Need to create an e-learning presentation but don’t have an eye for good visuals? This episode is for you! 

We revisit a great past episode with Diane Elkins, instructional design pro and owner of Artisan Learning. There’s so much solid advice in this episode on what works, what to avoid, and how visuals impact the learning experience (probably more than you think).

Diane explains how bad visuals inhibit learning, why simpler is often better, and why “slides” are due a name change. Plus, she gets on her soapbox to explain the real goal of e-learning. We also look at some examples of pretty, plain, and hideous slides to compare, based on a real experiment Diane used to test out visual design. 

One thing to note: We do share some visuals in this episode of good and bad design choices, so for the full experience, we recommend checking out the episode on YouTube.

Learning points from the episode include:

• 00:00 – 02:44 Introduction to Diane and her work
• 02:44 – 04:57 The role in visuals in e-learning
• 04:57 - 07:33 Best practices for visuals and what to avoid
• 07:33 – 11:11 Mindset shifts to avoid over-the-top visuals
• 11:11 – 13:20 Why visuals are even more important in e-learning scenarios
• 13:20 – 16:25 How to decide what information to put on a slide
• 16:25 – 21:53 Diane’s pretty, plain, and hideous visual design experiment
• 21:53 – 25:00 Why simple is often better for learning
• 25:00 – 29:34 Why “is it helpful?” is the most important question to ask
• 29:34 – 31:31 Why visual aids should always be in service of the audience
• 31:31 – 38:42 An example of whether we should decorate or illustrate with visuals
• 38:42 – 46:18 Can we fix it? Diane’s advice to bad design examples
• 46:18 – 49:49 Speed round questions
• 49:49 – 51:40 Outro

Important links and mentions:

• Visit e-Learning Uncovered: www.elearninguncovered.com
• Visit Artisan Learning: www.artisanelearning.com
• Connect with Diane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpelkins/

I think one of the things that's important is to not try to give your

visual aids too many purposes. Classroom training.

You're making your PowerPoint and they want the

PowerPoint to also be the instructor notes. I don't mean the

notes pane, I mean the slide. And so

they're making their visual aids be their instructor notes. And hello,

where's the worst place to put instructor notes? Behind

me? I mean, really

is that that's where I should put my notes so that the students can

see my notes? No, I mean, there's presenter view. Get

out an index card. Nobody will mind if you put your notes on an index

card or you have a piece of paper in your hand so your slides are

not for you. Good morning, good evening, good

afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from. My name is Matt Pearce, host

of Visual Lounge. I'm getting ready to go on vacation. I've got this episode.

I wanted to go through it again because it's such a great episode with Diane

Elkins. So I think you're going to really like what you hear, if you're interested

at all in visual design, not only from a, like a how do I make

my instructional design look better, but why should I do that?

And you're also interested in accessibility. Diane is someone that you need to

listen to. She is just fantastic. So I'd encourage you. It's a longer

episode, but go through it because there's so much great information here about

using visuals. Now, if you are listening to podcasts, there are a couple sections,

just as a heads up, that are better as visuals.

And we got some great examples. And one of them, oh my gosh, it is.

It's actually looking at a hideous example and getting Diane's advice on how you

would make it better. And so I recommend, if you get a chance, go check

out those. You could scrub to them till you can find them. They'll be easy

to see. You will not miss it, trust me. But if we also try our

best to describe them so you won't miss too, too much. So with that said,

let's dive into our episode with Diane Elkins. Our guest today

is Diane Elkins, who is a co owner of Artisan Elearning, a custom

elearning development company, and Elearning Uncovered, where she helps

people build courses they're proud of. She has built a reputation as

a national elearning expert by being a frequent speaker.

If I could talk, I would be. I would be an expert too, but I

can't by being a Frequent speaker at major industry events for atd,

the Learning Guild and Training Magazine. Her favorite topics include

accessibility, instructional design and articulate storyline. She

is co author of the popular Elearning Uncovered book series as well as

Elearning A Practical Guide from ATD Press. She's

a past board member of the Northeast Florida and Metro DC chapters

of atd. And with that said, please welcome

Diane Elkins to the Visual Lounge. Hi there.

Hey. Thank you so much for being with me today. You bet. We're going to

start kind of broad here. I'm curious. There's a lot of opinions

about good E learning, bad E learning. What role

do you think visuals have in kind of tipping

the balance? Because I don't think it's going to be like, it's not the only

thing that makes E learning good. Right. But what role do you think it has

in tipping the balance towards good elearning versus stuff that's maybe less

successful or less helpful? Yeah. Well, one thing that I think is really

important to know is that good visuals can't fix bad training.

You know, if. If we don't have information

that's helpful, it doesn't matter what the images are. I don't care how pretty it

is. So pretty can't be. The. The

driving force is going back to that word helpful. It's one of my

favorite words. At Artisan, one of our core values is to be knowledgeable and

helpful. Our job is to go out there into the world

and put information in people's hands so that they know how to do their jobs

better. And everything we do has to drive that.

Now, at the same time, if it looks terrible,

that can, first of all, inhibit learning. If I can't read your

font, we have the ability through font and color choices to induce a

migraine. Right. You know, electric blue and

lemon yellow. Don't know. I mean, we have the opportunity

to actually inhibit learning. Some of the research

I like, Ruth Colvin Clark's research on such that in

many cases, you can learn just as well with a simple diagram

as a complex diagram. In fact, in some cases, people can learn better

from a simpler diagram. But learning

is only one aspect of it. You want people to take it.

You want people to believe you. You want people to

assign you enough credibility that they want to go adopt the things

you're trying to get them to adopt. You want them to maybe

say nice things about it to their coworkers. And visual design

does have a lot to do with that. Because if your message is

in an unprofessional looking package, people

will doubt your message. Well, there goes. I'm just starting to check off

all the questions is going to ask you about. Right. Like, okay, there we go.

Let's talk about that though for a second because I think there is a, there

is a sense of like, what's the role of aesthetics? And like you said, like

bad aesthetics can create migraines, you can create problems. It can make it so

people don't learn. I know there's a study and this is completely different space,

but it's about audio quality that people who listen,

like, if you have an expert and their audio quality is bad, they'll actually be

perceived as less intelligent. I

imagine that same with visuals. Like, if it's bad visual design, it will

be seen as less relevant, important. So how do we, how do

we know that we're getting to the right level? Right. And I know

we've got some stuff we'll talk about different kind of levels and approach. But like

just generally, what are there best practices here that we should just be aware

of? Absolutely. The way I like to look at it is

three levels. There's a certain level of professionalism you don't want to go below.

You know, Comic Sans in purple, you know, just,

just don't. Just don't. Images that are

grainy and fuzzy and poor quality. One that's a piece of clip

art next to a photo and they're just, it's just a haphazard look. You can't

tell where you're supposed to be looking at. That's a level of professionalism you don't

want to go below. Then we've got what I'll just call

simple, average, maybe even kind of plain. And

then there's, oh my gosh, that's beautiful. Well, oh my gosh, that's beautiful is

great. But it's okay if your me. If your

design is simple. I talk about

the 3 font rule and the 3 color rule. Unless you are a trained professional,

you don't need to go with more than three colors. A dark, a light,

an accent. And you don't ever need more than three

fonts, a heading, a body text and an accent.

If you have more than that, you're trying too hard. Now, some people can pull

it off. Like I have a friend, he can pull off a plaid blazer

and a paisley tie like no one can. Most people will get

that wrong. So for most people, it is a good rule to not mix your

pattern unless you happen to know you can pull it off. Same thing

with things like Fonts and colors is

one of the best ways to be professional is to have fewer

design elements, which might seem counterintuitive. People

might say, oh, I went to PowerPoint class. I've learned how to do this and

this and this, and I'm gonna put it all in one course. Well,

that's actually gonna hurt your message. So simplicity is actually

better. Pick a few key colors that you use over and over. A few key.

The key fonts over and over. So in terms of just your.

Your immediate global design choices,

keep it simple. So let me ask you, because I

see that a lot with especially beginner designers,

instructional designers, but outside of that too, right? We. It's easy to make that mistake

of too much. How do we. How do you help pull someone back

from that? What. What would you say to someone if I'm making that vital

mistake? Because it feels good to use lots of

stuff. I know, right? So. So how do you help talk somebody but off the

ledge before they. They make that, you know, leap into the. Oh, my

gosh, it's too much. I think if your driving

force is how cool it is, you're off the mark

right there. If it's, oh, my gosh, I want to learn this. Use this new

thing that is the cart before the horse. I can use lots of analogies here.

Right? Is ultimately, I think what we

can do is change the prompts in our own head. So if I'm sitting there

looking at something and saying, what should my

slide say? I am

seeding my brain to come up with text as my answer.

What should my slides say? I am predisposing my

answer to be text. What should my bullets be? Again, I'm

predisposing it. What piece of clip art or what image

should I put off to the side? You're predisposing

yourself for a certain thing instead.

Maybe even stop using the word slide and

go back to a word back from, like the 90s when, you know, before we

even had PowerPoint in the classroom back in the dark ages, we talked about

visual aids, not slides. I want to

see that term come back. If I ask myself, what's

the best visual aid

for this? So I look at my content and saying,

based on what I'm trying to accomplish, what

visual will best help me get there?

Not how can I make this look cooler? How can I make this

hip? Hey, can I use that new thing I learned in class?

Those are prompts that will send you down the wrong path. But if you ask

yourself, what am I trying to accomplish? Is it to explain a

point, evoke an emotion, build credibility.

What are you trying to accomplish and what visual will

best help you get there. That'll help make sure

you're staying on track, you're focusing on what's most important. And oh, by the

way, it's likely to be helpful. I love it. I love it.

And we are. Okay, we're doing this. We're bringing back visual aid as a

term. So let's. Right here, hashtag visual aid.

We're going to spread it across social media. I love it because I think it's

so easy to get caught up in those things because there's, you know, there's so

much you can do and there's so much like you want the aesthetic. Like, I

think there's the trap. I fall. I know I fall into this is I want

the aesthetics because I want it to be believable. I want it to be trusted.

I want it to feel good. And sometimes it's hard

to like it's a conceptual concept. And so I'm like,

I don't have anything visually, like, that's super valuable

here. So I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna make something that's pretty.

I think I do an okay job with the pretty, you know, and I'm pretty

good overall balancing. But it feels like I fall into the trap because

short of the other things that I could be doing, it's really sometimes hard to

be simple. And so I love the advice that I know. There

was a comment in the chat about the three colors, three font

rule. I'm guessing that most of us still probably

pair. Even in three, three fonts is hard. That's a lot of fonts to me.

I'm going to get it wrong. I just know I'm going to get it wrong.

I want to take that. What you've said, though, and I want to talk about

something we talked about prior to the show. You talked about the difference

between a classroom trainer and an E learning module,

where even with a subpar or

poor kind of visual aids, a

classroom trainer can make it work versus, like an online standalone

module. And I'm guessing that goes for lots of things that could be an

elearning course, it could be a video, it could be, you know, however you present

it, but those won't work. Whereas the, you know,

I'm a pretty good. Pretty good in front of the camera, pretty good in front

of the classroom. I could probably make it work regardless. Tell us. Tell us why

that is. Yeah. So a good instructor can carry a bad

PowerPoint. If you are, imagine you're sitting in a

classroom. Remember those days when we all like gathered in rooms together?

Yeah. Remember that. So you're sitting in a classroom. Most of the

time you are looking at the instructor. The instructor is your primary

visual. Yeah. You're going to glance over the slides and yeah, if they're awful, you're

going to cringe. But it's such a small percentage of the overall

visual information you're taking in. Most of the time you're looking at the instructor.

Once you're online, that changes. Now if it's,

you know, alive, if it's instructor led. Yeah, you still perhaps got that

person on camera. But the slides are going to be much bigger, self paced E

learning, freestanding video. The visuals, your

slides, your Visual aids are 100% of your message. So

a mediocre slide that barely cut it in the classroom

is going to be ten times worse online. So

you've got to up your visual game if you don't have the instructor.

And then we also need to think about how often that visual changes.

An Instructor can spend 10 minutes on one slide in the classroom and

it's perfectly normal. 10 minutes in self paced E learning

is an eternity. That is probably the,

that's the module, right? Like 10 minutes. Yeah. So

we've, if we're. Especially if you're converting from a

person being the primary visual to converting it to something that's

more self paced, you've got to up your visual game.

Okay. So we know we've got to up our game. Is, is there a

rule generally because like I think about the visual, we talk about visual aids, right.

It's aiding the content. It's easy for us to talk about

slides because you know, a lot of people do PowerPoint, whether it's an elearning

page or module or whatever, it doesn't really matter here how much information

should be on that in that box with that

visual. Like is there balance that happens there? Because I

find, and I'm probably maybe more skewed one way.

I have very little information. Like it's

one thing, like one idea and might even be part of an idea. Right.

Because I'm trying to just reduce how much is there. Other people do the kind

of cardinal thing where they're like I'm gonna put five bullet points, lots of data.

What's right here when we're putting kind of incorporating that, the visual

aid with this. Right. I'm not a fan of rules in that

regard, which I know for some people rules are Very helpful.

So you probably heard of the 6x6 rule or the 10 by 10 or the

8 by 8, whatever, you know, whatever number people pick that you shouldn't have more

than six bullets with six words each. Well, that's if bullets are even the

right choice for that slide. Maybe that slide. The best thing is

a video with zero words. You're trying to evoke an emotion.

Well, your words aren't going to do that. It is critically important that you

know that will cause nobody to care. So

a lot of it is again about your, your goal, your message. But

I think one of the things that's important is to not try to give your

visual aids too many purposes. I think

one of the struggles that people have, especially I see this more with

classroom training than with self paced elearning. But with classroom training, you're making your

PowerPoint and they want the PowerPoint to

also be the instructor notes. I don't mean the notes pane, I

mean the slide. And so they're making their

visual aids be their instructor notes. And hello,

where's the worst place to put instructor notes? Behind

me. I mean, really,

that's where I should put my notes so that the students can see my

notes? No, I mean there's presenter view, get out

an index card. Nobody will mind if you put your notes on an index card

or you have a piece of paper in your hand. So your slides are not

for you, period. Your slides are not for you. And

so if you're trying to put enough on there to

idiot proof yourself so you remember what to say, that's not the goal of your

visual aid. Or they say, oh, well, we want this to stand alone for people

who can't make it. If I've done my job, my

slides make no sense without me. I

love it. My message, they are not my message. If I want

to make a document, then I'll make a document.

Yeah, I love that advice because I'm pretty sure my slides I've

turned into many of these conferences, they're not very good without

the presentation part of it. Yes, because

they're your visual aid,

not a book. Absolutely. Well, I know you, you've

done some work around this kind of, this concept of looking at the kind

of variety of what works, what doesn't work. The levels you talked about earlier,

should we, should we dive in to look at those? Would that be good? Yeah,

let's take a look. So a couple of years ago, you want me to set

it up? Yeah, please set us up. Okay. So a couple of years Ago,

I made a short course, it was about a 15 minute little

course on staying focused on your priorities. And I

designed it three ways, pretty plain

and hideous. And for each one, the content

was exactly the same. The narration was the same,

the words were the same, and the content of all the images

was the same. So if there's a picture of a clock on one, it's a

clock on the other. But what was different is just the graphic

design. And I put it out in the world randomized

and so that people would randomly get one or the other. And I

wanted to see, you know, people like Ruth Colvin Clark's work

has already indicated that it shouldn't matter for their ability to

learn, unless, again, you can't read it. But I wanted to

know, does it impact people's ability,

willingness to receive and adopt the

message? So you want to show the slides there?

Matt and I will share with what my results were.

Okay, here we got them up here of the pretty. I

think I have like three or four slides I can show you. So there's

slide two. There's. It looks good, you

know. Okay, so that's basically how they all

worked is for each of the seven points, there was a teaching slide and then

one of these activity slides. So same thing over and over again. Now let's look

at the plain version. Kind of the average. Yeah. So

it's very similar in concept, but I would bet most people

out there in the business world could say, yeah, I could make that.

I could. I could pull. I could pull that off. It's not

fancy. Nobody's gonna win an award from it. Nobody's gonna

put it up on their refrigerator because they're so proud of it.

But it's fine. It's perfectly fine. Okay,

let's. Let's show them the ugly. Are you ready? Cause I don't know. I

don't know if I'm ready. Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's painful. Yeah. There's our menu. Somebody

wanted to use every tool in their toolbox.

Got some. Lots of color options. Yeah. Oh, isn't it

gorgeous? Yes. Oh, stock photos. Those are fun graphics.

Yes. Brush font. Oh, yeah, that's easy to read,

isn't it? So when I was making this course

and making the ugly version, I was thinking, Diane, you've gone too far.

Like, people don't really make it this bad. This is not going to be really

worthwhile. And then I got a PowerPoint from somebody, some we were

talking to about doing work. And they said, yeah, we've got some existing training. We'd

like to refresh it. We'd like to, you know, bump it up a notch. And

when I opened it, I physically jumped back

in my chair because of the physical assault that was their course.

I'm like, nope, I have not gone too far. This does exist, the world.

So I had about 500 people go through the course, and unfortunately,

I didn't get enough survey results for it to really be statistically valid. I was

hoping to make this like, you know, actual big R research.

But what was really interesting to me is

that the plane and the pretty

got very similar results. Pretty got a little

bit higher. Yeah. So there's again, the plane,

and it got very similar results to the prettier one.

And they said that the. What I like best was the comments,

you know, and so people with both courses said, hey, this was helpful. This gave

me some useful things to think about. On the plain one, there were also a

few comments that says, you know, it would have been nice if it was a

little more visually interesting, but. And then they went on to say a nice thing

about the course, and they were talking about how this would help them.

Not one person who took the ugly course

said anything about how it was helpful. It was the same

exact course, but not one person

said, hey, I learned something that will help me. So either they didn't finish

it. I don't even know if I would have gone past that first slide, quite

frankly. Yeah, I think that this is a showstopper.

Yeah. Yeah, right there. So, you know, you could have the best

content in the world, but if

it's in this type of package, people won't listen

to you. And so we've got to make sure

that our attempt to be cool doesn't

backfire. And it is better to be plain than to

try cool and get it wrong. Yeah. And real quick, Diane, what I want

to do is just. I want to try to describe this visually for anyone who's

listening to the audio portion of this later. So imagine a slide with

striped. A striped background. Multiple different types of

visuals that are images, fonts, or images like

graphics that are different types and styles and colors, blurry pictures,

a very cursive font, which is. Wow.

And so you really have to go check it out on our YouTube channel, the

Visual Lounge on YouTube, if you want to get the full picture of it, if

you're listening to this, but you don't need to see it to imagine it's pretty

bad. Now, one thing I did notice, and it was

interesting because when you sent these to me, I Looked through them and I was

like, okay, Yep, that looks really, really good. That's really good. I want to point

out on this slide, and this was just. My kind of gut reaction is on

this. Ways to stay focused and prioritize. You've got kind of this arc

of the icons and the numbers. I actually really

responded to the average one. I thought, oh, this feels

much clearer, much easier

to read. I know I wasn't taking the course, I wasn't trying to go through

it as a learner, but just kind of my gut was like, I actually like

this one better because it was just like I could

follow along easier where it wasn't trying to kind of throw me

around with too many things. Too many things. Yeah, it was almost overdid it

on the pretty. Yeah, yeah. And that can happen.

And you can also clutter up your message so that it's hard to tell

what's what. And the other thing that is really important is

to, you know, think about individuals who

may not have the same. Same physical abilities as you.

The same ability to perceive color, for example.

The same ability to just process information.

And so sometimes the clearer, more straightforward approach is

easier for people to process.

Yeah. We had a question come in from. From Garth. One of our

viewers today said, are we saying that visuals can really do more harm than

good? Would. Would you say that's the case? They can, they

can. You know, from a couple of perspectives. One is it can

be hard to read, it can be distracting,

it can be irrelevant. There's a lot of things that can go wrong with it.

Patty Schenck just did a really great article

on when it is and isn't appropriate to

use graphics. And I won't remember the official

three words. So we're just going to have to. But basically using my words,

I apologize, Patty. You have your helpful graphics, meaning they

aid in learning. Then you have your basically

kind of neutral graphic. It might be decorative, but

it's not causing any harm. But then you can have,

I think the word is like seductive graphics, where

it gets you sucked in to something that is

irrelevant and it actually knocks you out of

learning. So, yes, the wrong graphic can actually

inhibit learning. Yeah, Well, I love that. I love

that concept because I think there is a danger. And, you know,

TechSmith, we are all about images and visuals, but it's still using the

right ones for the right place and the right time. But I love that

breakdown that, you know, because sometimes there's not a visual that fits. And as

long as it's not, it's Kind of that principle, do no harm, right? Like it's

not doing harm, but it is very easy to get caught up and be like,

oh, we're going to do a really nice graphic here. And then you get caught

on the graphic versus what is the message, what is the thing that we're going

to say, or what are we trying to convey? Whether it's learning

or even I would just imagine, just kind of regular communication, right? Like

you get caught up on it and it's taking people on the wrong thing.

And that's why I love the question, is it helpful? Because

yes, it can be cool, but is it helpful? And if it's not

helpful, then we have to ask ourselves why we're doing it. And

you talked about, you know, staring at something and struggling

about what to, what to do. That's helpful.

And what I tell folks, especially newer writers who come to work with

us at Artisan, is I'll say if you're looking at your slide, your

script or narration or whatever, and you're struggling

what visual to use, question your content first.

Because theoretical, abstract,

conceptual information is, is a lot harder

to illustrate. And so what we end up doing is

decorating instead of illustrating.

I would rather illustrate my point with something that makes that point

clearer, more memorable, more impactful than

decorating a slide. And

conceptual information is harder to illustrate because it's so abstract. And so

that's where we end up with cheesy thumbs up or person pointing

to the bullet points. I hate that. Or oh, a light

bulb to indicate it's an idea. Well, you're going to get really

superficial graphic handshake, you know, people

gathered around a computer pointing at it. You know, you've seen all of it.

Is you're going to come up with generic graphics if your content is generic.

So I'd say look at your content and say, am I being

helpful with my content? Am I being clear

about how somebody would use this? In what situation

am I giving clear examples, analogies, scenarios? That's why I love

an analogy. It is so easy to do a great

visuals if you have a great analogy. So if you're

really struggling, question your content. Yeah,

I do love that. And I love that you turned it towards thinking about what

are the analogies, what are the ways that are illustrative outside of pictures, right?

Like how do you illustrate to take this from a high level thinking to more

concrete thinking. But that's a real challenge for a lot of us, right? Because

we do have conceptual things that we have to convey.

And so I Guess the analogy stuff helps. Any other tips to get from kind

of that concept down to, you know, maybe more concrete things

so that you could illustrate and not just decorate?

Yeah, one thing is that if you have an analogy, tell it first.

So if I have a conceptual concept that I explain, and then I have a

great analogy for it to make sense. Well, what's my visual? You know, let's say

my analogy is about an elephant. Well, I can't start that slide with the elephant

if I'm starting with the conceptual, because people are gonna be going, why am I

looking at an elephant? Tell your story first. Have

it start with a great visual. Then you can explain conceptually what you're

trying to tie to. So just flipping it sometimes can really be

useful. And then the other is just good instructional design is to try

and focus on what people are doing on some

random Tuesday in November. So this is my

soapbox. So at a certain point, you may need to cut me off. I love

it. Okay, so here we go. We are in the job

of helping people make decisions. So you've got some guy named

Joe on some random Tuesday in November sitting at his desk or at the assembly

line or on a. On a sales call or whatever,

and he has to make a decision. Do I pick up this tool or that

tool? Do I click this button? Do I click that button? Do I say this?

Do I say nothing? Our job is to help Joe make a decision

in that moment. The more we can focus our training on that

decision, the better our training is going to be.

And by the way, that moment is easier to illustrate than,

oh, I want you to list, define, exclude, explain, and

understand these concepts. So the more we can

have our training live in the moment of decision, the

easier it's going to be to illustrate. That's a great

soapbox. I love it. Well, I think I just did

this. Conversation with somebody yesterday, so if you see me out there in the world,

you'll probably hear me say that, because it's like my thing. Well, I

love thinking about Joe in November on a random Tuesday, doing

his job, just doing his job. Right. He's. And he's got to. We're

providing something for him. And, you know, at TechSmith, we've been talking a

lot kind of broader about communication, not just training, but it's like in any

communication with visuals. Right. Like, what's going to really make it

relevant to Joe. And. Yeah. So I want to

go to a question that was asked in the chat that I think is

James is asking in choosing visual aids Is it. Is the content

or the audience more important? I think I know my answer, but I think kind

of similar thing, right. You just sort of answered it. It's about the

audience. Everything we do is in service of the learner.

It is not about us and it is not about the expert.

Everything we do is in service of that person. Because

here's the thing, we might have business goals, but only the learner can achieve the

business goal. Only the learner can change their performance on

that Tuesday. And so everything needs to be in

service of what is going to help that person understand,

retain, remember, and care about your content.

Yeah. And I would say that goes to so many other areas too. Right. If

you're a marketer watching this or listening, you're in service of that.

That audience because you want them to be successful. Whatever they're doing, it's not about

us or you or it's not even about your tool. It's about getting that

person to be able to do the job that they've got to get done. So.

And there's so many overlaps between training and advertising.

Advertising is also about getting you to make a decision. Now, it usually

involves your checkbook, but, yeah, they're trying to get

you to make a decision at a certain point in time. And

we're doing the same thing. We're trying to get people to make a decision a

certain way at a certain point in time. Yeah, I want

to go back real quick because Jane was asking. Jane Davids was asking the three

words. It was instructive, decorative and seductive.

Seductive, yes. And again, these are not the official researchy words.

And Matt, if I get you the link to Patti's article, I assume you can

put it in the comments or whatever and it can. It can look. Yeah, it

was a great article. We can put that in the show notes as well and

make sure everyone gets that because. Yeah, I'd love to see that for myself, but

I, you know, Patty. Patty Shank, if you don't know Patty Shank, she does some

amazing research and great stuff. So. Okay. And then

I have an example of this if you want. Yeah, you want to do the

Red Cross example? Let's do that. Let me pull that right back up. And. And

I'm going to scroll down there. Okay.

Yeah, that's the one. Okay, so this gets back to the concept

of do we decorate or do we illustrate? And if we can't

illustrate, let's question our content. So we've done a lot

of work over the years with the American Red Cross. In their disaster services area.

And we worked with them on a course about how to fill out a

form to help them manage their disaster

relief efforts. So imagine a hurricane comes in. There's shelters everywhere. They're trying

to manage that operation. And so the

audience is volunteers who do not have a financial or statistical background

who need to fill out this complex financial and statistical stuff. And, oh, by the

way, there's a direct disaster raging around you, you know, so no

pressure. And this was one of their slides. So what's

a commitment? Well, it's about how much money we believe we've spent and

blah, blah, blah, it's. But it's a management tool, not accounting tool. So

it's critical that reflect it as soon as possible because the dollar figures drive

financial decisions. Okay, well, first of all,

you know, not a very interesting slide. This was for a webinar that did not

have the person on camera. So this is all you were looking at.

And the guy who put it together was just

such a great person who was so passionate about how data

can. The power of data can really help change people's lives.

But he. He didn't know the right way to get that message out. Fortunately,

he knew it. My job's harder when my client doesn't know their

baby is ugly. He knew his baby was ugly, and

he didn't know what to do about it. So he knew this wasn't right. So

it's not like I'm picking on somebody behind their back. We were in on this

together. And so I could just decorate this

slide. So you want to show the next one? Yeah, I could just

decorate it. I mean, that's a prettier version, right?

Yeah, but have I added any

value? Is this content easier

to remember, easier to understand, remember,

apply do in the moment, get you to care about.

It's not. And so question your content.

And so if you read over this, what you realize is

I don't even know what it means. Like, I know what all

those words mean, but I don't know what it means.

And if I'm a shelter manager, I don't actually know, like, what are you

asking me to do? So that's when I have to use my

interviewing skills, which I think is one of the best skills you can have, whether.

Whether you're. Whether you're crafting any message. I don't care what kind of message it

is. And so I talked to the subject matter expert. I'm

like, tell me what's going on in the real world. So there's a

hurricane There's a disaster shelter. What's going

wrong? What are people not getting about this? And they said, and

he said, okay, so here's the deal is we want people to report how much

money they're spending, but I want to know the minute they commit

to spending it. So if they need new cots, the minute they place that

order, they've committed to spending our money. Like,

they haven't paid for it yet. The bill hasn't arrived, the cots haven't

arrived. By the time the cots have arrived and the bill has come and we

paid it like our shelters are closed, we're done. Like, I can't

respond if I know three weeks after you've made a

decision or a purchase, I need to know the minute

you've committed our funds. That's why they're called commitments.

And what I realized is, is that this is not a

slide about money. This is a slide about time.

They were putting the expenses on the wrong day.

So coins are not even the right decoration. So if we go to

the next slide, we could do something as simple. This is a

very, very simple slide. I'm sure everybody watching this can

make this slide. For those of you who can't see it, it's a calendar with

a couple of dates and a couple of red circles. And so if this was

self paced elearning, I'd say, okay, so let's say you order some cuts on the

7th, receive them on the 10th, and receive the bill on the 23rd.

We can't wait till the 23rd to know that that money is being spent.

The minute you spent it on that, you made the order on the 7th. That's

the day it goes on your form. It's clearer to understand

you're going to remember it better. And by the way, this is going to be

a much shorter slide. The right graphic makes

your courses shorter in many cases.

Now, if I want to go farther to an analogy, because, you know, this is

something that you may not do for six months, let's hope you don't do this

for six months. Because there's no disasters. You may not remember it.

Can I do something that's maybe a little bit more memorable? And that's where an

analogy comes in. So I could say, you know,

imagine you're going to have dinner with your friends. You have a $20

bill in your pocket. You place your order, you get burger, fries

and a shake. It comes to $14. Okay, you're waiting for

your food. You still have $20 in your pocket. Don't you. You do. And

everybody says, hey, you want to go to the movies? And you go, Yeah, I

got $20. We can go to the movies. Well,

you've already committed to spend $14 of it.

So if you want to show the next slide,

when you order, you commit. And it's the

commitment that we put on the form. So

that's another case where an analogy makes your graphics so much

easier to do. But it's not just about prettier.

It's. You're more likely to remember this now. It's more

helpful. Yeah, well, wow. I love these

examples and I love the walkthrough because you're. You know, I was looking at

these earlier. I'm just going to go back and like you said, this made no

sense. Money on the page, no sense. It made no sense. It's

because it's not about money. But really, I was like, what is this even saying?

Right? But these are very clear. Like, I love both of these because

this one is like, oh, I can. I could like, quick recall, if I looked

at it, I knew what it is. But this one, it's going to have a

different kind of reaction because of the story with it. Right. Like, 20 bucks,

I spend that amount. I can't go and spend it on something else.

So, yeah, I love. I love both of those. And if you go back to

the one with the coins, if we go back to how we craft our

message first, that's the problem with this slide. It wasn't that the first

one was ugly, is that our message wasn't clear. Like, even now that you know

what you know and you read over this text, now

it hits you in the face obvious, like, oh, I'm not actually telling them what

to do. Nowhere on this slide doesn't tell them

overtly. Enter in your financial

commitments the day you make the order and make the commitment. Like, does. Does it

say that every. Anywhere? No. If you

can't figure out how to illustrate and can only think of how to decorate and

it's something cheesy and superficial, question your

content. Yeah. Just so you know,

a couple things here, we got the link to Patty Shanks article. It's been

put into the chat, so we'll also put that throughout the. The show notes and

things like that. Diane, pretty soon here, in just a couple minutes, we're

gonna go to our speed round. But before we do that, I want to. Gonna

try something to do. Never done this before, so you're my guinea pig. Thank you

for agreeing to this. We're gonna do something called, let's see,

can we fix it Now, I have mocked up

an E Learning page. And you know how you said,

maybe I should warn people about seizures? And this is

intentionally hideous based on my Google search. But

I wanna just. Your gut reaction, which is gonna be,

first of all, it's gonna be like, I gotta throw up. But just

immediately, what advice would you give to someone to fix it? And I've intentionally. Again,

I want to clear the area. I've intentionally made it bad. I would never make

this myself. Are you ready? I'm ready. Everyone at home

better hold your seats and get your trash bags ready, because it's hideous.

Here we go. How. Pointing to

content. How did you know that was my favorite? You have

said so many of the things. I'm just like, in my back of my head,

I was thinking, oh, oh, boy, I'm glad I did that one.

So someone comes to you and says, diane, we've got

elearning. We need you to help make us make it better.

What would. What advice would you give? And obviously, this is more like a Interact.

Could be an interactive module, but this could be a slide. I could do this

in PowerPoint. It could be in whatever. Right? So, yep.

Okay, so a couple of things. I'll go big picture, little picture,

etc. One is we always want to

check for color contrast. Color contrast is one of the best ways

to make our communications more accessible to

individuals with disabilities. So I can tell you right now that

that white on orange does not meet the minimum

required color contrast. I did a short

video for atd, their Toolbox Tip series on how to

check for color contrast and what the preferred thresholds are. So I can make sure

I can get that to you as well, Matt. But that is such an easy,

easy, quick thing to do to be more inclusive with your content.

And then we have the word resources up there at the top. I took

a whole semester of typography in college and liked

it. And a semester of calligraphy. And I would have gotten an

F for that because you don't ever want to use all

caps in what's called an ornamental. So any that's

a. That's considered a swash italic. So the little swish

on the R and the E and the S is you. Generally, all caps

are harder for people to read who have information processing. So the

whole thing is in all caps. I would reserve all

caps for a few words here and there, you know, just for

emphasis. So one of the other things we learn in design school is when you

Emphasize everything. You've emphasized nothing. So you want to use your

emphasis sparingly. So I'd be careful about using all

caps and especially if it's an ornamental. Most

ornamental fonts. Old English is another one which you probably shouldn't be using in

E Learning, but they're, you know, certificate of completion or whatever. Never,

ever, ever in all caps. I think this is a

great opportunity to use the three color rule.

Now we have four. If you're going to use three

again, I would recommend a dark, a light, and an accent. Not three

in your face colors.

So, you know, could you use that green and that pink? Well, you might.

There's a national sorority that has that very similar to that pink and

green colors. And you know, if this is for them, then you would absolutely use

it. But if you're too. If you've got several bright

colors like this, because maybe that's your color palette. Integrate more

white and black. White and black are always free. So remember I said the three

color rule. White and black are always free. So maybe that

pink is more of a stripe directly below the, the,

the green. Or maybe if we kept pointy lady,

maybe there's like a, like a fun cutout behind her that's in the

pink. So the, one of the, one

of the things I also learned in design school is the more

you, the more you have of something, the less fun it can be.

So something that's that big shouldn't be that pink. The same thing is

true with text. The more text you have,

the less fun you can have with the font. So if you

have two words like hot tip. Yeah, pick something a little fun and

interesting for that hot tip. But if you've got a paragraph,

first and foremost, unless you are, unless your goal is to create fine art,

the goal of your text is to be read. And

so if you do things that keep it from being read and

using a complicated font on a larger passage,

it's, it's going to, to eliminate the effectiveness of

your message. So let's see, we've got 1, 2, 3,

4, 5 fonts. So I, I did my

worst. Yes, yes. And you got Comic Sans in there.

So you know, way to go. And then the

other thing that I would. This is, you know, more of a subtle thing, is

through design, you have the ability to

influence where the learner's eye goes.

And some of the things that cause your eye goes

somewhere other than other. One place, other

versus another. See, now I can't form full, full sentences.

Some of it is if it's distinct. If everything is big

and one thing is small, you're gonna look at the small thing first. Everything's small

when things big, if one thing's brighter, if one thing's more dull, basically

whatever makes it different. Also, a lot of room about some around something

makes it more visible. So my eye goes directly to her, which is

the least important thing on the message. Now, the one good

thing about her little pointy finger, which I hate, is it does actually draw your

eye over to where you're supposed to look. But why should I look at her

first? Right. So I won't say you can control

where people's eyes go, but you can influence it.

There's another graphic. I think I'll see if I can find it for you.

It's. It's awesome. It's a graphic with a bunch of tech. I think it's a

web layout. And so everything's in the right font

and color and position, but the words say, you'll read this first,

you'll read this next, you'll read this next, you'll read this last. And by golly,

it's true just based on where it is and how

it looks. So what you need to decide is

where do you want them to look? I took an abstract

painting course once, and the teacher was

off looking at somebody's work and says, what's your

focal point on this painting? And she says, right here. And

he says, okay, what's going to make me look there?

Okay. And then where did they go next? So on this slide, I don't. I

don't know where. Where to go next. Like, it's. It's so disjointed.

I'm just going to be bouncing around and probably won't end up reading it as

a result. Yeah, well, we could look at that all day because there's probably

a million other problems, but I want to. I want to kind of keep things

moving here, but thank you for that, because I think what that did. I love

that it brought back some of the things we talked about earlier, some of the

kind of those rules, kind of see them in action and. And, yeah. That.

It hurt my soul a little bit to make that. Just. I want everybody to

know it's pretty bad. There's some funny comments

in the chat about Pepto Bismol, and, you know,

pink and green are probably not the right color combination.

Yeah, Lots of reasons it was bad. However, then we're going to move

on and go quickly through our Speedrun questions. So here we go. Okay.

All right. So first Speedrun question we're going to move fast and furious on these

is you're truly an expert at elearning. There's no doubt about that. You've

proven your kind of abilities today

and you get to talk about that at work in your bio. But what's something

that you're an expert in that we might not know? Flowers.

Really like arrangements. I grow them. I

arrange them. I have a whole cabinet in my kitchen of vases.

I grow about 50 varieties of flowers. I could

talk your ear off. Oh, that is awesome. That's great.

And next time I'm with you, I'll have to ask you about flowers because I

can't. Only if you want me to talk for an hour, so be careful. Yeah.

Well, that's the next podcast TechSmith is making. We're going to only talk about florals

and vegetation. So next speed run question,

what's a piece of advice you'd give everyone looking to design

learning content that you want them to know that maybe we haven't talked about today?

It doesn't have to be about visuals. So best advice you can give

us. Best advice.

Go check out Cathy Moore's action mapping process.

It is one of the best ways, in my opinion, to stay really focused on

that Joe on some random Tuesday in November. Those are my words, not

hers. But it's just a very elegant process

for making sure you're focused on what people need to do

instead of just filling their heads with information that they may or may not

know what to do with. Perfect. I love it. So Cathy Moore's

action Action mapping. Action mapping. Action mapping. Okay, go

check it out. Okay. Question three. There's only two questions left. So question three,

where do you go for inspiration? Obviously you're in a creative kind of industry

job. You've got to have lots of ideas. How do you keep keep the

kind of the creative well filled, if you will. Good.

Question one is I go to a lot of conferences, so

that's great. Learning Guild, ATD training magazine has a lot of good

stuff. So many webinars. I find a lot of

my inspiration from LinkedIn. So connecting with

people like Patty Shank, that's how I found out about her article.

So LinkedIn is where I see people who post things

that influence them and so that helps. When I was

newer to elearning, one of the things that really helped

was getting my hands on as many examples as I could.

And so doing a search for people's online portfolios,

companies, you know, like Artisan has an online portfolio Go check it out. Go

look at some of the examples. The Articulate community has

their elearning examples page, their Elearning challenges

page. The Learning Guild has an event called Demo

Fest. You can go in person. That's great. If not, the winners of that event

have a free webinar so you can see it. So get out there and just

see as much as you can. Yeah, I love that idea because it

really is. It's. It's amazing what people are creating, what they're able to

do. And it's. It is definitely a place because I'm

a firm believer of, you know, great art. It's what Steve Jobs stole from

Picasso. Great artists are bad. Artists copy. Great artists

steal. And. And there is no shame in taking people's good ideas in the industry

as long as you're not blatantly ripping it off and calling it your own. But

taking their ideas, making it your own is. I am a fan of

borrowing inspiration. Absolutely. Well, well, Diane, thank you.

So you have been so fantastic. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge about

so many things about visuals and images. I know

I've got notes that I need to go and take and say, like, okay, gotta

remember the rules of threes. And we don't like rules, of

course, too much, but we definitely thank you for sharing with us

and being a guest today. Well, thanks for having me. And I

hope I won't have too many nightmares from that pink and green and blue slide.

I hope not. If anyone wants to connect with you or follow you or

get inspiration from you, where should they look? Three places, I would

say. One is follow me on LinkedIn. The other is

I contribute to two blogs. One is

artisanelearning.com and the other is e elearning

uncovered.com so artisan elearning is more at the decision

maker level and Elearning Uncovered is more at the in the

trenches, making those slides happen level. Awesome. Well,

well, thank you again for being with us today. You bet.

So thanks everybody. We want to thank Diane. She's so fantastic. Isn't that great? I.

Hopefully you got wonderful information out of this. You're listening to it and thinking about

how you can make your images more impactful, more meaningful, more helpful

to your end audience. Audience. With that said, don't forget we are only going to

be live on the YouTube channel. That's the Visual Lounge channel. We will not

be on the text my channel. We'll still point to it there occasionally, but. But

you know, go over to the Visual Lounge. Make sure you subscribe hit the bell.

Or if you're listening to podcasts, make sure you put it into your podcast tool

of choice. We're on all of them that you can find. You can even ask

your smart speaker to play it for you if you're you really need to go

to sleep or something at night. But we're, we're just so grateful for all of

our great, wonderful guests that join us. We're grateful for our audience that joins us

live and ask fantastic questions. And for you for just tuning in and

listening. So don't forget, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, make sure you take a

little bit of time. Level up every single day. Thanks, everybody. We will see

you guys next week.