply the instructional design process to the creation of the now-ubiquitous infographics and whiteboarding videos.

When designing infographics or whiteboarding videos for learning, the following are some things to consider. Keep ADDIE in the back of your mind when reading through these quick tips:


What? Goal • What is the main goal of the

intervention?• What’s the topic?• ls it data-oriented? A how-to?

Conceptual?

Why? Objectives • What does the learner need

to do differently?• Can you measure the behav-

ior change and impact of the intervention?

Who? Audience • Customers? • Employees? • Remote employees? • What are their needs? • What are their backgrounds?

Where? Context • What’s the context for this

visual?• ILT? • WBT? • Water cooler?

Theme Story • Your (visual) metaphor! • Most economical way to tell

the story?• Do a storyboard!

Tools How-To • Discover which tools your

company already subscribes to that can help you achieve your design goal. Tools are second-ary to proper analysis and design; one can create amaz-ing visual interventions with something as simple and read-ily available as PowerPoint (if properly and creatively used).

Enzo Silva

61 tips making learning memorable withm.cedma-europe.org/newsletter articles/elearning guild/61 tips...

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