Chapter 3: Quick and Dirty Curriculum Design

One of the wonderful things about a product like Camtasia Studio is its open-endedness. In other words, the software can readily adapt to the individual content needs of the person wielding it. Want a video tutorial to train new hires on filling out a supply acquisition form online? No problem. Need a demo of your software’s new features to show to shareholders? You bet. Want a marketing spot to convince your target audience that they can’t live without your program? Cake.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss a number of items you’ll want to keep in mind when creating each of these three kinds of videos. While it is well beyond the scope of this book to offer you a survey course on marketing or computer-based training, I have provided some general pointers to help your video content hit the mark. You’ll also find a few good book tips at the end of the chapter should you desire to learn more (and I certainly hope you do). I decided not to inundate you with all kinds of extra background reading, opting instead to save you time by focusing on just a few really good resources, so I just picked out my top three faves for each genre. Remember, for each kind of video, there’s no shortcut to great results, and a strong proficiency in Camtasia Studio alone is not sufficient to produce a truly world-class training (or marketing or demo) video. For each goal you want your video content to accomplish (you have established goals for your videos, haven’t you?), I strongly encourage you to learn all you can.

Keep in mind that the following sections (indeed, this and the next chapter) have a fair amount of overlapping content. What I mention as a good technique to employ for a training video might also serve you well when creating a marketing spot, so I encourage you to read the chapter straight through rather than skipping around.

General Guidelines

Prior to delving into the various video types and what methods work best for each, I wanted to bring up a couple of items that are vitally important regardless of what kind of video you’re making. The first section pertains to knowing what makes your target audience tick and how to reach them. The second is a checklist for dealing with the internal IT policies of your own organization.

Know Your Audience

You would think that this would be a no-brainer, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen videos where the creators clearly lost sight of the very people they were trying to reach. But you won’t make that mistake, will you? Here are some thought-provoking questions that may help you figure out exactly who’s watching. Later on, we’ll examine our target audience even further through the lens of each video type.

Who’s likely to see your video? Are you going to place the video content on your web site, with free access to anyone who wants to view it? In that case, try using a web analytics program to see who is accessing your site. If you have other (similar) videos, pay particular attention to who is viewing those. If you’re a software company, and plan on restricting access to just your current customer base, it’s time to start mining the customer database in order to assemble some basic information about where your customers are, who they work for, and what they’ve purchased. Why is this important? Well, friends, even the most basic vital statistics can tell you a lot about the direction of your videos.

• Geographic location. Especially if your customers come from all over the world, it’s important to know where they are. If you have a lot of non-native speakers of English in your customer base, you’ll need to be careful to watch the pacing of your videos as well as the terminology you use. Your tone is important, too. What’s engaging and cute in one culture could be offensive in another. If you have large concentrations of customers in a particular foreign country, consider a localized version of the video just for them (if you’re making videos of your own software product, consider localizing the software itself, too).

• Occupational data. The professional lives of your audience should also be taken into consideration. Of course, this may already be inherent in the software you’re trying to teach. For example, if the software in question is aimed at history teachers, then your job on this front is basically already done. Even if your target audience is a bit broader, at least knowing where the customer or prospect works can be of great advantage. Do they work for Fortune 500 companies? Are they mainly academics? IT professionals? Teenagers? If you’re teaching to the average home user, slang phrases and cartoony title screens are more acceptable than they would be in a video aimed at corporate executives.

• Purchasing habits. What your customers are purchasing may not have much of an effect on the videos themselves, but their purchasing habits should have a profound impact on your priorities, and therefore the order in which you tackle the various video projects in your organization. When creating tutorials, concentrate first on the product that is selling the best. If a product is just being launched (or its sales are beginning to slip), a good marketing video may be just the ticket. In addition, your company can extrapolate other purchase information from its customer data that may have an effect on the videos you produce (or the format in which you produce them). For example, if you get a lot of volume license purchases, then consider creating a video series on CD- or DVD-ROM to include for free as a value-add.

Your web site can be a terrific tool for figuring out what your audience is looking for, especially if that’s where your videos are destined to appear. Which pages are the most popular? How long do the users stay on a particular page? Analyzing these items could yield valuable insights as to which parts of your software are the most attractive to customers. Or which parts your users are really struggling with.

And for goodness’ sake, don’t forget to talk to the people in your organization who have the most frequent contact with your target audience. In the case of tutorials, this could be your support, QA, or training team. For demos and marketing spots, it’s likely to be your advertising or marketing staff. These are the folks who are most likely to be in tune with the needs of your audience.

And here’s a novel concept: In addition to collecting data about your customers (or clients or colleagues, etc.), why not simply ask them about the kinds of video content they’d like to see? This holds true for all video types, but especially for training videos. After all, who would know better than they what kinds of problems they’re contending with? This can take the form of anything from an informal office poll to a fully detailed online survey (complete with door prizes, if you want a high response rate). But keep in mind that this should serve to augment your other data collection efforts, not supplant them. Customers and clients can tell you what they think they want, but they may not be able to articulate their actual need. Perhaps this is because they’re unfamiliar with all the aspects of your software. Or maybe the solution that they really need just hasn’t been invented yet, and is therefore outside the scope of their experience. In short, listen to your audience, but don’t always do exactly what they say.

Determine All Technical Specs Ahead of Time

Although I strongly believe that learning (or selling or presenting) should never be a slave to the technology, the reality of our modern workplace is that the IT departments of many companies place stringent restrictions on what you’re allowed to do from a technical perspective. You may be forced to use a particular operating system, media player, etc., while abandoning all others. Do make sure that you find out the policies of your particular situation so that you can safely work within the confines of those rules.

Keep in mind that some of these policies may not always be explicit, meaning that you’re going to have to involve some other people. While some of you may be employed in an academic or small business situation where you’re the sole decision-maker (at least when it comes to producing video content), chances are that you’re producing videos as part of a larger team effort. Be certain to include the decision-makers from IT, management, and anyone else who has a stake in the content you’re producing. Before recording a single frame of video on a new project, do make sure that you reach a consensus on the following points. Don’t worry if you don’t necessarily understand these concepts just yet; they’re all covered in this book.

• Method of deployment. Will these videos be posted to your web site? The corporate intranet? Will CD-ROMs be created? What about a DVD for viewing on console televisions? These decisions will affect your video dimensions as well as the output format of your final production. And, whether online or on CD, it’s never too early to start planning your menu navigation.

• Maximum file size or bandwidth requirements. It’s especially important to clarify this if your organization will be hosting these videos on its servers. If you’re deploying on CD-ROM, then you should try to compute how much space, on average, each of your planned videos is allowed.

• Video dimensions. Smaller video dimensions generally mean smaller file sizes. Larger video dimensions mean better visibility, but a corresponding high file size, plus the risk of those with smaller monitors not being able to view your creation without scrolling (bad) or scaling your content (even worse).

• Will the videos be narrated? Unnarrated video titles don’t necessitate the hassle of setting up audio equipment, but you’ll see a corresponding need for captions and text callouts. Narrated videos should ideally have a script in place prior to recording, so that you can appropriately time the recording of your segments. In fact, as you’ll see in the next chapter, effective scripting and storyboarding is a good idea regardless of narration.