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🎓 Lesson 17: Characters, Content Library 360 & Slide-Based Scenarios

Real learning is often about people and decisions — a customer at the desk, a colleague asking for help, a choice with consequences. In this lesson you'll bring people into your courses using Content Library 360's characters, and then combine characters, choices, and the variables you already know into slide-based scenarios that branch on what the learner decides. This is where your Storyline skills start telling stories.

📚 What You'll Learn

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Describe what Content Library 360 offers: templates, icons, photos, videos, and characters
  • Insert a character and change its pose and expression
  • Use a character purposefully — as a guide, mentor, or a person in a dialogue
  • Build a slide-based scenario that branches by jumping between slides
  • Use a variable to track the learner's path through the branches

⏱️ Estimated Time: 50 minutes

🎯 Project: Insert a character, adjust its pose/expression, and build a two-choice branching moment that jumps to different slides and remembers the path. Windows only

In This Lesson

🖼️ Content Library 360: The Shortcut to Polish

Content Library 360 is a huge, ready-to-use collection of professional assets built into the Articulate subscription Trial / Paid — and it's one of the fastest ways to make a course look sharp without a design team. From inside Storyline (and Rise) you can drop in:

  • Templates & slide templates — pre-designed layouts you can restyle to your brand.
  • Icons — a vast, consistent icon set for clean visual cues.
  • Photos — royalty-free photography for backgrounds and content.
  • Videos — stock video clips for backgrounds and B-roll.
  • Characters — illustrated and photographic people, the star of this lesson.

Because it's part of the subscription, you don't hunt for licenses or worry about usage rights for these assets in your courses — they're there to be used. Inserting is easy: look for the Content Library options on the Insert tab (characters, photos, icons, and so on each have their own picker), search, and place. Swapping is just as easy, so you can try several options and keep what fits.

🧠 Mindset

"I'm not a designer" stops a lot of people cold — and Content Library exists precisely so you don't have to be. A consistent icon set, a clean stock photo, and a friendly character do most of the visual heavy lifting for you. Your job isn't to draw; it's to choose well and use assets purposefully. That's a skill you already have from a lifetime of knowing what looks clear versus cluttered.

🧑‍🏫 Characters: Poses & Expressions

Characters are the feature people fall in love with. A character is an illustrated or photographic person you can drop onto a slide — and the clever part is that each one comes as a whole set of matching images. For a single character you can choose:

  • Pose — standing, gesturing, arms crossed, pointing, sitting, and more. The body language.
  • Expression — happy, concerned, thinking, surprised, neutral. The face.
  • (For some) perspective / crop — full body, or a closer waist-up shot.

Because every pose and expression is the same person, you can keep one character consistent across a whole course and just change how they stand or feel to match the moment — pointing and cheerful when they explain, concerned when they warn, thinking when they ask a question. You change pose and expression from the character's options right there in Storyline, without swapping to a different person.

Figure 1 — A branching moment (a simplified mock-up, not a real screenshot): a character sets the scene, and each choice sets a path variable and jumps to a different outcome slide.

💬 Using Characters Well

A character is a tool, and like any tool it can be used thoughtfully or thrown around. A few principles keep yours purposeful:

  • Give them a job. The strongest use is a guide or mentor who walks the learner through the course, or a person in a scenario the learner interacts with. A character standing around decoratively adds little.
  • Match expression to the moment. A concerned face during a warning and a warm one at a win do quiet, powerful work. Mismatched expressions feel eerie.
  • Stay consistent. Reuse the same character (varying pose/expression) rather than a parade of strangers — learners bond with a familiar guide.
  • Represent your learners. Choose characters that reflect the real diversity of your audience; people engage more when they see themselves.
💡 Characters make scenarios click. The moment a real-looking person asks the learner "what would you do?", the stakes feel human and the decision feels real. That's why characters and scenarios go hand in hand — which is exactly where we're headed next.

🌳 Slide-Based Scenarios: Branch by Jumping

Back in Part 2 you built a block-based scenario in Rise — quick and tidy. Storyline does scenarios differently and more powerfully: a slide-based scenario branches by jumping between slides. Each situation, choice, and outcome is a slide (or a layer), and the learner's clicks send them down different paths using the same jump to slide trigger you met in Lesson 13.

The structure is a tree: a situation slide poses a decision, each choice jumps to a different outcome slide, and outcomes can lead deeper or loop back. Here's a simple two-choice branch drawn out:

graph TD A["🎬 Situation slide
character sets the scene"] --> B{"🤔 Learner chooses"} B -->|"Choice A"| C["✅ Good outcome slide"] B -->|"Choice B"| D["⚠️ Rocky outcome slide"] C --> E["🔁 Continue / next situation"] D --> F["↩️ Reflect, then try again"] F --> A style A fill:#bfdbfe,color:#1e293b style B fill:#fde68a,color:#1e293b style C fill:#bbf7d0,color:#1e293b style D fill:#fecaca,color:#1e293b style E fill:#f1f5f9,color:#1e293b style F fill:#c7d2fe,color:#1e293b

Figure 2 — A slide-based branching scenario: choices jump to different outcome slides, and paths can continue forward or loop back to try again.

Why go to the trouble? Because scenarios teach judgment. Instead of telling learners the right answer, you let them make a choice and live with the consequence in a safe space — which is how adults actually learn to handle real situations. It's "show, don't tell," turned interactive.

💡 A built-in helper for branching

Storyline also includes scenario/branching helpers that can scaffold a decision structure and even generate a starter scenario for you, so you're not placing every slide by hand. Availability and exact features vary by version at time of writing — but underneath, it's still the same idea you're learning: slides connected by jump-to-slide choices. Understanding the manual version means you'll never be lost, whatever the helper does.

🧭 Tracking the Path with a Variable

Jumping between slides makes the branch work — but a variable makes it smart. This is where Lesson 14 pays off again. As the learner makes choices, you set a variable to remember the path they're on, and then you can react to it:

  • A Text variable Path set to "empathy" or "policy" lets a later slide say "Because you chose to listen first…" using %Path% or a condition.
  • A Number variable can total up "good" choices, so an ending slide can reflect how well the learner navigated the whole scenario.
  • A True/False flag can remember "the learner already made a mistake here," so a retry branch behaves differently the second time.

The pattern is exactly the write-then-read loop from Lesson 14: each choice sets the path variable, and later slides read it in text or conditions to personalize the payoff. Characters give the scenario a face; jumping gives it a shape; variables give it a memory. Put all three together and you've built a genuine decision-making experience — the kind of high-value interaction that gets people hired.

✅ Everything you've learned, in one interaction

A character-driven, variable-tracked scenario uses every Part 3 skill at once: objects and the timeline (L10–11), states (L12), triggers (L13), variables (L14), layers and buttons (L15), maybe media (L16), and now characters and branching. If you can build one, you can build almost anything Storyline makes. That's the whole of Part 3 coming together.

🎯 Try It: A Two-Choice Branch

🏋️ Activity: Build a branching moment with a character Windows only

Objective: Insert a character, set its pose and expression, and build a two-choice scenario that jumps to different outcome slides and remembers the path in a variable. Needs Storyline 360 on Windows (or a Windows VM), on the trial or a plan. Trial / Paid

Steps

  1. Create three slides: a Situation, a Good outcome, and a Rocky outcome. (⏱️ 4 min)
  2. On the Situation slide, insert a character from Content Library. Set a fitting pose and a concerned expression, and add a short prompt like the one in Figure 1. (⏱️ 8 min)
  3. Add two choice buttons (A and B) under the prompt. (⏱️ 4 min)
  4. In Manage Project Variables, create a Text variable Path (default blank). (⏱️ 3 min)
  5. On Choice A add two triggers on click: set Path to "empathy", and jump to the Good outcome slide. Do the same for Choice B with set Path to "policy" and jump to the Rocky outcome slide. (⏱️ 8 min)
  6. On each outcome slide, add a text box that reflects the path — e.g. You chose the %Path% route. — and change the character's expression to match (happy vs. concerned). Preview and try both choices. (⏱️ 8 min)
💡 Hint

Keep the trigger order in mind (they run top-down from Lesson 13): put "set Path" above "jump to slide" on each choice, so the variable is stored before you leave the slide. If %Path% shows nothing on an outcome slide, check the spelling and that the matching set trigger actually fired. Don't worry about polish — a rough character and plain text prove the concept perfectly.

✅ Activity Complete When…

  • A character appears on the Situation slide with a pose and expression you chose
  • Each choice jumps to a different outcome slide
  • The outcome slide correctly reflects the path via the %Path% variable

🎯 Quick Quiz

Question 1: What makes Content Library 360 characters especially useful in a course?

Question 2: In a Storyline slide-based scenario, how does the learner move down different branches?

📓 Learning Journal

Keep your Learning Journal going — scenarios are a wonderful thing to plan on paper first. Jot down:

  • Key concepts you learned
  • Things that clicked for you
  • Questions or confusion points to revisit
  • Ideas you want to try
  • Your progress and how you feel about learning this

✍️ This lesson's prompt: Think of a real decision someone in your capstone topic's audience faces. Sketch a one-situation, two-choice scenario for it: the setup, the two options, and what each outcome teaches. Who would your guiding character be, and what would you want the Path variable to remember?

📝 Lesson Summary

🎓 Key Takeaways

  • Content Library 360 is a built-in trove of templates, icons, photos, videos, and characters — a fast route to a polished, well-designed course without a design team.
  • Characters come as matching sets of poses and expressions, so one consistent person can guide learners or play a role in a scenario.
  • Use characters purposefully — as a guide/mentor or a person in a dialogue, with expressions that match the moment and that represent your audience.
  • Slide-based scenarios branch by jumping between slides on the learner's choices, and a variable tracks the path so outcomes can personalize and reflect.

🎉 What You've Accomplished

You just built a decision-making experience — a character posing a real dilemma, choices with consequences, and a memory of the path taken. That's storytelling and engineering, and it's exactly the kind of interaction that stands out in a portfolio. You've now used every Part 3 skill together. Storyline isn't a mystery anymore; it's your toolkit.

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

Illustrated or photographic characters — which should I use?

Both are professional; it's a tone choice. Illustrated characters feel friendly, timeless, and blend well with graphic designs. Photographic characters feel realistic and grounded, great for serious or real-world scenarios. Pick one style and stay consistent within a course rather than mixing.

How complex should my first scenario be?

Start tiny — one situation, two choices, two outcomes. A small scenario that works beats a sprawling tree that confuses you to build and the learner to follow. You can always add depth later. The two-choice branch you built today is a complete, shippable pattern on its own.

Do I have to track a variable, or can choices just jump?

Plain jumps work for a simple branch. Add a variable when you want later slides to react to earlier choices — personalized feedback, a tally of good decisions, or different behavior on a retry. Start with jumps, then layer in a variable once the branch itself works.

🔭 Looking Ahead

That wraps Part 3 — you've gone deep with Storyline. In Lesson 18, Part 4 begins with assessment: question types, feedback, question banks, and result slides, so your courses can measure what learners have actually learned.

✅ Before the Next Lesson

  • Finish the two-choice branch and preview both paths
  • Write this lesson's journal prompt — sketch a scenario for your capstone topic
  • Browse a few Content Library characters and pick a "guide" for your course

📚 Additional Resources

🌟 Encouragement for the Journey

You started Part 3 opening an intimidating interface. You're ending it building character-driven, branching, variable-tracked scenarios — the good stuff, the work that changes how people learn. Take a moment to feel how far you've come. Part 4 is about proving it, publishing it, and sharing it with the world. You are so ready.