By Rick Nigol 

Three weeks ago, I lamented the fact that I could not find good examples of eLearning applications that help an organization's clients or potential clients figure out how to use their products or services. Well, faithful readers have come to the rescue and sent me a few examples.

 

Not surprisingly, two of these examples are from the telecommunications field, and are designed to help clients use cell phones, wireless mobile email devices and MP3 players. This makes sense, as these are technologically complex devices that can take some time to master (for codgers like me of course, not teenagers!).

 

 

The Sony Ericsson website in the UK has a Learn About section where its clients can click through various tutorials on how to perform tasks on its cell phones and other mobile devices, such as downloading music, transferring files, synchronizing, sending text messages, etc. What I like about these tutorials is that they are story-based. They have characters in defined situations wanting to perform certain tasks with these communication devices, and learning from others (often friends or family) how to do these.

 

There are clean, simple graphics and users often click on different parts of images of the devices to get the results they want. In this way they mimic how to use the actual device and are more likely to remember the steps. In fact, users could go through these tutorials while simultaneously doing the tasks with the actual device.

 

These tutorials could be improved, however, by better and more extensive use of audio. They were eerily silent for the most part. Strange, given that people are learning how to use devices that transmit voice and music.

 

 

Like the Sony Ericsson site, Research in Motion has a site that has a numerous Blackberry 101 multimedia tutorials on how to use their mobile phone / email / Internet devices.

These RIM lessons follow a much more lock-step (do this, then do that, then do this, etc.) pattern than the Sony Ericsson tutorials. They have, as you would expect, great production values, but I didn't find them as interesting or compelling as the story-based, situational Sony Ericsson approach. And, in contrast to the Sony Ericsson approach, the RIM tutorials use a lot of sound. Too much so, in my opinion. It was a relief to have the option of turning off the pulsating and grating background music.

 

I think the ideal approach is somewhere between the more engaging story-based approach of Sony Ericsson and the sharp production qualities of the more boring and traditional lock-step RIM approach.

 

 

While not an example of "client education," a reader pointed me to a site called Instructables. Here, anyone can post a tutorial (with text, pictures, call-outs, highlights, etc.) that guides one through how to build something as simple as invisible bookshelves, aluminum computer tables, or solar heaters for your garage, to more complex projects such as wind turbines and jet engines (not kidding). Readers can post reviews of and comments about these different projects, and ask the author questions.

 

I think the Sony Ericsson and RIM tutorial sites could have been improved by having users post questions and having them answered right there, much like the Instructables site. If one person has a good question, odds are that there are many more who would benefit from the answer. And these questions from real users could be used to improve subsequent versions of the tutorials.

 

 

We are just beginning to scratch the surface of what I would call online "self-service" learning. The possibilities are nearly limitless. I really see great potential for organizations providing more and more opportunities for clients to help themselves. This makes good business sense. As a consumer, I prefer helping myself whenever possible (as long as you make this easy, interesting, and fun for me to do this). It certainly beats reading manuals written by engineers, or wasting my life away listening to muzak while on hold for the help desk. And, as the provider of a product or service, having good online learning supports will increase your client satisfaction levels, while at the same time lowering your client support costs (the best of both worlds).