Watch the video interview or read the full interview below.
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“I made the crazy decision to put everything in variables”
TicTac Learn: You’re quite famous for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in Storyline. Without naming any clients: what’s the most challenging or most fun project you’ve worked on and how did you solve it?
Nejc: I could name a few, but the one that immediately comes to mind is a tool used around the world in the medical community for cancer screening.
Medical professionals work through a long questionnaire and select their answers. Right from the start, this was a challenge, because the client asked me to limit the selection to three answers. Otherwise, people could have picked as many as 20. That project is actually where my “Select max 3” video came from.
Once all the questions were answered, I had to display a pie chart of their answers, along with solutions they could then click on. This was done without JavaScript, because it was just before AI was around to give me that extra help. So I built a crazy multi-layer solution with lots of triggers, using dials. Basically, a dial turns a circle with pie slices of different sizes. By combining all of those, I could set the size of each slice and turn it exactly as far as I needed. That’s how I created the pie chart.
Then it became even more complex, because people had to click on specific items in the chart, so I had to place those in exactly the right position for each pie chart. On top of that, I used lightbox slides and because slides repeated, I had to put them in master slides. That was about two years ago. I was really happy, the client was happy and it got good feedback.
Last year, they came back and said they now needed it translated. That was another big challenge. I noticed straight away that, because it was more of a tool, a lot of expressions and terminology repeated throughout the project. So I made the crazy decision to put everything in variables. There was no text on the slides at all, just variables. That meant I could put everything into, let’s say, an Excel file to keep it simple and get it translated.
All of that was necessary to make the translation efficient and effective and to avoid translating the same words over and over. The terminology also had to be handled carefully. It has to be consistent: “cancer” can’t be one word in one place and a different word somewhere else in Spanish or French.
Then there was the extra complication of Arabic, which meant I had to flip every slide from right to left. I quickly learned that doing this with variables makes it even more complicated and I had to work around some bugs. But I guess that’s part of the challenge. You find a solution, because you simply have to.
“AI has really sped up the process”
TicTac Learn: That sounds like a really interesting project. You mentioned that it was shortly before AI came into play. I’d assume AI is already making your work a lot easier and it will certainly be a big topic at Masters of Articulate in Köln as well. Articulate also released quite a big update to their tools very recently. When you look at your daily work as a developer, what really makes a difference with AI?
Nejc: Personally, the biggest one for me has been voice-over. That used to take a lot of time. You had to wait to get the recordings back from a speaker and making fixes was a problem, because maybe the sound wasn’t quite the same anymore. And then you were waiting another week again. So AI has really sped up the process, both for the first version and for updates.
Still, I’d say you have to be careful. I worked on an Arabic project where I produced the voice-over in Arabic, but I don’t speak Arabic. I had no idea whether it was correct or not. Then I received feedback: this word isn’t pronounced correctly, that word isn’t correct either. But I couldn’t fix that myself, right? Luckily, I had a colleague who spoke Arabic and she was able to make the updates and go through the whole project. So you still have to know what you’re doing, or you could easily go in the wrong direction.
TicTac Learn: In Köln, you’ll be talking about reusability and practical approaches in Storyline. Can you give us a sneak peek? What will attendees be able to put into practice the very next day?
Nejc: It’ll be along the lines of my videos: how to work effectively so you don’t repeat work. Repetitive work is basically just a waste of time. So I’ll show how to build a slide that you can duplicate and use it a little differently on the next one. How to make questions and feedback simpler, so you have a system for it and don’t need to reposition the check mark next to the correct answer every time the answers are shuffled. And how to use variables more smartly, because I often see them being overused. States, on the other hand, are underused, I think. I love working with states and the conditions you get from using them. And there’ll be more in Köln.
“Stick to the old KISS rule: keep it simple, stupid.”
TicTac Learn: Amazing, we’re looking forward to that. It’s a very important topic, because there’s a lot of change happening right now. Companies need a lot of training at the moment and instructional designers and e-learning developers have even more on their plates. What piece of advice do you give them in your freelance work? Is there anything you always recommend?
Nejc: Well, I guess it’s part of my talk. To keep it in the Storyline context: be efficient and don’t solve the same problem twice. Try to think more broadly. If I do this on this slide, what happens on the next slide? Or what happens if the user repeats the slide?
Also, use fewer variables, which basically means keeping things simpler. So stick to the old KISS rule: keep it simple, stupid. And if you develop something reusable, it becomes bulletproof. You can repeat it without the bugs that might creep in if you build the same slide or the same functionality again and again.
Saving time is the smart approach to development, but I’d also say focus, especially as a freelancer. I’ve noticed this myself: it’s better to work on just one project per day, or maybe one in the morning and another in the afternoon. But don’t keep switching every hour, because your brain will be all over the place and you’ll lose focus. Every time you switch, it takes a while to get into the new task and that’s wasted time. So stick to one thing, work on that and tomorrow you can work on another one.
For me, there’s always more than one project going on, because as a freelancer I can’t just wait for the next thing. When there’s an opportunity, you have to take it.
“I am still learning every day”
TicTac Learn: Experience like yours takes time to build. Storyline is a highly capable tool, but it can feel complex when you open it for the first time. What would you advise people who are just starting out?
Nejc: Well, even I am still discovering things after ten years, so I am still learning every day. But when you’re starting out, just try lots of different things. You’ll fail and you’ll learn from that. Try variables, try states. Maybe try to copy other people’s projects. Go to the forums and search through them, because a lot of questions have already been asked there. I’ve also answered quite a few myself. And maybe watch my YouTube videos.
TicTac Learn: Of course, everyone should! At Masters of Articulate, you’ll be sharing the stage with some well-known experts from the community: David Anderson from Articulate, Ron Price from Yukon Learning and our own certified Articulate trainers at TicTac Learn, Silvio Birthelmer and Ralf Hartmann. What are you looking forward to most about the event?
Nejc: Meeting people I wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to meet. I think that’s a big plus, because we’re all there at the same time. And seeing the Articulate people again. I had the chance to meet them last year at a different conference, but it’s always nice to chat about the products and where it’s all going. And I simply want to deliver a good talk, so people learn some good tips that they can apply in their work the next day and just get better at what they do.
“It’s really about the community and about helping each other out”
TicTac Learn: And finally: you’re very active in the e-learning community. What role do live events like Masters of Articulate play for you? Is there anything that makes them really special?
Nejc: I guess it’s the sharing of ideas and experiences. I love discussing problems and solutions with people, when someone asks me how I’d tackle a certain challenge. And just meeting people. It’s great when someone tells me they’ve seen one of my videos. Or when I finally get to meet someone in person that I’ve been in touch with for years. That’s great. So it’s really about the community and about helping each other out.
TicTac Learn: That’s what community is all about. We’re already looking forward to meeting you there. Nejc, thank you so much for taking the time to answer all these questions. See you in Köln on 19 November!
Meet Nejc and many other experts live at Masters of Articulate in Köln.
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