Item: Articulate 360
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Articulate 360

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

So I utilize this as my primary authoring tool to develop e-learning technical training for our engineers. I work directly with those subject matter experts on training that they want to develop within their technical discipline. Typically used to kind of fill any gaps that we found within their technical space that needs to be fulfilled. So I work directly with them to help them design their content, put their content together, write their scripts, and support them through that process. Once the design piece of it is done and I have what amounts to be a storyboard and voiceover gets handed over to me for the fun development in Storyline 360. I take that content and typically I've already talked to my SMEs about what I'm thinking, "Hey, I think an interaction would be great here. I think we need some knowledge check questions here." Just kind of get that buy-in from them. I'm working with some of them and they just hand it to me and say, "just make me look good." And they just let me take their content and build it how I believe it should be built. Others want a little more involvement, which is totally fine. I take that and then I build out the training. It's been so fun moving to 360 from Storyline 3, just the sheer amount even of templates and things like that that have been built in that I can just go grab. I don't have to build them from scratch where I built a lot of things from scratch I think prior. So that's been really cool.

Pros and Cons

Pros

I would say in terms of ease of use, there's so many. I think that when it comes to Storyline as a whole, there's always more than one way to do something. It's designed that way on purpose so that some people may decide that they want to build something in this way. I want to do branching, I'm going to do layers. I'm going to do a variable. There's always multiple ways to accomplish what you want accomplish. I really like that because I like flexibility. I go rogue and so I really like the flexibility in that, but at the same time, sometimes you just want to be like, just tell me how to do what I want to do. And there is absolutely that available to you. It's just like you do it this way, it will work, it'll be great. It'll work for you.
One of the newest things that I learned, it's literally going to save my life, is cue points. I did not know they existed before that. I was opening up my audio listening and writing down time codes and dragging my object and my text elements to those times. I think that the biggest thing is make sure that you understand all the ways that Storyline can work for you. That's the biggest thing. There's so much of that. It's things that I wish I had had more time to really learn earlier on.
I guess I would really also encourage, if you can take some Articulate training, oh my gosh, do it. It's going to save you the time down the line. There's so many things that are built in that are meant to make your life easier. Little things of even something as simple as fit, my timeline, the longest object, but little things like that that make a huge difference. A little click.

Cons

I don't know if I feel, I thought I was super knowledgeable, but I'll tell you just recently I'm like, I think there's so much that I don't know. I feel like you guys are really getting there and just there's more and more things that are being released that are exciting. Obviously the whole AI side of it I haven't got to play with very much, but I think is going to be really cool and exciting. The things that you're building in to make our lives easier. Again, I mentioned the templates, the characters, the icons, the building, all of that stuff in has been amazing, whereas prior I had to import these things. So I think that, I guess all I can say is keep giving us these built-ins just to make our lives a little bit easier. Things that we're going to go looking for graphics, we're going to go looking for things that just, if you keep us in the tool as much as you can.

Return on Investment

Huge. So I was actually hired onto this team. It was a brand new position. So this particular team, they had an instructional designer who was focusing on the support of our instructor-led trainings. The best that they could do with the resources they had is they would record a virtual instructor-led training, and they'd put that recording out on the LMS, right? She couldn't do all of it, and they knew it was time to really expand. They got approval to have this specific role created for kind of a technologist online self-study role. That is everything I do. The impact it's had to my team and the engineering community has been so big because of the ability to create this kind of very engaging, robust type of self-paced learning as opposed to they sit and they literally watch a video of people in a class. It's been such a great experience. I've been in this role now for, well, almost three years, so I got Storyline right away. The impact has just been so good. The quality of the training, the response people seeking out online self study as opposed to video like, oh, I want to go find that one instead of just watch the video. I want to do this one instead. So it's been great.

Comprehensive Platform

Yes, that is the one area that I haven't really delved into since I've got the tool. I jumped right into using Storyline 360 Desktop. I do know I am aware of and have an understanding of some of the other modules, but I haven't gotten to necessarily utilize them. We use Workday as our LMS. So typically in terms of even, I really want to look more into the Review side of it. That's the side I really want to look at. But we have a sandbox. I send my users there for review. That's what I've always done. That doesn't mean that that's the right way to do it going forward. But I will say I haven't had time to dig into the other modules.

Integrated AI

I also haven't had much experience to play with your guys' AI assistant yet, so I don't feel like I can speak to that.

Usability

N/A

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Captivate

So I started off, the very first authoring tool I ever used was Captivate over 10 years or 15 years ago, that kind of thing. I think that was just because that was the tool that the team was using at the time. That was my first experience ever with an authoring tool. I found the learning curve to be very extreme, and it was kind of hard to, I mean, you get there, but that was really the first authoring tool that I really had my hands on that I used for a little bit. Then ultimately in that role, I ended up doing much more instructor-led training. So I got further away from self-paced training. Then I wasn't really using it when I knew I was coming back to that online self-study realm. And they actually asked me, what tool is it? What tool do you want to use? I want to go Storyline this time. So I had talked to other companies and organizations, honestly, I've even seen in job openings, they're asking for Storyline experience specifically. So I was like, okay, industry, this would be a smart move for me too. They're asking for specifically storyline.

Key Insights

Do you think Articulate 360 delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Articulate 360's feature set?

Yes

Did Articulate 360 live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Articulate 360 go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Articulate 360 again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Camtasia, Workday Student

Likelihood to Recommend

I think in terms of my primary goal, especially with any kind of self-paced learning, being that hard goal of trying to keep your learners engaged, that is the ultimate challenge and it's your ultimate goal. Obviously. Yes, I want to share with them this content, but I need to keep them interested and keep them going and keep 'em away from their email and keep 'em away from answering a phone call. I feel like the variety of options that Storyline builds in to add in interactivity, add in engagements and stuff. Either you can build that stuff from scratch, you can bring it in if you want to. You have the flexibility, but I need that interaction every three slides and I want it to be different. I think that when I have conversations with colleagues, I get a variety of folks across the board who maybe aren't instructional designers, maybe they do some training, maybe they're just purely curious about how did you make that kind of thing. I do talk to them a little bit about that balance of how much are you going to use it. There's a learning curve of course. If it's not something that is a primary part of their role, I may be like, there may be other options for you. This may not be the right one, just in terms of the time that you're going to spend. Because I do also feel like with any kind of tool like this, if you get away from it for too long, you're going to lose a lot of your memory and knowledge of how to do things. I think that's the most conversation I have with folks is how much of your role is actually building training. And maybe we can keep it more simple for you. But yeah, if you're really interested, then yes, I definitely suggest it's a great tool if you want to take it up a level kind of thing.

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Articulate 360 Review