There’s been a lot of Next Button bashing in the eLearning business of late.
Such abuse!
Sometimes it’s warranted, no doubt.
But let’s not throw out the Next Button with the bathwater. She has her place – and when treated with respect and dignity, she can do wonderful things.
Read on for more about poor old Nextie….
If you have comments or thoughts on this ever controversial subject, please come back here to my blog and share your rant!
5 comments:
I don't know how this works outside Brazil that is where I came from, but I will tell about my experience anyway :) - usually is the developers fault so much hate towards the next button. Here, most companies charge by scene (or screen) and what usually defines the end of a scene is the next button - so, it's not unusual to see a lot more "nexties" than would be necessary. As a ID, I try to make that each scene talk about the smallest unit I can divide the content, in a way that the next button doesn't interrupt the flow of the training and that the change of the scene makes sense - but I do know this isn't standard procedure. I hope my English is not so rust as it seems to me!
Hi Cammy,
I agree to some extent, but I would argue that we often need more than the Next button. Most elearning also should have menus and search.
Otherwise, we can often end up in a situation similar to giving people a book without contents or an index.
Mark
I've not seen a 'nextie' on a website, but I will assume we all seem to navigate them quite well. Why then should we insult our learners that they don't know how to navigate?
Yes, 'nexties' are appropriate at times and for good reason. I see the problem not in the use/misuse of 'nexties', but simply in poor design.
It seems most eLearning is designed 'around' the nextie rather than designing the instruction and if a nextie is called for, then it's appropriate to use.
The biggest problem with cookie cutter patterns is that we've conditioned folks to expect it. As an experiment, we attempted to remove the next and back buttons as primary traversal. We provided alternate methods of navigation and more organic cues.
The result was primarily confusion. We built something that was more like a usable website. People expected an easy clickfest.
I hate that we've conditioned learners to expect these cookie cutter outputs. It makes it harder to do something well:)
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