November 19, 2016
Rapid Development for mLearning
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In this video, I share part of a talk that I gave at the 2016 Adobe Learning Summit in Las Vegas on creating mLearning in 60 minutes.
Reasons for Designing for Mobile
- Increase completion rates – people want to use their smartphone
- Engage employees – people don’t want to be tied to their desks
- Maximize productivity – let employees use their downtime (e.g. during their commute)
- Employee health – get employees outside or simply away from their desk and moving
- Mental health – Put employees at ease by making learning informal
- Employee choice – give employees options like reading, listening, or watching
Key Strategies when Rapidly Designing for Mobile
- Technology Needs Analysis – Designers need to know their audience and part of a needs analysis should include understanding the audience. The same thing can be done when it comes to technology. Poll your audience and learn what type of mobile devices the employees are using. Perhaps the company has given all the sales staff an iPhone 6 plus. Using that device as one of your breakpoints might be a good choice.
- Good Templates – Using a well-built and fully tested template will save you development time. Your mLearning courses might end up with hundreds of various interactive objects. The key to rapid development of mLearning is having a template, theme or both with the hundreds of design decisions already implemented. This way you can get down to the details of just building a really great mobile course.
- Prepare your resources – gather your resources and prepare them for rapid development during the days leading up to your development time. For example, when video or images are made available to you, take the time to prepare them for mobile delivery. Make sure they are in the most appropriate format and when possible reduced in size to maximize for mobile delivery.
- Don’t Reinvent the Wheel – Coming up with really cool new interactions for your mobile Learning is a cornerstone of what we do, but during your rapid development is not when you want to experiment with new ideas. If you have a tight timeline that needs to be met, stick with your tried and true learning interactions that are already built into your template. Spend your down time coming up with the next really great idea.
- Practice with Responsive – Having a solid understanding of how to develop for responsive design is crucial for your success. Knowing when you want an object to be positioned and sized by pixels, percentage, or percentage relative to other objects. As you transition to smaller breakpoints consider optional objects that might not need to be taking up small screen real estate. Move these items into your scrap area or exclude them from other views from larger breakpoints.
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2016-11-29 20:55:38
Hello. I attended your session, Paul, in Vegas. I’m inquiring about the Geo-location feature we only had a bit of time to explore, given the time constraints. Have you had a chance to post that yet? Have I missed it?
Thank you, and well done by the way!
Adam
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2016-11-30 02:29:41
Hey Adam. Yeah I did a video on that as well. You can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R2lGE4fc1Y
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