In this video, I’ll show you step by step how you can add immediate feedback to your drag and drop interactions in Articulate Storyline.
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Sample drag and Drop Interaction
So, I have over here a sample drag and drop interaction that I’ve created in Articulate Storyline. What I’ve done first, I’ve built my slide, then I went to insert. Now it says, “Remove free form,” but I chose, “Convert to free form”. So, I converted my normal slides to a free from drag and drop question, interaction. And, then you see that you get the slide view on form view
What I’ve done by form view, I added my drag targets, and I match them to the corresponding drop targets. And also by settings, I’ve checked two things. I checked this one, so it means that if you drag an item in an incorrect position, it will jump to the starting position. And also here says there’s one that is snapped to the center drop position.
Now normally you get only feedback by drag and drop question if you dragged all the answers to each position, but I want immediate feedback and I am going to show you how I’ve done this in Articulate Storyline, by using layers and triggers.
Freeform Drag and Drop
So let’s move back to slide view. What I want here is that there appears a checkmark before the name of the social media if you’ve dragged the correct item to the correct drop spot. And if you have dragged it to the incorrect place, it will jump back and you get feedback by adding a crosshair. So, and I will do this by adding layers and triggers.
Slide view
In the middle of the slide view you see the layout of your slide. Here you can add text, images, shapes, video and audio files. But also buttons and sliders or links to external sources to create an interactive module.
On the left side of the screen you see the slides that are in this scene. Also, as in the story view, you can see arrows between the slides that show the flow between the different slides. At the top you can switch between different scenes of your module.
At the bottom of the slide view you see the timeline of your slide. Here you see all the objects that are on your slide. Here you can also time objects. If an object wants to appear after a few seconds, you ca move the object on the timeline to the desired moment.
Add Correct Feedback
So what I’ll do first is I will cut these and I will create a new layer, and I will paste it over here. I will name this layer check Facebook and check the properties, and that’s okay because I don’t want this one checked because that means that I can’t use drag or drop or click something on the base layer. So this is okay. So I’ll go back to my drag and drop base layer. What I do now is I create a trigger that says, “Show layer.” Which layer. Check Facebook when a user drops an object on a target. So which object should be dropped? We will do the first one now. So it will be the first one. So that will be Facebook and will be dropped on drop Facebook. So okay. And let’s preview the slides to see what it is.
So if I drag this one it will bounce back, and we will fix this cross later. You’ll see this is also incorrect bounce back, and if I drag it over here it stays, and you get immediate feedback. So now if I want incorrect feedback, what I can do is I can cut this one, create a new layer, for instance and copy the cross over here, and I am going to create a new trigger.
Add Incorrect Feedback
So to get to incorrect feedback working, I will create a new layer and I’ll copy the cross. So what I will do, I will cut the cross, new layer, and paste it over here. Let’s call it “wrong.” I’ll make the timeline of this layer less than one second, and we will see why that’s what it is. So what I now will do is I’ll create a new trigger that says show layer wrong when the state of Facebook where that’s my drop target. My drag item is dropped incorrect. So this means this one jumps to drop incorrect, it has different states, so you can see over here it has free states or normal states, drop correct state, and drop incorrect state.
So if you drag it to a wrong globe item, Articulate Storyline automatically sets the shape to drop incorrect, and that’s designed for Storyline to show the wrong layer. So let’s preview how this works. So what we will do now is drag it and it won’t work, and why it won’t work, let me show you. There is another layer. So let’s, this one delete. No, wrong. So show layer wrong when the state of dropped Facebook is incorrect. So let’s try it again. Preview the slide.
So let’s drag it to Facebook and you’ll see you create a cross and it’s back on the stack. So what I now want is that the cross disappears so we can drag it another time. So what I do here, go back to timeline. I’ve set the timer on 75 seconds. And what I do is I will hide this layer when the timeline ends on this layer. So that’s one step, but if you dragged it to an incorrect drop spot, Storyline lets the dragged items stay on its incorrect state. So we must do one other thing. Go back to wrong here. And what I’ll do here is I say change state of Facebook to normal when my timeline starts on this layer. So let’s preview what it does.
Preview it in Articulate Storyline
So now if I drag Facebook over here, I get a feedback and it disappears. I can drag it over here. It’s wrong, it disappears. I can drag it over here, it’s wrong and it disappears, and I can drag it over here it stays and I get a correct feedback. So this is a way to get immediate feedback in a drag and drop interaction in Articulate Storyline.
