top of page
How I used animation and illustration to keep learners engaged
Allow me to tell a story about an entire team of technical trainers who were creating content using "whiteboarding". The problem is, they were attempting to communicate their ideas without using any effective visuals. To their credit, they tried to create their own sketched-out diagrams and visuals to illustrate their points but something was missing, and it was pretty obvious. Learners were dropping off videos without finishing courses, and an average subscriber would often leave the service shortly after joining.
Now that you know the backstory, let me tell you how I fixed their "boring" yet substantial problem.
With the goal of retaining learner attention and increasing the length of subscriptions, I organized and implemented an entirely new system of supplying professional animated illustrations to supplement all videos in the training library. All a trainer had to do was request an illustration with a quick note and a reference image, which I would then illustrate, animate, catalogue and deliver at scale with fast and reliable one-day turnaround. They could then drop it into their video quickly and easily, and boom! Exciting and engaging visuals were in every video.
Allow me to tell a story about an entire team of technical trainers who were creating content using "whiteboarding". The problem is, they were attempting to communicate their ideas without using any effective visuals. To their credit, they tried to create their own sketched-out diagrams and visuals to illustrate their points but something was missing, and it was pretty obvious. Learners were dropping off videos without finishing courses, and an average subscriber would often leave the service shortly after joining.
Now that you know the backstory, let me tell you how I fixed their "boring" yet substantial problem.
With the goal of retaining learner attention and increasing the length of subscriptions, I organized and implemented an entirely new system of supplying professional animated illustrations to supplement all videos in the training library. All a trainer had to do was request an illustration with a quick note and a reference image, which I would then illustrate, animate, catalogue and deliver at scale with fast and reliable one-day turnaround. They could then drop it into their video quickly and easily, and boom! Exciting and engaging visuals were in every video.
Anchor 2
With so many new animations being created that had massive potential for re-use, I used a website called Canto to create an extensive online library of over 2000 animated illustrations that have been cataloged and tagged for any trainer to use at any time in any of their training videos.
So... Did it work?
It absolutely worked, and the goal of engaging more learners was accomplished with dramatic results.
The illustration library system has significantly improved the quality of training and also quantity of learners and signups for CBT Nuggets over the past 6 years, resulting in an increase of millions of dollars in comparison to the previous system without visuals.
According to analytics, the lifetime of the average subscriber was significantly increased within the first few months, as well as the amount of video content consumed in one sitting by a learner. These statistics have remained at a steady increase since the implementation of the illustrations in the training.
But wait, there's more!
I have used this style of animated illustration in several other marketing and promotional content, and it has been successful in these instances as well. One example, I created the visuals for a video promotion for Cisco Learning to encourage more youngsters to become engineers.
Anchor 3
Anchor 1
Here are some examples of the animations in the library. Sit back and relax as the magic of animated illustration captures your attention in a way that other mediums simply can't.
bottom of page