Timer

The timer is an action in Colibri which allows designers to create a delay between steps and allows designers to publish other content outside the primary channel. This creates a sense of realism when an immediate reaction would seem unusual.

It's usually not a good idea to slow down the player experience because you remove their agency, which means you risk spoiling their engagement.

Benefit	Feature
Improve the realism in some cases when an immediate response would seem inaccurate	Set duration of the delay
	Connect up to three steps

How to

To set up a timer in your exercise, create a new step. In the Body tab in the right-hand window, select Action. Under Type of action, select Timer from the drop-down list:

To set the duration, go into the Interactions tab. Click the up and down arrows in the boxes to set the duration of the delay between steps in hours, minutes, and seconds:

Timer visible

You can choose whether to make the timer visible or not to players in the virtual desktop.

Visible use	Invisible use
You might want to make the timer visible to players to create time pressure during key player decisions	You might want to make the timer invisible to players when using the timer only to send out additional content

To configure this in the Editor, navigate to Configuration > Channels and find the timer channel in the list in the main window:

⭐Add additional steps

In Interactions on steps, you can activate up to 2 additional steps on any option selected. You can utilise the timer action to send out additional content:

For example, you may want to send out multiple posts on MicroBlog (Twitter), but don't have enough additional steps. By setting a short timer, you can send out 2 more steps and simulate social media pressure for participants.