The Interactive Content team used ThingLink to create interactive learning materials for two Careers Services projects: ‘Skills For Success Framework’ and ‘Riding the Wave’. They chose ThingLink for its ability to add interactivity to graphics and its ease of embedding into EdWeb. The team collaborated with the Graphics Design service to create engaging and accessible content using ThingLink’s scenes and tags features.

Background

The Interactive Content team has just completed (May-July 2025) two projects using ThingLink for the University’s Careers Services. ThingLink is a website and app-based program that helps you create interactive, immersive teaching and learning materials.

The projects:

1. Skills For Success Framework wanted an interactive version of their infographic.
2. Riding the wave is a student journey aimed at new students where they can access information and help. This project was also reviewed by students during the project creation.

For these projects, they didn’t want multiple web pages for each topic or scrolling very long pages. The requirements had something in common:

• content which had impact
• easy access to the content
• interactivity
• embedding into EdWeb

We chose ThingLink for these projects as it was a good fit for adding interactivity to graphics requiring a lot of information.

Collaboration

Stewart and Jackie worked together on the ThingLink part of the project, along with Nicky Greenhorn from the Graphics Design service in Digital Skills Design and Training who created all the graphics.

The colours used in the graphics are University bright colours from the SharePoint: University Brand Guidelines. We normally receive .pdf files from the graphics team which are much smaller in file size than the huge Adobe InDesign files. We then convert the .pdf to .png ourselves; but for one of the projects in particular there was a problem with some of the colours; they looked a bit darker, not quite right. So Nicky then sent us .png files instead, and you can see the difference below on the right without the .pdf intermediate step.

There were of course subsequent edits required to the visuals and the text, so we implemented some basic version control within ThingLink. Each time there were changes we created a new ThingLink version. Luckily ThingLink has a ‘clone’ feature making this fairly easy to do, and it is also straightforward to update background images. This made it obvious to whoever was working in ThingLink which was the latest version.

Using ThingLink

Although the two projects were similar, the second one was much larger, so to incorporate this we used ThingLink scenes. The scenes are a bit like different slides in PowerPoint. Each slide has a background image which you add clickable icons to, these are referred to as tags. These popup tags are where you add all your text, alongside any other media you wish to add, in our case it was images.

When creating your tags a default icon is added but you can change this icon from a large selection of options, you can change the colours, and you can even add your own icons. If you do add your own icon this has to be an .svg file. You can also set the tag popup to be larger so if you have a lot of text this can be extremely useful.

Like everything there are limitations to certain aspects of it. The tag popup does have layout options but these are limited, the default worked best in both instances. If you use scenes the hover on the icon is automatically created and can’t be changed or removed. The hover on the standard text/media icon has the option to be turned off.

Like many online applications you can send your client a link to your latest version of ThingLink for review without requiring an account, this is very useful.

Accessibility

One of our clients enquired about the accessibility of ThingLink as they were unfamiliar with its features. Thankfully ThingLink is big on accessibility and even has its own accessibility menu. When creating your ThingLink it is a good idea to order your tags in a meaningful order as this will be the order it is shown in the accessibility view. The menu contains options like accessibility profiles, contrast, text size, text spacing, larger cursor to mention just a few of the many.

The accessibility menu is available via the icon of a circle with a person inside available at the bottom-right of the window.

Analytics

ThingLink also has built-in statistics for each file (asset), very useful for us and our clients to see how many people are using their content.

You can view combined statistics for the entire ThingLink asset, and each individual tag (hotspot) contained within it.

It tracks 4 types of basic audience interactions:

1. Number of views
2. Number of tag opens (i.e. how many times viewers have clicked on a tag)
3. Number of actions (clicks on the links within pop-ups)
4. Approximate time viewers spent on the media (average across all viewers)

ThinkLink support article: Statistics for a single creation

Example statistics

Other features

ThingLink also includes a number of other features such as languages, different preview options, renaming your scene, changing your background, to name a few.

Sustainability

The good thing about ThingLink is the fact that any text added to the tags is easily updated. Once we hand it over to the client they can make any further text edits themselves rather than have to ask us to update a typo or add new information.

Publishing ThinkLink on EdWeb

Like video you can use iframes (inline frame) tags to embed ThingLink into web pages. Although you can embed your ThingLink into an EdWeb page via the ‘Custom HTML’ component, a request has to be made to the Website Support team to make it fully responsive. This is particularly important for mobile users, otherwise it will extend off the side of their screen.

Take a look at our ThingLink projects embedded in their EdWeb pages:

• Graduate attributes and skills for success: Skills For Success Framework
• New students: Riding the wave

Further information

Accessing ThingLink within the University

EdWeb 2 Support Hub: Custom HTML

Making an impact with ThingLink / Digital Learning Applications and Media by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0

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