Articulate Challenge – An Interaction to Teach Comparisons

I found this Articulate Storyline challenge online this week, and I thought it looked like fun.  As I started playing with it, I decided I would use these size comparisons as a language learning activity to compare superlatives.  I made this drag-and-drop interaction where users place comparison words on the correct plane.  I’d love any feedback!  Comment or email me.

Start Screen:

I wanted to find a font that looked “airplaney”.  Lo and behold, Air Americana.  I love finding awesome fonts!!  This is definitely a font to use sparingly.  I like it, but it would be awful to try and read a paragraph of this.  Even the smaller text in the instructions box is not as easy to read as I’d like.  Overall, though, I think it works for this piece.

During the Activity:

A couple things worth mentioning here.  If you drop something correctly, it stays and turns green.  If you drop something incorrectly, it just goes back to its spot instead of turning red or something like that.  Either way would be fine.  The return option was the default, although, if I was doing a large drag-and-drop, I would make it stay in place and change color to avoid a lot of back and forth with the mouse.  It’s just a little detail to avoid frustrating users.

A Snag…:

In the picture above, “Thinnest” is on the pink airplane.  In the picture below, “Shortest” has covered it.  I tried making the hotspots different sizes so they were not completely overlapped, but when I user-tested it, it wasn’t a smooth interaction.  Learning a new language is hard enough without having clunky learning activities to worry about!  I’m still not sure how to get around this.  It would be nice to find a “drop location” feature or something so I could specify where I wanted the piece to fall within the hotspot.  Possibly a tall order.

Completed Activity:

Here is the completed activity.  I thought it would be a good idea to leave a reminder of the comparison words beneath the corresponding category (eg length) to help with remembering.  I used soft edges to give the faded appearance.  They are on the base layer, while all of the hotspots and dragging pieces are on a second layer.

That’s it!  Hopefully you like it.  My next Articulate post will be a larger module about inheritance, where I had lots of fun with radio buttons.  See you later!