By Ramón Talavera-Franco
YOU developed an Articulate Storyline 360 game and want to share it with the world. You decided to restrict playback to landscape mode before you publish it to help users have a good learning experience when using a mobile device. You previewed the entire project in Storyline 360 and you were satisfied when you saw that tablet portrait and phone portrait modes asked the user to rotate the device in order to start playing the game. Maybe you even uploaded your game in AWS or a website and sent the URL to some friends to pilot it. So far, the game worked perfectly so.... why not getting started to promoting your game in social media?
Well, let me tell you how I panicked when I shared my Storyline 360 game-based learning project in Facebook. I developed a game to teach Spanish through Hispanic literature in Storyline 360. I uploaded it to AWS to get my unique URL. I decided to share first the URL with my in Facebook friends before sharing it with the target audience. I included the game URL into my Spanish for Heritage Speakers website and BOOM... sent it to my Facebook friends. Next day, three friends told me that they could not access the game. They could not go beyond the first screen: "Rotate your device." I panicked! I could not afford to weaken the beginning of my social media strategy due to a technology problem. I was relieved that I did not sent it to the target audience first.
After collecting some information from my friends and from the internet, I realized that I had to work in two main issues that I'm gladly sharing with you today:
TIP #1: FACEBOOK does not include landscape mode for smartphones. Only for tablets.
TIP #2: Portrait orientation of the smartphone must be unlocked. Although this sounds obvious, not many people are "smartphone savvy."
When less techy users approach to these kind of problems, they believe that the product does not work properly and they are more likely to leave the page almost immediately. As a consequence, YOU get bad reputation as a Storyline 360 developer.
So, if you really want your audience give it a try to your Storyline 360 game or course, and you decide to share it in Facebook, include a disclaimer with the above two tips.
Hope these two tips that took me hours to learn take you only minutes to fix when sharing your product in Facebook.
YOU developed an Articulate Storyline 360 game and want to share it with the world. You decided to restrict playback to landscape mode before you publish it to help users have a good learning experience when using a mobile device. You previewed the entire project in Storyline 360 and you were satisfied when you saw that tablet portrait and phone portrait modes asked the user to rotate the device in order to start playing the game. Maybe you even uploaded your game in AWS or a website and sent the URL to some friends to pilot it. So far, the game worked perfectly so.... why not getting started to promoting your game in social media?
Well, let me tell you how I panicked when I shared my Storyline 360 game-based learning project in Facebook. I developed a game to teach Spanish through Hispanic literature in Storyline 360. I uploaded it to AWS to get my unique URL. I decided to share first the URL with my in Facebook friends before sharing it with the target audience. I included the game URL into my Spanish for Heritage Speakers website and BOOM... sent it to my Facebook friends. Next day, three friends told me that they could not access the game. They could not go beyond the first screen: "Rotate your device." I panicked! I could not afford to weaken the beginning of my social media strategy due to a technology problem. I was relieved that I did not sent it to the target audience first.
After collecting some information from my friends and from the internet, I realized that I had to work in two main issues that I'm gladly sharing with you today:
TIP #1: FACEBOOK does not include landscape mode for smartphones. Only for tablets.
TIP #2: Portrait orientation of the smartphone must be unlocked. Although this sounds obvious, not many people are "smartphone savvy."
When less techy users approach to these kind of problems, they believe that the product does not work properly and they are more likely to leave the page almost immediately. As a consequence, YOU get bad reputation as a Storyline 360 developer.
So, if you really want your audience give it a try to your Storyline 360 game or course, and you decide to share it in Facebook, include a disclaimer with the above two tips.
Hope these two tips that took me hours to learn take you only minutes to fix when sharing your product in Facebook.