Very often, companies making the step to internally harnessing the awesome power of knowledge management are new to the process. Sometimes, these new duties fall on the shoulders of already busy individuals and other times those in charge struggle to get the support they need from other participating departments. While it is important to enlist the support of all beneficiaries, sometimes the chain of contributors becomes so convoluted that it is no longer manageable.

This can be a nightmare for a custom content development team. We've seen chains of command so long that entire projects stall-out. Review processes get passed along from individual to individual and from department to department until it's unclear who has the ball or even what court it's in. From a designer's standpoint, halting production not only delay's deadlines, but runs the great risk of inconsistency and redundancy. In the past, we've seen reviews and evaluations of scripts come in months after a project is completed and in use in the field. Obviously, this poses a great problem for those who have already received certification in a course.

While lack of clear project leads can stall out production, too many can be equally disruptive. If two or more coordinators are communicating directly with our content developers without properly communicating among each other then disaster is bound to happen. The last thing we want to have is surprised or confused clients. An example of this communication breakdown is when a project coordinator gives unchecked authority to subject matter experts. While the details of a project are accurate, at times the larger goals of courseware are lost and the final product falls short of original expectations. Too, correcting miscommunications can drastically delay completion dates and add great expense.

Before any work commences on a project it is invaluable to our design team to have firm project liaisons with clearly defined duties and to establish other contributing parties who understand what is expected from them.

Imagine being in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, for instance, Paris, France. You're lifelong dream has been to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and the only thing standing in your way is successfully obtaining a metro ticket that will get you to the museum from your hotel. Standing at the station kiosk, your heart begins to race and your palms dampen as you frantically attempt to decipher the foreign phrases. Well, the Paris Transit Authority understands these potential complications and has set up a system of translated instructions and universal icons to guide foreigners through the ticket buying process. Without proper guidance it would be nearly impossible to know how to properly interact with the computer, possibly even for native French speakers.

Similarly, we instructional designers need to develop clear, concise and intuitive instructions for effectively navigating through a course module. For instance, in our latest simulation of a medical procedure the users will perform a number of interactions with the module that range from picking up objects with a virtual hand, to dragging syringe plungers to specific volumes and to filling-out checklists and signing forms. These interactions will require specific mouse movement, clicking and holding left mouse functions and utilizing key strokes on their keyboards. If we don't effectively make the desired interactions logical and clearly presented, then the user will be learning how to operate the module rather than how to perform the medical procedure - and that would be a colossal failure on our part.

Our solution with this simulation was to develop a series of icons that denote specific interaction types that are intuitive enough not to necessarily require a key to understand (though a key will be provided for those who may need clarification). In addition, simple questions and scenarios are presented to the user that will lead them to choose the proper interaction to perform next. If the user can perform an action in the module without having to ask "how?" then we have succeeded.

In June I wrote a post on the use of high dynamic range or HDR photography titled Tools, Tips and Techniques of Our Trade: HDR Photography. It turns out the HDR technique has really gained ground in popularity and more and more enthusiasts are venturing into the algorithmic process. As I too hone my skills and refine my own photographic style I've noticed a few trends forming in the community.

As we know HDR can yield some dramatic results and often viewers of my photos will be wowed and not truly understand what makes the photo appear so, let's say, vibrant. But recently I've noticed more folks are at least aware of HDR and ask "Oh, is that HDR?" Interestingly, I was kind of surprised that I've had trouble answering that question. Many think HDR simply requires tossing multiple exposures into to a program, clicking a button and having a beautifully optimized HDR photo spit out the other end. This is far from reality. Over the last year or so I've developed my own process for post-processing photos which utilizes a number of programs and treatments all depending on the requirements of each individual photo. An HDR program is just another "tool" I often use to obtain the final result I'm looking to achieve. Never will one of my photos be a raw HDR product. When I use HDR, I always mix and mask the HDR generated with one or all of the original exposures in Photoshop. After using any number of other tools such as noise reduction, sharpening, color correction, and exposure adjustment the final photo will only contain a fraction of the HDR produced by the HDR program. Of course, depending on the specific photo, a shot could be 80% HDR or 10%.

And this is true for all of our favorite "HDR photographers." No great HDR was produced solely using the raw HDR photo generated by an HDR program. They too have all been mixed with the original exposures. Every photographer has their own unique style and process to achieve their desired results. So now when someone asks if a particular photo of mine is HDR I reply with an estimated percentage. Mostly this unexpected answer produces a reaction of confusion and sometimes annoyance but is much more accurate than a simple yes or no.

Below are a couple of my photos that use HDR. Also you can see more at my blog at http://www.bfhstudios.com/blog.

Orton Hall foyer, The Ohio State University. 3 exposure 75% HDR.



El Castillo, Chichen Itza, Mexico. 3 exposure 40% HDR.

Efficiently managing projects from the beginning is crucial to efficiency, consistency and assuring that we develop the best end product possible. Since some of our projects are quite large, responsibilities are divided up among our design team to be worked on simultaneously. While it may be an obvious practice, using common graphics libraries is an invaluable practice that can save precious time.

In an ideal world, we would create all the necessary graphics for a project before work is even started. But that is almost nearly impossible. We inevitably will need to add and alter graphics along the way. Therefore, we create a single library that contains all of the graphics for the project. Each graphic is saved as a symbol. At any time during the course of the development phase, when we add or change a symbol it will be updated at every instance along the project pipeline. 

For example, we had built a course that often referred to a very specific, step-by-step procedure at many places throughout the module. After the course was finished, the client had made a very important change to this standard operating procedure. Since we had created a graphic symbol of this procedure, we were able to make the change to the symbol in the common library and simply republish the course. We were able to save valuable time and ensure accuracy by not having to go back through the course and manually find and change every instance of that graphic.

Below is an example of an ever-expanding library of characters for an on-going project.

Actually, it's a great day for all of KMi. Last week it was announced that a customized eLearning course of ours has won a coveted Brandon Hall award for excellence in eLearning. Our custom content development team receives this news with great pride. But of course we already knew it was a great achievement due to the satisfaction of our clients. So while being recognized is a great honor, we view it as another notch in our design belt and will use it as motivation to continue to create engaging course development while looking to improve upon each new success. Look for exciting new course-ware from our content team in the near future.

Stay tuned for a formal announcement of this award very soon here on our blog!

Have you ever tried to describe something indescribable to someone only to fumble for the right approach and the right words and simply give up the effort by saying "you had to be there?" For example, imagine trying to paint a mental picture of the Grand Canyon for someone who has never seen it in person or in photos using only words. You start by stating the facts. It's a big hole in the ground, a canyon, with a river running through the bottom. Then you simply start spewing words: erosion, red rock, enormous. Expectedly, all you receive are blank stares and a furrowed brow.

At KMi, our eLearning content developers often run into similar troubles when attempting to express courseware concepts in visual terms. That is why we storyboard our custom eLearning solutions. The storyboard is a preproduction visual concept that does wonders for bridging the gap between wacky designer visions and client understanding. We know our clients don't always think like us and we don't want to make the process any more difficult. Our customized eLearning storyboards are non-functioning, static graphics. They usually introduce the module skin design along with rough sketches, low resolution placeholder photos and production labels describing functionality and animated features.

In the below example we can see the eLearning content development storyboard for a Supply Chain safety course explaining the graphical style and user interaction and then the final result.

Very often the course material graphics, charts and graphs we receive from subject matter experts are less than stellar. They are usually developed by third parties and have been passed down through the years from presenter to presenter. By the time we receive them at KMi, they have been saved and re-saved so many different times that they have unrecognizable file extensions and barely legible resolutions. 

Though it's nearly impossible to recreate every precise line graph and data developed chart, we do have the opportunity to improve the simpler graphics, which usually constitute a large chunk of the material. Our content developers have outlined a process that utilizes isometrics and other techniques to quickly and easily recreate any number of graphs and charts in a visually attractive manner. Let's have a look at an example.

This is a sample survey that I will use to illustrate the process. Since the results of the survey add up to 100% of those questioned, a pie chart is the most logical method to display the findings. Using some basic math I was able to quickly recreate the pie char. In just a few simple steps I can simply add perspective, color and shadow to create a much more visually pleasing graphic.

While not as appropriate for this survey, I will also demonstrate the bar graph method we often use. On the left, we can see a flat bar graph - similar to ones we receive from subject matter experts. Starting with five simple squares (1), I first use isometrics to create the desired perspective (2). Then, I create each bar based on a 100 pixel high scale. This allows the graph to be exact. After the bars are created I've added color and shading to bring the whole graph to life (3).

However, telestration is not all that is in the development pipeline. I know this sounds like a bit of a tease but . . . well, actually that's exactly what this is - a teaser! We have a number of other projects that we're very excited to share with the world but only when the time is right. Stay tuned for more exciting news from KMi!