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Subject:Re: Multimedia and Demo-It From:"Molis, Debbie" <Debbie_Molis -at- FREDDIEMAC -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 4 Jun 1997 09:20:34 -0400
In response to questions from Beth in Tucson's supervisor and John about
creating multimedia presentations and demos...
My two cents:
Multimedia is a great tool to use for demos! Especially if you can create an
interactive, tutorial-type demo in which users actually experience some of
the product's most desirable features.
One caution: if you include videos to show the audience how to work with a
specific feature, try to keep them short, maybe 30 seconds max. Users don't
want to be captive to a video for very long.
You also don't want to overdo any aspect of the demo or presentations, such
as sound. The audience can be turned off by excessive use of certain
multimedia features. Any sound should complement the demo of the features.
And while sound might be a nice complement to the demo, I don't think it's a
must do. The demos I've developed did not use sound at all, and they are
very usable and still provide valuable insight into the software features.
Pacing is also important. Move the demo or presentation along quickly and
keep it short, to 5-10 minutes; or if it cannot be short, try to break up
the demo into different sections so the user can decide which features he or
she wants to review in a 5-10 minute timeframe.
As for Demo-It, I have never used it. I have heard from someone I was
working with and did use Demo-It that the software is very limiting. In
fact, this company decided to switch to DemoShield because of the Demo-It
limitations.
I found DemoShield to be very easy to work with. It has allowed me to create
some very nice demos in short timeframes. You can also create CBT with it.
However, if you want to allow the user to actually use the software being
demoed, by enabling the software application within the demo, you first want
to make sure the software is compatible with the demo application. The
software I was demoing could not be enabled within DemoShield, for some
reason. I was able to get around this problem by capturing screens with the
appropriate menus showing.
Other multimedia applications, such as Director and Authorware, are supposed
to be more flexible in this regard. Of course, they are more expensive also.
I hope this helps.
Debbie Molis
Technical Writer
dmolis -at- erols -dot- com
Debbie_Molis -at- freddiemac -dot- com
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