Knowing your audience is a fundamental step in the analysis of designing training. When that audience is international, this is even more critical for understanding cultural differences in both language and visuals. Then add in the additional factor of using the comic medium as a vehicle to tell a story through instruction. This combination is what was faced when designing an instructional comic for labor and delivery nursing students in northern India. This project needed to not just deliver content, but also do it in a way that reflected this audience’s lived experience and also leveraged the unique strengths of the comic medium.

In this case study session, you’ll explore the learning problems that were faced and find out why the comic medium was chosen as a solution to achieve the goals to increase awareness, increase retention, and change behaviors. You’ll learn about the steps that were taken to design characters for this comic that reflected the audience, from skin tone to their clothing and shoes. You’ll see how we addressed cultural understanding and how careful the script writing process needed to be to avoid inappropriate words and phrases. Finally, you’ll take a closer look at the results of this project and the impact this instructional comic made in reducing infant mortality rates.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why the comic medium was chosen as a solution for this learning problem
• The challenges that we faced when writing the instruction for a specific international audience
• How to write personality into characters that relate to the target audience
• The process through character modeling and the importance of attention to detail
• How to cast the right voice actors to play the role of the characters
• The results and impact this instructional comic made in reducing infant mortality rates

Audience:

Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders (directors, VP, CLO, executive, etc.)

Technology discussed:

Articulate Storyline 360, Adobe Illustrator