An Interview with Audrey Dalton from CodeBaby Part 2

Part 2 of Interview with Audrey Dalton

BSF: Can you share some examples for us as to how eLearning Designers are taking advantage of CodeBaby for their services or products?

Services:

We offer a very generous support policy for 18% of your final single license price.
Includes:
✓ 1 year of free updates including major version changes
✓ Priority phone and email support + 12 hours of application assistance on customer projects

Lots of designers take advantage of custom services through clothing changes, character changes, and even completely new characters. We have clients that ask for doctors, nurses, specific uniforms, hats, etc.

Additionally, in the very near future, we're gearing up to provide a more extensive lineup of training services, from self-service tutorials to webinars to onsite training. We currently provide this training, but we're looking forward to extending the offerings.

And at this point, since we're a very personalized organization that's still growing, we offer a very human connection when you're dealing with us. We provide unique solutions for each client.

Telstra, the largest internet provider, trains 40,000 employees on the best practices of social media engagement featuring character "Lily". They do this by integrating Lily into an interactive flash comic book.

The Medical School at McMaster University raised public awareness of asthma symptoms on behalf of the Asthma Society of Canada, in honor of World Asthma Day. They publicly launched the module “Taking Control of Your Asthma” on May 9, 2009.


ASTD Best Winner, global accounting firm, Grant Thornton, uses CodeBaby characters in multiple languages across the globe this is due to the language independent lip synching. Learners achieved an average of a 11% higher score than the national average for their most recent tax training.

The University of Illinois uses a specific mad scientist custom characters in its science eLearning modules.

I could go on, but the list is extensive.

BSF: What eLearning applications can you integrate CodeBaby into?

AD: Anything that accepts a swf, avi or flv file, for example Articulate, Captivate, PowerPoint, Lectora, Rapid Intake, and Learn.com, etc. I'm not recommending specific tools, but the point is that this works with most everything. The only restriction we have is that you are using the CodeBaby characters for internal learning uses and you're not trying to sell eLearning that includes the CodeBaby character, unless you have a specific agreement with us.


BSF: What is the learning curve for integrating CodeBaby into your current projects?

AD: Extremely fast. If you're an eLearning developer, with one or two tutorials and perhaps a webinar, you'll be able to create a two character interaction almost immediately. I'm fairly tech savvy but nowhere near the skill level of some of our eLearning partners, and I can now create custom animated one character interaction, and I learned that in one day. We have one client, Wendy Phillips with Big Pond in Australia, that learned the program and developed an award-winning flash comic book eLearning program on employee orientation all in a matter of two weeks - from start to finish.

BSF: Could you walk us briefly through the steps to develop an eLearning solution using the CodeBay Production Studio?

AD: Yes, first things first. After you decide to use characters to simulate role plays or specific people, define that character's persona. Run a contest to name and describe your persona and get people familiar with your chosen character. Second, write dialogue script and scene instructions. How will the character walk in? What will they say? What's the location/background? You're creating a rich story before opening Studio. This way, you have outlined your props and backgrounds, character personalities and scene instructions.

Then for a very straightforward interaction, you drag and drop selected character. Drag and drop selected background (there's another step if you use your own or when exporting, it can be a transparent export which then will overlay any background in your learning output).
Import audio and allow the default for auto animation and lip syncing. Hit play and adjust gestures as necessary by dropping and dragging any number of the 400 animations. Export as flv or swf, and you're done with your first animation! As time goes on, you'll learn to use the camera changes, tweening and multiple scene and stage development.


BSF: What services does CodeBaby offer for those professionals who may be interestested in out sourcing the development?

AD: If the client provides the storyboard, we'll develop the animation. They provide their own audio or we'll source professional voice talent for them. We also create props, minor to major modifications such as glasses, aging, new clothes all the way to face wraps which means creating a character likeness of a real person, and we also develop new characters based on the client's developed persona.


BSF: What features are current users of CodeBay Production Studio asking for at this point in time?

These features will eventually be available in upcoming new versions. The most asked for new features are more character with different body sizes and additional gestures that allow for more character movement. I won't go into detail on these yet, but with our new releases, we will be satisfying these requests.


BSF: In closing- please summarize for us why eLearning Specialists should consider using CodeBaby for their projects?

AD: If you want to create amazing learning that truly helps learners retain information while enjoying the development process as you create engaging scenes and interactions, CodeBaby is the solution. Contact us for a trial to experience this for yourself!

An Interview with Audrey Dalton from CodeBaby Part 1

I had the pleasure of meeting Audrey Dalton, Product Marketing Director at CodeBaby during the DevLearn 09 Conference and had a chance to sit down and talk to her about her role and the CodeBaby platform for eLearning.


BSF: Hello Audrey, can you share with us your position and tell us a little background information about CodeBaby and the company?

AD: Responsible for all product marketing functions for the eLearning product line: Product Release Planning and Marketing, Demand generation, MarCom, Tradeshow & Event Planning, Online Community Relations, Curriculum Design, and Corporate Marketing Activities. Essentially, I'm the jack of all trades for the eLearning product marketing line and additionally have oversight for the education sector. Since we're a growing company, I'm taking on a multitude of roles at this time. Most importantly, I enjoy working with clients, our eLearning developer partners and reseller in Australia, Symmetree, to showcase and promote new uses and ideas for using CodeBaby characters in eLearning programs. In this role, I leverage my prior eLearning project management experience to facilitate their success stories and understand the customer perspective when marketing and gathering research for future product releases.

CodeBaby's history is quite interesting. CodeBaby began as a incubation project within Bioware, a Canadian company based in Edmonton, Alberta. In creating memorable 3D characters for their story-driven games, Bioware founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk noticed that those interactive characters created a powerful digital engagement and emotional response with players. In 2001, CodeBaby officially spun off as a completely separate entity. Our web product consists of digital character-driven "Conversations" that are directed at engaging customers, while driving specific objectives such as lead capture, click-to-buy, up/cross-sell, and customer self service. This product is sold on a SaaS / monthly subscription model, and integrates with a customer's site via a single line of code.

The product that I'm responsible for is the eLearning product - CodeBaby Production Studio.
CodeBaby makes the creation of animated, 3D digital characters accessible to a variety of companies who want to make their training content come to life. CodeBaby Production Studio is a timeline-based, drag-and-drop production environment that puts the capabilities of a highly skilled, 3D artist in the hands of a eLearning/training content developer. Studio comes with a library of 20+ standard characters, and 400+ animation sequences. Lip synch to recorded audio files is driven programmatically by the software, condensing hundreds of hours of animation work into only about an hour per minute of finished content.


BSF: With the shift to eLearning happening in all kinds of markets how does CodeBaby fit into this move to online learning?

AD: Good question, CodeBaby Production Studio is a natural fit for online learning, informal learning, and easily exports into any cloud-based product. Since Production Studio exports your CodeBaby scenes as swf, flv and avi files, these can be used in virtually any learning delivery. If you want the CodeBaby character to introduce classroom instruction delivered from your cloud-based presentation tool, that's easily done. If you want to create up to the minute communication announcements for your company or school, just export the CodeBaby as a swf and export to your learning portal. If you want to create more complex scenario based scenes and export into a traditional rapid eLearning or authoring tool, it's perfectly suited. As long as the medium has to do with learning, and it's for internal use, CodeBaby interactive characters are a highly effective addition to any learning program.

BSF: What do you see are the benefits of developers using CodeBaby for their eLearning projects?

AD: Are you speaking from a technical aspect or instructional design aspect? If from a technical aspect, Studio is very rich in development possibilities. For a creative, experienced developer, they'll truly enjoy playing with the 400 animations and 24 stock characters, ability to create multiple scenes and stages and the capability of producing bulk renders and exports. We have developer options to create new outfits for the characters if they use graphics programs like Maya or 3ds Max. Just the other day, one of our eLearning partners said that they've explored the program so much and have extensively studied and utilized the gestures and animations that they are now incorporating neurolinguistic programming theory into the movements in order to enhance the learning transmission. Additionally, he said that he's really looking forward to the additional animations that will available in upcoming versions.

From an instructional design perspective, we have found from our own research, from customer experience, and from Byron Reeves at Stanford from his paper the "The Benefits of Interactive Online Characters", that character interfaces bring social intelligence to online interactions. Social intelligence determines engagement, attention in learning, and persistence in relationships. Compelling social interactions are as important in online transactions as they are to teachers in real life. Bottom line, socially intelligent, interactive characters foster learning and adoption of new information and behavioral skills. We consistently hear from customers that performance improved, attention increased and they saved money when comparing online instruction with CodeBaby characters to instructor-led training or using video production. Essentially, there are no limits with how CodeBaby characters are used: as peer instructors, experts, multiple character role plays in which students learn in a non-threatening environment, in immersive simulations, sales training, customer service training, organizational change, employee orientation, best practices, compliance training, etc.


To be continued.....