eLearning Can Be Smart AND Good Looking!
March 19, 2008
Tom Kuhlmann has an excellent post on the importance of visual design in eLearning (my personal driving philosophy and the reason for the eQuixotic blog) on his Rapid E-Learning Blog. Tom rightly points out the importance of visual appearance of your materials to your learners - that a visually shoddy course may immediately be perceived by the learner as a “course not worth taking.” I can’t agree with this strongly enough. I can usually tell by the first screen of an eLearning course if it’s going to be a course I’ll enjoy or despise because I can immediately tell how much regard the designer had for me as a learner by how much attention he or she paid to the look and feel of the course.
One commenter to Tom’s post mentioned it’s possible to go “overboard” on making the presentation look good. I disagree with that general premise, based on my definition of “overboard” and “looking good.” I don’t believe that extra “bells and whistles” per se equate to beautiful design - in fact, they are often its very antithesis. And I don’t agree that “rapid development” must be equated with quick, sloppy visuals (though, unfortunately, some people appear willing to live with that implied reputation). Nor that “quick” visuals need be “sloppy” at all.
I feel an example is in order.
Cabel Sasser, legendary Mac software developer and visual designer extraordinaire, gave Coca-Cola the nod for Best Packaging Redesign in his 2007 Cabel Yay! Awards (CYA).
Over the years, the classic Coke can had devolved into an eyeball-assaulting mess of visual “bells and whistles” that had no real point or purpose. These artifacts were added simply for the sake of adding them. Coca-Cola recently (thankfully) scrapped that mess and went back to the basics.
The result: brilliant visual purity.
(Nod to Cabel for the image as well)
Now from a design perspective, which of these took more “work?” Obviously the can with the 3D bubbles, the extra swooshes, the multiple colors and gradations, the drop-shadowed text - all unnecessary (and, note, work-intensive) visual noise.
Simplicity is beauty. God is not only in the details, but in the lack therein.
Yes, you can strip the senseless bells and whistles (or bubbles and swooshes) from your eLearning design while still achieving a visual appeal that will pull your learners in and hold them there until the end of your course. Once eLearning developers finally accept the fact that this not only can be done, but must be done, eLearning can start to achieve some real legitimacy with our learners.
Smart AND good looking? Absofriggenlutely! The two are not mutually exclusive, despite what some academics (who wear ugly eLearning (or ugly anything) as a badge of honor) want you to believe. You can have the best of both worlds. Hey, Natalie Portman graduated from Harvard!
Our learners deserved beautifully-designed courses. Always. Whether we create them rapidly or slowly, well, that’s entirely up to us.
And Tom, anyone with a disdain for Screen Beans is a lifelong friend of mine.
Posted in eLearning Design
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I'm a Web and eLearning developer looking for (and striving to create) eLearning that delights as well as educates. Please join me.
March 19th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
On that note, Chris, I welcome you as my new best friend! =) The shadowy mime-o-WTFs never made any sense to me even as clipart, let alone a candidate for inclusion on anything other than toilet paper.
The one key aspect of pretty much all elearning design I have seen and been a user of is the general unfitness of its visuals. I make it a big part of what I do. I’m no art-degreed design whiz, but I think I can cut the mustard well enough to put out a good course people won’t want to shut off. Also, so many people are so used to seeing ugly courses that the second something comes along that’s actually organized and designed visually, the sooner their minds shift from “man I have to sit through another one of these” to “hmm, interesting; this is the best course yet”.
As far as design csimplcitiy goes, it coems and goes. Obviously way back when Coca Cola’s design WAS simpler than the complex can you show, and then it got to the complex can via marketing sensibilities and product design technologies. These days, everything is going back to basics (a movement kicked off partly by Apple and its products and website) because everything got complex and whiz-bang, and then everyone woke up and asked “hey, why DOES it need to be that busy?”.
In 15 years it’ll be gawdy Hollywood on store shelves again.
March 19th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
“In 15 years it’ll be gawdy Hollywood on store shelves again.”
I hope you’re wrong Paul. There seems to be a real blossoming of design appreciation among the “unwashed masses” - something completely new and, frankly, long overdue. In automotive design, in household product design (Target), in interior design and architecture (note the rapid growth of HGTV), in consumer electronics and computers (Apple) - people are finally starting to wake up and say “We don’t want ugly crap any more.” And they’re willing to pay the extra money for common everyday products that look beautiful and work in elegant ways. And I don’t know that you can turn back once you start down that path. In other words, is good taste merely a fad? I doubt it.
It’s time eLearning be given the same extreme makeover everything else seems to be getting.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Eh, I don’t know. There was amazing design in the 20s, 40s, 50s and 60s. But that all went away on some level. Now we’re getting back to it in cars, houses, business and products. Granted I hope I’m wrong and things stay haute couture. But life is a long string of cycles, ebbs and flows. Function will someday once again rule form, and then Form Function, and so on.
But then I even see “poseur” high style, and in a way too much can cheapen the value. See how many websites now use the plastic button style Apple introduced ages ago. a large part of the Web 2.0 look IMO apes Apple a lot. This is not necessarily bad, but it can be a substitute for real design. Even the most utilitarian companies have switched to a version of this button style to run with the cool crowd. HP makes an especially poor effort on their site in this respect.
But we have a lot more, better style now than ever before due to its prevalence in pop culture outlets. Perhaps this will keep the ball rolling for longer than I projected.