With people checking their phones every few minutes, the work of designing mobile learning content has become quite difficult. If the content for mobile learning development is not responsive or delivering the same experiences on a smaller screen as in the larger one, then you are missing a few tricks. Here are a few tips to help you in designing mobile learning content with the best responsive learning designs available.

Responsive design is the name given to the process of designing mobile learning content that adapts intuitively to the screen. Smartphones or tablets have less screen space than desktops and one cannot fit as much content to the smaller screen and that’s where mobile learning development kicks in. Mobile learning is being used a lot nowadays but it is an old concept with a majority of the learners moving to smaller screens to learn on the go.

However, not all content should be made responsive just because it can be done. For instance, microlearning modules or mini learning experiences work perfectly on mobile screens and need not be made responsive as they are content that people will watch only on the go. As a thumbrule mobile learning development need not be done for simple interactions like quizzes and polls or video content which is short.

But longer modules need not be made responsive that teach about a process and may have a lot of complex interactions or detailed screen grabs or some such software learnings that are not conducive yet due to technical reasons to be made mobile friendly. Here are a few things to keep in mind when designing mobile learning content:

1. Capture the requirements: One needs to study the need for a responsive design before the project even starts in earnest. The need of the audience and the type of learning experience will help you decide if designing mobile learning content in a responsive manner is even required. Once you have decided that your content requires a mobile friendly format, you should gather key information regarding the types of devices that your audience is bound to use and then the designing mobile learning content can follow. The process becomes easier if all learners have the same type of mobile in case they have been issued with company devices. But usually mobile learning development happens on the BYOD concept.

2. Always design for the small screen: The data captured in the step above can now be used in the design phase where one should:

• Make bite sized content for easier access to learning for the audience.
• Develop fewer clicks and longer content scrolling.
• Focus on the content for one part at a time and remove unnecessary screens.
• Keep it clean with visual content which is easier to read.
• Add enough key points that stand out so that any fast scrolling reader still gets enough knowledge.
• Use bullet points as often as possible to grab attention.

3. Develop interactions wisely: Although all of us content people love making detailed and complex interactions which look and feel so good on larger screens but for a smaller screen these need to be made succinct without losing their essence. Breaking up the monotony of the interactions with different ones like using a mixture of drag and drop, hotspots, FIBs, MCQs, etc. and try not to use complex interactions that might be difficult for the audience to use. The complexity of the interactions also depends upon the age group of the audience and should be done as per your data collected earlier.

4. Use simple graphics: This is equally relevant for any content development work but when the screen space is limited, it takes precedence. If your graphics have too much details like lots of screengrabs, complicated diagrams or images with text, one should consider that on some devices they might not scale down well. A better option is to simplify the graphics as much as possible and try to use text wherever one can or consider keeping graphics as a separate PDF which can be accessed if the user needs it.

5. Test… test… test: Test across different devices thoroughly before you release the product. One testing round is never enough and neither are many rounds but depending upon your allocated budgets, test as much as possible. It is always a good idea to test your product in a closed group and record how they interact naturally with the content and gather their feedback to make adjustments.