How good design is improving employee training and comprehension

There can be no doubt that design has a positive impact on a company’s training programme and the ability of employees to comprehend a course. This is especially true when it comes to the use of rich media, which if used well, can help employees to understand training and even apply what they have learnt much better.

Furthermore, it is very important to have in place very effective and innovative blend of learning solutions and elearning solutions to help a business or elearning company meet its specific training objectives unique to its operations. Effective solutions have to integrate great learning technologies that are versatile, including engaging content that gives the staff an effective and inclusive learning experience. Essentially, the training solutions help in strengthening critical competencies, boosting productivity, enhancing energy efficiency, boosting profitability and even saving lives.

Rich media together with customisation that is user-friendly help in designing interactive courseware to facilitate the learning process while improving performance at the same time. This happens through a number of ways.

Incorporating sound

Rich media is a unique design approach that allows the materials and courseware to incorporate instructional design sound while offering very compelling content for training purposes. This is designed to fully engage participants while at the same time facilitating knowledge transfer. Topics that can be covered with the incorporation of instructional sound design include government related training, health care, IT, reliability and maintenance, human resource and safety training among others.

For example, audio within training modules are vital to the IT industry, where industry leaders can offer tips and tricks to new software and system updates. SolarWinds, an IT management software company, offers video resources that help users with products, troubleshooting, software updates and much more.

Top quality delivery

No matter what you’re training, rich-media allows you to get an edge over competitors by ensuring dynamic and unique rich media design content has been delivered to your employees. Since the employees are the face of any business as well as the brand, ensuring they are informed continuously is very important concerning the services and products. This ensures customers have been served effectively. You also want them to retain any information they have learned and this is where rich-media comes in.

A good example of top quality delivery can be found in this month’s online New York Times (NYT) Arts edition, where an interactive piece featuring Justin Bieber, Diplo and Skrillex uses rich media to explain how they collaborated and made a hit song. From basic camera interviews, NYT added visuals of the music notes and beats to break down how a hit song is created. This interactive is one of the many reasons that sets NYT above the competition.

Furthermore, by using rich media for presentation programs, you have a better communication solution capable of distributing with ease the best quality of training modules. This also helps employees to receive corporate information on demand and in real time at the location you have selected, whether it is a conference room, office or even a break room for employees and basically to every device from Smartphone, Tablets, and Laptops to PCs.

Takeaways

Rich media needs to be used in the right way with corporate training, with quality sounds and visuals in order for organizations to be competitive and grow their employees. Think about what training you’ve done in your spare time and why those programs appealed to you. Chances are they used rich media tactics to keep you engaged.

Powerful training

Employees are also visual learners, especially because our brain has been hardwired in a special way to rapidly process visuals. For visual learners, the addition of images and video to every procedure is definitely one of the most powerful ways of delivering a quality training and related information that will not be forgotten. This ensures the procedures looks great.

You even have the ability to add diverse rich media files from animation to videos within the training. You can have videos shot from any device, from a Smartphone, handycam and web camera to the best digital cameras. To show applications from a PC, screencasts can also be created to increase employee training, comprehension and overall employee engagement.

Visuals are great in training

Visuals are processed by the brain 60 000 times faster than text. It means that if your training has not included rich media, this is the time. The brain also processes all kinds of visuals cues in only 250 milliseconds such that any employee course using visuals will definitely create a rapid yet lasting impression. Visual aids also improve the learning process by over 400 percent.

For example, this year’s Webby winner for best online film & video How-To & DIY, Joey Shanks, creates tutorial videos on how to recreate Hollywood movie effects with household items, called Shanks FX. The videos are very visual with simple text accompanying it. Especially for a virtual industry, consider using training modules that are very visual.

Takeaways
When in doubt, always include visuals in your training. It can not only help retain information better, but increase overall work engagement. Employers need employees that have engagement with training and informational content in order for them to grow within their careers.

As such, by incorporating all forms of rich media and having the best visuals with you, the best content that your employees need will be availed. The content can be stored in the cloud where it can be accessed anytime from anywhere. Changes can also be done there and pushed right onto the employees immediately.