4 eLearning Design Strategies When Using Animated Digital Characters

4 eLearning Design Strategies when
UsingAnimated Digital Characters
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Introduction
a CB Studio Guide | 2
Learning interactions are essentially social, but eLearning courses frequently lack social
intelligence and emotional impact. In one study, The Beneﬁts of Interactive Online
Characters (2004)1, Byron Reeves concludes that simulating a social exchange and
enhancing the environment with an interactive character leads to an increase in
memory and trust of information. Additionally, he found that character interactivity leads
to heightened realism that improves the value of the learning and the interaction.
While you can use methods such as audio, static avatars, and conversational text to
create a socially intelligent context, animated characters advance interaction and
provide opportunities to create immersive learning scenarios. Immersive environments
create emotional linkages that help the audience tune in, remember, and learn from
their “experience”.
Animated characters easily lend themselves to these environments while simulating
human-like gestures and expressions that motivate your audience to live the scene
rather than just observe the scene. Combine interactive characters with intuitive and
creative ways to progress through the course and you’ve created experiential learning
that will be memorable and effective.

Contents
In this guide, we’ll cover the components you should consider when designing with
digital animated characters:
1. Casting – Role Types and Personas
2. Setting the Stage – Backgrounds
3. Building a Sense of Presence – Props and Effects
4. Delivery – Desktop to Mobile
Note: For all examples on the following pages, just click on the image to view the demo.

1.Casting
Perspective
Subject matter, audience, and learning objectives dictate the roles your characters
should play and the persona each character should have to produce the best learning
outcomes. When designing with interactive characters, you have several options.
1. Learner as observer: less emotional engagement; more appropriate for technical or
tutorial interactions.
‣ The learner observes behavior or reads information in order to make a decision.
‣ The learner receives information or is guided through procedures.
2. Learner as participant: drives additional emotional investment during scenarios; this
perspective can enhance soft skills or consultative sales training.
‣ Learner takes an active role in the learning as a character in a scenario, or as a
co-learner who makes active decisions about the direction of the learning
module.

In addition to establishing your learners’ perspective, you must choose the roles your
characters will play and the personas they will hold. In a previous Learning Solutions
article2, we referenced four different types of social roles: expert facilitator, peer
instructor, no-emotion co-learners, and cooperative co-learners.
From our research review, the presence of a cooperative co-learner resulted in learners
performing considerably better because the character provides support and motivation
while taking the course alongside the student. That being said, use of an expert
facilitator or peer coach is still necessary to complete the instructional scenario.
Once you’ve selected your characters’ roles, each character should have a distinct
personality and a point of view, and each one should have human-like actions and
reactions.
The eLearning course examples that follow show characters in a number of roles, with
various personas. Click the course sample window to play the course.
1.Casting
Role & Persona

1.Casting
Examples"
Technical Training:
Ernst and Young Intranet Home Page Tutorial
The Ernst and Young knowledge guide introduces the intranet home page to
new employees and explains the vast number of resources available to
them. She is knowledgeable and conﬁdent. She's joined by a new EY co-
learner, another CB
Studio character.
Role Type: Expert
Facilitator in conjunction
with a No-Emotion Co-
learner
Press

1.Casting
Examples"
Soft Skill Training: Medtronic Employee Orientation
w/ (pronounced "W SLASH"), immersive learning simulation developer )
created the Medtronic on-boarding introduction led by the expert corporate
spokesperson Alex. He’s a friendly company spokesperson leading new
employees through orientation. While his tone is conversational, he appears
credible by demonstrating
extensive corporate and
medical knowledge.
Role Type: Expert
Facilitator
Take the course here.
PressPress

1.Casting
Examples"
Soft Skill Training: BigPond Call Center Corporate Culture
BigPond’s award winning eLearning module features a digital comic book
showcasing "Lily", who explains the importance and meaning of the “Big
Pond Vibe”. Lily is an authoritative but approachable HR specialist. A cast of
characters play various roles and appear both fully animated and voiced, as
well as in 2D form with
speech bubbles.
Role Type:
Peer Instructor
PressPressPress

1.Casting
Examples"
Technical Training: Grant Thornton Voyager New Audit System
In an ASTD Best Winner, global accounting ﬁrm Grant Thornton drives
innovation, learning, and retention while saving thousands in training
expenses using characters to train auditors in 12 countries.
When characters were
present, learners scored
11% higher than the
national average on post-
course assessments.
Each character carries a
persona appropriate to
the role, and tells his or
her “story” to engage
learners.
Role Types: Expert
Instructor “Grace”, Peer
Facilitator “Mike”, and
Cooperative co-learner
“Matthew”
Press

1.Casting
Examples"
Soft skills Training: CA Technologies Sales
CA Technologies uses characters in a simulated ofﬁce environment to train
IT salespeople. Learners choose qualifying questions for a prospect
(“James”) who then responds appropriately. James’ personality and
demeanor are consistent with a typical prospect for CA Technologies’
products.
Role Types: “James” is a
prospect who is qualiﬁed
by “you”, the sales
person.
Learn more about
animating characters
starting with the basics.
Learn more about
creating a two character
scene.
Press

2. Setting the Stage
Backgrounds
In the previous examples, designers were deliberate in their construction of
immersive learning experiences. When characters are placed in a realistic,
recognizable environment that mirrors the workplace, the information presented
has context that make it more accessible and memorable.
Setting the stage can be as simple as incorporating an office background or as
complex as creating a multi-stage TV studio. Although these environments may
look complex, they are actually quite easy to produce.
CodeBaby characters are 3D and fully animated head-to-toe. They lend depth of
field to a flat 2D background and complement an immersive 3D environment.
Export the characters with a transparent background and they can appear to
interact with any existing background or other media.
Let’s take a look at some examples of outstanding background environments
and review some of the tools that were used to create these effects.

Taco Bell Customer Service Training
Taco Bell’s character, Tracy, demonstrates how to properly greet a guest and
describes a Crunch Wrap Supreme. Throughout the modules, she conducts
training from a simulated Taco Bell environment.
Taco Bell created this
realistic look by gathering
architectural renders for
planned restaurants and
combining them with
store photos.
They added this
background to the CB
Studio timeline and
exported the animation
video to the course,
adding additional
functionality with their
authoring suite.
Examples
Press

Telstra Social Media Training
Lily appears again to conduct training on social media best practices for
Telstra’s 40,000 employees. Creator Wendy Phillips used photos of Telstra’s
ofﬁces for the background in each panel. Fireworks was used to edit
graphics, while Comic Life provided the comic book effect. Finally, Flipping
Book XML created the
page ﬂipping effect. "
Read about the entire
design and development
here.
Examples
Press

Best Buy Retail Sales Training Simulation
W SLASH created this dynamic gamification simulation using “Tracy”, the peer
instructor and “Joe” in the role of learner. Tracy supervises and guides Joe through
the simulation where he learns about technology for the “Digital Home”. His final
challenge will be on the retail sales floor.
W SLASH creates these
environments with either
photographic or full 3D
renders that they say
produces “just the right
situation for learners to
apply both existing and
newly learned skills.”
Take the full course here.
Learn more about how to
import backgrounds into
CodeBaby Studio.
Examples
Press

3. Props and Effects
In addition to backgrounds, props and accompanying effects enhance cognition
and add realism to the scenario, helping you build a sense of presence for your
learners. 3D interactive characters can use tools, walk into a room, sit down, turn
on a television, use a phone and much more. In addition to props, the use of
lighting and sound brings the scene to life and allows the learner to retain
information on multiple levels. Combine that with natural, clever and even
humorous dialog, and you’ve created not just a course but a learning experience.
The following examples demonstrate the use of multiple tools and effects.

DISC Sims Training
W SLASH created 3D simulations for DISC personality trait training. People
learn about how to speak and work with others through 3D experiential
simulations, which allow learners to both fail and succeed in a safe
environment.
W SLASH made effective
use of a side view of an
ofﬁce in which you see
two characters interact
about an upcoming
project.
“Jane” uses her speaker
phone (included in
Studio) on the desk just
before she speaks to her
manager. Additionally,
both characters are sitting
in ofﬁce chairs. Changes
in camera angle allow learners to occupy a role in the sim.
Learn more about how to create effective camera positions.
Examples
Press

Bank Teller Training
CodeBaby created this internal eLearning scenario to demonstrate proper
customer service skills in a retail bank environment. Creative Commons/
Public Domain photos were use to create the bank environment and a desk
prop was used for the counter. Monitor and keyboard props complete the
environment.
The backgrounds and
props contribute greatly to
realism, which is a key
component when you’re
building a sense of
presence for your
learners.
Examples
Press

Electronic Retail Sales Training
In this W SLASH simulation, characters “Dad”, “Caitlinn”, and “Mom” go about their
weekend activities as they get acquainted with their new cross-platform
entertainment system. The effects and props are almost too numerous to list, but
take note of the following:
• Backlights for the Q
apps on the TV screen
• PIP movie embedded
which shows Dad
watching “Eat, Pray,
Love”
• Realistic phone audio
• Mom sits at a modern
desk with the latest
computer and then
video chats with
her sister and mother.
Take the full course here.
Learn more about props
to enhance the environment.
Examples
Presslivepag
e.apple.com

4. Delivery
Desktop to Mobile
With the advent of tablets and smartphones, the options for eLearning delivery
have expanded, as have the challenges for creating content that is optimized for
all devices. Many authoring tools such as Articulate Storyline, Captivate, Lectora,
and iSpring can import CB Studio characters and also provide the required
options for mLearning delivery.
If you are exporting a character video for use as a standalone asset for social
learning or mobile presentations, you can easily encode the video to mp4 or
HTML5 standards. Please see our video encoding guide to review all the
options.
Beyond the technical aspects, character-driven course design should to be
modiﬁed and adjusted to produce the best learning experience.
Let’s take a look at the same eLearning course on the desktop, iPad®, and
iPhone®. In the iPhone® example, we’ll see the course without optimization for a
handheld device and then we’ll see how the same learning piece after is was
optimized for smartphone delivery. We’ll use W SLASH’s Sony’s HX Series
Internet TV course as the example.

Desktop
For a desktop simulation, wide angle, multiple character scenes in Flash
output produces the best experience. As W SLASH has noted, “they’re ideal
for situations where mobile access isn’t a high priority, and where available
technology – like processor speed, connection speeds, and audio – is
modern and powerful enough to
manage the heavier workload that
simulations require.”
4. Delivery
Desktop to Mobile
Press

Tablet
For tablet delivery, you can use many of the same elements as you would for a
desktop environment; however, too many characters will crowd the screen.
Additionally, you want to ensure
that engagement effects are large
enough and placed properly so
the learner does not need to scroll
to ﬁnd controls.
Note: This recording was done in an emulator
and therefore does not ﬁll the entire screen.
4. Delivery
Desktop to Mobile
http://
player.vi
meo.com

Smartphone
Smartphones require the most signiﬁcant change to course appearance, to
optimize it for mobile. Animated characters scenes will look best with a single
character. Since transparency isn’t supported in HTML5, learners will see a
black background. And video segments should be short and targeted; you won’t
be leveraging them to the same extent as you would on a tablet or
desktop.
Consider using static character renders combined with audio to
simulate the tablet and desktop look and feel.
Finally, think of the mLearning course as complement to the
desktop or tablet course rather than a replacement.
Use it to reinforce skills and provide just-in-time performance
support.
Take the course here.
livep
4. Delivery
Desktop to Mobile
live

Download a free trial or request a consultation.
Learn More:
Go to codebaby.com/elearning-solutions/studio-overview/
Email info@codebaby.com
Connect with Us:
Sources:
1Bryon Reeves, “The Benefits of Interactive Online Characters”, Center for the Study of Language
and Information, Stanford University, 2004, (http://codebaby.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/
The_Benefits_of_Interactive_Online_Characters.pdf)
2Audrey Dalton and Brian Friedlander, “Animated Characters in eLearning: The Benefits and Social
Roles”, Learning Solutions, 2010, (http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/486/animated-
characters-in-e-learning-the-benefits-and-social-roles)
Ready to create your own animated
digital character productions?
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