Stop, Collaborate, and Listen

I would offer a gold star to the first person to place my post title in its respective pop song of yesteryear, but I think it’s too easy.

What this is really about is the opportunity to collaborate at the outset of or during storyboard development. As I came on board to my new project management role in June and started in on refreshing and older course as part of my training, I learned that the step of taking time to collaborate with another instructional designer (ID) or your project manager (PM) (or, gasp, both??) tends to fall away as expectations for output increase.

This is a very common shortcut in this learning space. In my last position, a step on the Project template that was always skipped was graphic design collaboration. The ID was expected to put comments in on concepts he or she had specific visions for, or on those concepts that may be tricky to animate, but otherwise the off-shore designer was expected to forge ahead and animate sans input or collaboration. Depending on the designer’s skill and experience, this either went smoothly or it went, well, bumpily. On the bumpy road, the ID would end up collaborating with the designer via logging edits in a review system. While working in different time zones, we’d go through a few iterations of: log edits, wait, implement edits, wait, review changes, log more edits, wait, implement new edits, wait… You get the picture or have been there, done that!

So, what’s better about a process where development and design are handled by one role? You as the ID own the entire process. Not only do you have input into the content at authoring, but you then transition into developing your own storyboard, and then into implementing said storyboard at media development. Those concepts you thought would be easy to animate because the images and animations were percolating while in content development will be easy to develop. No mind-meld needs to take place between you and a graphic designer. Those concepts that you thought would be a little challenging to animate probably will be, but your little brain hamster has been spinning his or her wheel on that problem while you’re working on other things. You’re more ahead of the game than any graphic designer might be in coming up with a slick treatment for a vague or slippery concept because you’ve had time to ruminate.

“But Christy!” you interject, “Are you advocating for always storyboarding in a vacuum and never reaching out for collaborative help?” Absolutely not! Having storyboarded (eww, that word hurts my editorial self) my first few screens of my refresh course with an ID to get the feel for amount of icons and action on the screen was invaluable. I’d read the content several times, but she brought something new and fresh in several cases that enlivened my ideas. Similarly, while at a developer’s round-table a few weeks ago, in an effort to instill in newer developers a feel for how much and how often to change icons up and fade them in and out, we storyboarded one screen together from a final lesson in my refresh course. Again, even though I had a general idea of what I wanted on that short screen, the other six voices around the table brought something fresh and the end result is a lovely little screen. Would my animation as I’d originally envisioned it have worked? Sure! But the collaborated animation is a bit more…elevated.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road, though. We can’t always take the time to collaborate on every screen. You have to rely on your skills, strengths, and exposure to the Subject Matter Expert’s good ideas during development to get you rolling in the right direction. There will be trouble screens or concepts, and that’s the perfect time to reach out. Ping a fellow ID or your PM and sharing your screen to hammer out those challenging pieces. Meet for a couple hours at the outset of storyboarding and get the creative, brain-storming juices flowing. Hand off your storyboard after a lesson has been annotated and get some input before forging ahead. Having collaborated on a few screens and not on others, and having handed off my lesson 1 storyboard for input before moving on to later lessons, I can see how both approaches helped me refine my ideas and improve some of my vacuum-made decisions. Everything in moderation—you, the ID, are the best judge of when you need to reach out, and when you’ve got a given animation in the bag.

And here’s my parting thought: on a few screens of my lesson 1 storyboard, I got storyboarding fatigue. I thought, “I know where I’m headed on this concept. I’ll not waste time noting my ideas in the storyboard…I’ll just animate out of my head.” Well, hello rookie of the year! Guess what? If you take the time to develop a detailed storyboard, even if you do it in a vacuum, when you move ahead to media development a couple days later, it’s as if you’re collaborating with yourself. You reject certain ideas and bring in others when you have time and space between your initial thought for an animation and your implementation of that animation. If you’re not going to take the time to collaborate at the outset of a course build or mid-stream, at the very least you must stop, collaborate, and listen to your storyboard when moving on to media development.