Need your Help! For Working on Captivate 8 or 9- Can anyone suggest or share Do’s and Don’ts to be factored which we can plan a design or solution or even at a Storyboarding stage. This would help us avoid rework and deliverable delay later.

[SGS_Instructional_Design]

Need your Help!

For PM and ID perspective

For Working on Captivate 8 or 9- Can anyone suggest or share Do’s and Don’ts to be factored which we can plan a design or solution or even at a Story-boarding stage. This would help us avoid rework and deliverable delay later.

[Erik Lord]

Definitely spec the size (dimensions) of your project...or if a Responsive project (HTML output only), what are your target audience's most likely common breakpoints.

Are you going to record narration? Who will do that? Please put a script together before you record the 'final' version! You can use CP's TTS capabilities to mimic the narration on a temporary basis, in order to time out the slides, if needed.

What's the review process? Sign-off process? What is in and out of scope for the project? (!!)

Do you have a QA process in place? Is the customer expected to do that and, if so, are they fully aware of it?

[SGS_Instructional_Design · Accepted solution]

Thanks Erik for your comments.

Here are few simple tips and tricks that will help us jump start your Captivate 8 experience.  A typical Captivate
demonstration or simulation begins with the Capture phase. In this phase, you will have to:

Act Slowly - When capturing the slides, make sure you perform all the steps you want to record slowly enough as Captivate won’t be able to capture all the required screenshots if you are too fast.

Capture extra screenshots manually - During a normal capture phase, Captivate takes a screenshot each time you click. But there are circumstances, when we want things to happen differently. In such situations, you may have to capture your screes manually.

Don’t record narration when capturing the slides - Remember that the quality of the captured screenshot is a critical part of the overall quality of your final product. In fact, it is so important that during the capture phase, your entire attention should be focused on this single task: generating the screenshots. Audio is another critical aspect that makes up the quality of the final project. In fact it is so important, that you should concentrate only on the narration when recording it!

The Editing Phase

Once you have all the required screenshots, it is time to move on to the second phase of the Captivate workflow: the editing phase. 

Use Styles, templates and themes

Make the students in charge of the overall rhythm of the course. Give control to the students. As a matter of fact, making an extensive use of the button object is all it takes to put the student in charge of its learning process!

KISS the simplicity –Keep your outcome simple. By keeping it simple, you’ll avoid many distractions for the student and keep him focused on what he has to do: learning!

Use audio wisely- Depending on how you use it, audio can dramatically enhance the overall quality of your project or... completely compromise it! In Captivate, audio can be added at 3 different levels in the project.

• Object-level audio
  • In this case the audio clip is associated with a specific object. The audio starts playing when the object appears on the stage.
• Slide-level audio
  • In this case the audio clip is associated with a particular slide. It plays in sync with the slides and is visible in the slide timeline.
• Project level audio
  • Also knows as background audio, this audio clip is associated with the project as a whole. It usually is a small sound sample that loops during the entire project.
    

As general rules, these are some tips and tricks to keep in mind when working with audio

• Don’t use background music! It is the ultimate source of distraction that drives your students' attention away from your course!
• Use object-level sound effects with care. Nothing is more annoying and tiring than a course that sounds like a video
  game!
• Spend the needed time to record and process the narration so it is of good quality. Remember that your students will listen to these clips for countless hours, consequently, a boring tone or a poor quality audio could compromise the entire (otherwise perfect) learning experience
• If you intend to publish your project in HTML 5, make sure no audio overlap (for example, an object level audio and a slide level audio that need to play at the same time). In a HTML 5 project, I suggest you stick to slide-level voice-over narration.
• Keep your audio accessible by adding closed captions. This is especially true in an international environment where some students take the course in a foreign language.
• Don’t use the text-to-speech feature. Text-to-Speech is good for proof of concepts or to showcase your work in progress to your customer. You should avoid it in the final release of your project though!
• Finally, keep in mind that the sound can be very intrusive and aggressive. If you use sound, always provide a way to turn it off or adjust the volume!

The Publishing Phase

The publishing phase is the last one in the workflow. This is where you make your project available to the outside world. Historically, Captivate was designed to publish your projects in Flash, but with the advent of mobile devices (Tablets and Smartphone) it has been necessary to add the capability to export the projects in HTML5.

Do not publish the same project in Flash AND HTML 5 – Decide on the requirement and then publish the course. When publishing to HTML 5, be aware the not all the Captivate objects are supported in the HTML5 output. In other words, you have access to a reduced set of tools when authoring a mobile-enabled piece of eLearning content.

The ultimate trick to produce a successful high quality piece of eLearning content with Adobe Captivate (or any other eLearning authoring tool) is to plan!

• Start by creating an outline of your course and make sure you communicate it to your student throughout the online course.
• Have a scenario, or at least a worksheet ready for each file of your course.
• Write your voice-over narration before recording them. You will gain a lot of time during the recording while making sure do you not forget to say something!

Make sure all your external assets (images, video files, animations, logos) are ready before you open Captivate.

[Lilybiri]

Great tips already. Here are some more:

1. Choose the resolution of the project wisely, whether it is a normal or a responsive project (where you need to choose more than one resolution).
2. Start by creating and saving a custom theme: that includes a custom Theme Color palette, object styles, master slides and skin. Be sure to set all preferences before starting the project. See What's in a Theme - a Template? - Captivate blog
3. Know the audience you are expecting for the course.
4. Which devices will be used to watch the course: file size will be much more important if you expect mobile devices will be included.
5. Use and structure the Library: to import all assets that you can drag to the project; make sure images have the size that you need, avoid rescaling in Captivate. For assets that you are using frequently in courses: keep them in a separate project which you can open as external Library. This is also valid for much used shared actions.
6. Use the roundtripping features of Captivate: with Photoshop, Audition and (for SVG's) with Illustrator.