Frisk Insights | Cheats | 04

In this edition of Frisk Insights, I'm sharing the next set of cheats to help you succeed in compliance training. This article discusses design, copywriting and feedback:

Design

Top Tip: Establish a sleek design process.

I once remember a customer saying, "If I give you some PowerPoint slides, can you put it through the Frisk Machine?" And, that is exactly what you want your design team to be – a well oiled machine. Here are a few ways that we work:

Timelines: Always make sure you deliver on time and within budget. Experience has taught us to say, "No!" to that eleventh-hour request that asks you to add 12 extra hotspots into a slide (after you've already signed off). And, why would you, when your customer can place the extra text on an intranet and link that to the e-course! That's a new project and it needs to be budgeted. Regular weekly reviews are a key part of that on-track process.

Documentation: The way we document an e-course guides the design process. First, we document the e-course as a Google Document transcript, in table form (ref, voiceover, text on slide and design notes). The transcript is a blueprint and so crucial for future updates. Next, we design the slides using Google Slides – a great opportunity to tweak the flow. Finally, we commit the design in Adobe Captivate (an e-course authoring tool).

Look and feel: These tips wouldn't be complete without thinking about style. As a publisher of compliance e-courses, we fight a constant battle (with auditors and customers) to avoid text heavy courses and aim to produce memorable training. Frisk has a style, developed using our own proprietary library of characters and images. However, one of the main points is accessibility and that can be achieved using:

• Uncluttered pages – don’t cram in text, list keywords separately and use bullet points.
• Plain English – avoid the use of technical jargon and legalistic terms. 
• Careful design – replace words with thoughtful images.
• Awareness of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Standards. 
• Technology – link downloadable PDFs to version controlled Google Documents; Adobe Cloud for fonts and so on.

 I asked our head of design David Little for his top tip and he said:

I really enjoy creating images that help people learn visually. My tip would be to consider, when appropriate, what kind of images could be added to help with the understanding of the text.

Copywriting

Top Tip: Create a style guide for language and grammar use.

If you are starting out as a compliance trainer, make sure you create a style guide. This doesn't just list the font and colours you use. It's also a template for your language and grammar. It irons out problems that include (amongst others):

• When to use an en dash versus an em dash;
• Whether an Oxford comma is the norm; and
• How acronyms, numbers and speech are defined.

 We state the following as a benchmark:

"Our copywriters specialise in US/British differences, follow the 'Oxford Style Guide', refer to the ‘Guide to Punctuation’ by Larry Trask (University of Sussex) and love plain English. Both these resources are publicly available online."

The key element of Frisk’s Content is that our customers review, contribute to and approve our lessons. Every change goes through copywriting, to keep the materials consistent. We are 100% customer-led.

I asked our copywriter Melandra for her top tip and she said:

When I'm copywriting, I tend to do a whole section and then read it through. I pay attention to grammar as a habit. If I have time, I'll do something else, come back and read my work again. A fresh eye helps and the longer the piece of text is, the more often you may need to step away from it to get it right. On the other hand, I try not to overthink what I'm writing! That can be fatal.

Feedback

Top Tip: State how you collect feedback within your T&Cs.

The Frisk Team aims to create actionable e-courses that drive performance. You need to know the purpose of your e-course and define learning outcomes. You also need to know how you are going to assess these outcomes, by surveying real-world output (and not just by creating a final test). Feedback helps you determine if your project is on track and must play a part in your quality review process.

When I first launched Frisk, I knew that learners would determine our success. They would complain if the product wasn't right and it could result in customer loss. We took advice and inserted terms, for collecting feedback, into our T&Cs.

We found the people responsible for signing off training were very detached from the rollout and feedback. They moved on, with no handover in place or just didn’t get involved. Our breakthrough moment was working with a major FinTech. They were excellent at sharing feedback – pre and post rollout! As a result, we made a lot of improvements to the content and user experience. 

So, as the main person responsible for Frisk's feedback my takeaway is:

Get permission to talk directly to the learners (if possible) and coordinate this with key points of contact. Not only do you improve your product, learners relish in the opportunity to shape future iterations of the training. When their ideas come alive in the shape of text, images and animations, it's a huge YES moment. The most satisfying part of the feedback process is the thumbs up, when your product goes live.

Find us on OpenSesame:

If you want to get a free demo of our training, head over to OpenSesame. https://www.opensesame.com/site/free-trial. Today, we are celebrating as we’ve just gone live on this platform. Once you’ve logged in, search for “Frisk Lessons”.

You can also find us on the Go1 Content Hub as an authorised publisher of compliance training. To speak to Frisk's Go1 success managers please contact us: support@frisk-online.com.

OK. That's it for today. Next, I'll write about Big Data, IP Ownership and Being Agile. I'd love to read your views in the comments below.

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