Which e-learning authoring tools offer the most user-friendly interface for beginners?

I would say Articulate Rise. Here’s my analysis from people who used it for the first time - To enhance the quality of your e-learning course it is essential that the course is reviewed by experts in the field. This also leads to effective collaboration across teams. Usually reviewers are from the product team, or branding team etc and are new to authoring tools. Articulate 360 offers a an effective way to provide review comments and feedback. Reviewers can easily add their comments to the respective section of the course by just using their work id. On the other hand the content developers can easily figure out and address the section where the feedback is provided. It is quite simple and user friendly.

If we are talking purely on ease of use, Articulate Rise and Storyline 360 are strong recommendations. Rise has a responsive design that allows users to build training block by block. Storyline is similar to PowerPoint with its interface and most can pick it up quickly if they have the foundations of PowerPoint already in place.

Entry-level video editing tools include Powtoon and Vyond, which both offer virtual characters, stock images, music, and other assets that make it easier to create a video quickly. In addition, both platforms offer a number of templates, which allow a beginner to see how a particular video effect was achieved. They both favor cartoon, white-board style videos, whereas Canva has an enormous cache of real-world video clips you can access.

Adding multimedia is one thing, but it's rare to be able to edit in the authoring tool itself (Articulate Rise, Storyline, even Camtasia). One shortcut or workaround is to upload an SVG (a vector graphic) to Canva, which allows you to change the color very quickly, as well as add basic animations and download as a GIF or MP4 for insertion into Rise or Storyline.

Camtasia offers the ability to add quizzes to the timeline of a video, but a similar effect can be achieved in Storyline. Storyline by far offers the most interactive options, but the learning curve is a bit higher. Articulate Rise has good options for a basic labeled image with hotspots, accordions, and other interactive pieces that are built-in. To enhance the stock offerings, you can start by creating one or two simple interactions in Storyline and inserting them into the Rise course.

One key aspect to remember is accessibility. Drag and drop activities are not screen-reader friendly. Ensure your course colors have high enough contrast to be easy to read, offer closed captions on videos and any voice-over text, add alt-text to images, and provide helper text or hints with a delay, and other web accessibility standards. Check out the W3 Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), and add the free web accessibility checker (WAVE Chrome extension).