Earlier this week I had a blog post on Handling Errors Gracefully that described some of the issues that I was having with OnTime. Well shortly after the blog posting I received a comment on the blog from Hamid Shojaee (founder of Axosoft) who asked for some more indepth feedback on my dislike of OnTime. Last night I sent a rather lengthy email to Hamid outlining some of my concerns about OnTime....and I must say, one thing that really, really impresses me about OnTime is that Hamid took the time to solicit this feedback, and also took the time to personally call me (and my manager) about the issue.
At Articulate we are extremely passionate about our software, and we take great pride in what we do. What Hamid demonstrated to me is that he, and others at OnTime are as passionate about their software as we are about ours (ok, maybe not as passionate, because we are damn passionate, but they are a close second). As I mentioned in my email to Hamid, we chose OnTime for a variety of reasons, and one of those reasons is that they are reliable and that they can provide proper support.
Hamid was also very helpful in doing his best to address our concerns, and suggesting other implementations that might fit our current work environment better.
So, in conclusion, I am really impressed with Hamid taking the time to address the concerns of his customers. We are working on trying out some of the suggestions given, and I will post more info on this topic as I try out the suggestions.
At Articulate we are extremely passionate about our software, and we take great pride in what we do. What Hamid demonstrated to me is that he, and others at OnTime are as passionate about their software as we are about ours (ok, maybe not as passionate, because we are damn passionate, but they are a close second). As I mentioned in my email to Hamid, we chose OnTime for a variety of reasons, and one of those reasons is that they are reliable and that they can provide proper support.
Hamid was also very helpful in doing his best to address our concerns, and suggesting other implementations that might fit our current work environment better.
So, in conclusion, I am really impressed with Hamid taking the time to address the concerns of his customers. We are working on trying out some of the suggestions given, and I will post more info on this topic as I try out the suggestions.
Using Sorenson Squeeze to create flash movies for Articulate Presenter
0 Comments Dave blogged on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 7:02 PM.
If you are looking to add short videos to your slides in Articulate Presenter a great option for converting your videos to SWF format (or FLV for that matter) is Sorenson Squeeze for Flash. It is a great (and relatively inexpensive) tool that can convert almost any common video (mpeg, avi, mov) to SWF format.Converting your videos to SWF is a great option if you are looking to embed short video clips (less than a minute in length) into an Articulate Presenter slide.
If you already own Sorenson and don't know how to create an Embeded Video watch this demonstration on creating an embedded video in Sorenson. By default when using Sorenson to convert a video to SWF it will actually create SWF player that loads in a linked FLV. The link above will show you how to create an embedded video that actually embeds the video in the SWF.
Benefits of using Embedded Video:
- Can easily be controlled by the Articulate Presenter playback controller
- Results in only a single output file
- Only requires the Flash Player to view
Pitfalls of using Embedded Video:
- Can only be used for videos less than a minute in length
Note: Embedded video should only be used with short video clips (less than a minute in length).
For other options for longer video (more than a minute in length) see the following blog postings:
Flash video in a slide
Slide level FLV without Flash
For more info on Sorenson check out the following links:
Converting Non-Flash Movies to SWF
Sorenson Squeeze 4.3 for Flash
For more information on Flash Video in general:
Delivery Options for Flash Video
If anyone speaks German and is looking for a good German blog on eLearning check out the following website:
http://www.rapid-eLearning.ch
They have done a great job of making links to presentations look very engaging (i.e. by posting a thubmnail image of the presentation as a link). Pretty cool site and an excellent resource for any German Articulate Users.
For the English speaking folks you might want to try translating it via babelfish, as it contains some pretty good info.
http://www.rapid-eLearning.ch
They have done a great job of making links to presentations look very engaging (i.e. by posting a thubmnail image of the presentation as a link). Pretty cool site and an excellent resource for any German Articulate Users.
For the English speaking folks you might want to try translating it via babelfish, as it contains some pretty good info.
Rant On:
It really bugs me when software programs have no error handling whatsoever. Take for example OnTime. If at any time you loose internet connectivity when trying to use OnTime (a bug tracking system) OnTime throws the unhandled exception shown below.
To me it is shocking that:
A. That they had no error handling for what is likely to be a common error
B. No QA guy or gal ever caught this
Imagine for a moment if every time you tried to publish a presentation from Articulate Presenter without first saving the Powerpoint file we through up this exception, then crashed Powerpoint...How annoying would that be?
Thankfully Articulate Presenter has better error handling than this.
BTW...if anyone from Axosoft reads this, it would be awesome if you fixed this.
Rant off.
Sorry, I felt compelled to write about a program I disliked after my last post about a product I liked. I wanted to maintain some balance :-)
It really bugs me when software programs have no error handling whatsoever. Take for example OnTime. If at any time you loose internet connectivity when trying to use OnTime (a bug tracking system) OnTime throws the unhandled exception shown below.
To me it is shocking that:A. That they had no error handling for what is likely to be a common error
B. No QA guy or gal ever caught this
Imagine for a moment if every time you tried to publish a presentation from Articulate Presenter without first saving the Powerpoint file we through up this exception, then crashed Powerpoint...How annoying would that be?
Thankfully Articulate Presenter has better error handling than this.
BTW...if anyone from Axosoft reads this, it would be awesome if you fixed this.
Rant off.
Sorry, I felt compelled to write about a program I disliked after my last post about a product I liked. I wanted to maintain some balance :-)
Labels: Bad UI
Normally I am against pimping non-Articulate products, but every once in awhile I try out a product that is soo cool, and so hard to find I feel that I must blog about it. For about the last month I have been searching for a tool that will allow me to automatically record Skype phone calls, and after messing around with some pretty sub-par programs (such as powergramo) I finally found one that worked well, and has a pretty slick UI. The program I found is called Pamela and beats anything else out there hands down.
The reason I think this program is soo cool is that it enables me to record Skype calls (I know I mentioned that already) in high quality MP3 format (with some tweaks) and easily post those recordings on the web for podcasting. As many of you know podcasting is becoming the rage in eLearning now, and Pamela is a great tool for creating podcasts from phone conferences with an included RSS feed.
Well anyways, it is a great tool, and a must have for any skype user. Click the link below to check it out!
The reason I think this program is soo cool is that it enables me to record Skype calls (I know I mentioned that already) in high quality MP3 format (with some tweaks) and easily post those recordings on the web for podcasting. As many of you know podcasting is becoming the rage in eLearning now, and Pamela is a great tool for creating podcasts from phone conferences with an included RSS feed.
Well anyways, it is a great tool, and a must have for any skype user. Click the link below to check it out!
Ever wonder what percentage of people have the Flash Player installed? Ever wonder what percentage of people are using which version of the Flash Player? Adobe keeps track of these statistics and has posted the statistics on their website (Adobe Flash Player Version Penetration).
Knowing this can be important when you are trying to create Flash content that the majority of the people can view.
Knowing this can be important when you are trying to create Flash content that the majority of the people can view.
If you aren't reading this post via a RSS reader you have probably noticed the new site design. I use blogger as my blogging tool and they give you a choice of about 20 different templates to choose from. So I spent the last couple of hours modifying the site to use a new custom layout I designed. I tried to make it have somewhat of a comic book feel without being too unprofessional. I also added a new search feature that is specifically tailored for this site. Hopefully this will enable people to find old posts a little easier. If you have a feelings about the new site design please feel free to leave me comments, I will be interested to hear some feedback.
Labels: Bad UI
Is offering 31 flavors bad for business?
0 Comments Dave blogged on Friday, September 01, 2006 at 2:51 PM.
I just listened to a really great podcast by Jared Spool and Barry Schwartz at UIE on Podcast: Designing for the Paradox of Choice.
We have all been in the scenario before where you go to a restaurant where the waiter or waitress comes up and asks to take your order. So you tell the waitperson that you would like a steak. You are then asked, "How would you like that cooked?" to which you reply, with your choice of cooked temperature. Then you are questioned, "Would you like soup or salad?" then "what type of salad" then "what kind of dressing?" then "would you like a potato with that?" then "mashed or baked," "with sour cream or without?" By the end of the whole process you are about ready to choke the waiter because all you want is your damn steak and who knew ordering a steak would be soo damn difficult?
Well in the podcast they discuss how we are much better off now because we can get exactly what we want because we have soo many choices, but the process of getting what you is soo difficult you are often left less satisfied with the eventual outcome. Much of what they talk about is based on a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP, Vol. 79, No. 6) that showed that, "when shoppers are given the option of choosing among smaller and larger assortments of jam, they show more interest in the larger assortment. But when it comes time to pick just one, they're 10 times more likely to make a purchase if they choose among six rather than among 24 flavors of jam. " Hence the question I posed in the title of this post, "Is offering 31 Flavors bad for business?"
The reason I found this so fascinating and so relevant is that I am a Quality Assurance Engineer, who often has to either design parts of the user interface for our new products, or critique parts of others designs and we are often presented with this problem. The problem is trying to allow a product to be flexible to meet everyone's needs without making the process of getting there completely frustrating to the majority of users. We have a general rule that we go by when we are designing new parts of our application, you want to make the default choice for users the option that 75-80% of your users is going to choose. This might seem simple and obvious, but you have to ask yourself this question multiple times a day when you are looking at software design. By designing to make life as easy as possible for the 75-80% of the users we hope to make the software we hope to keep them from having to make endless choices when using our tools. This however doesn't mean that our software is not flexible, its just that we try to keep some of the more obscure choices that you need to make outside of the main workflow (in areas like the options menu). We even offer an Articulate Presenter SDK for those who don't just want the 31 choices of ice cream but want the possibility of having a 140 different flavors of ice cream that the ice cream makers had probably never dreamed of. So by moving the endless choices out of the main workflow of a product we are able (hopefully) to satisfy the simplicity needs of the many while still offering options to satisfy the other 20-25%.
We have all been in the scenario before where you go to a restaurant where the waiter or waitress comes up and asks to take your order. So you tell the waitperson that you would like a steak. You are then asked, "How would you like that cooked?" to which you reply, with your choice of cooked temperature. Then you are questioned, "Would you like soup or salad?" then "what type of salad" then "what kind of dressing?" then "would you like a potato with that?" then "mashed or baked," "with sour cream or without?" By the end of the whole process you are about ready to choke the waiter because all you want is your damn steak and who knew ordering a steak would be soo damn difficult?
Well in the podcast they discuss how we are much better off now because we can get exactly what we want because we have soo many choices, but the process of getting what you is soo difficult you are often left less satisfied with the eventual outcome. Much of what they talk about is based on a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP, Vol. 79, No. 6) that showed that, "when shoppers are given the option of choosing among smaller and larger assortments of jam, they show more interest in the larger assortment. But when it comes time to pick just one, they're 10 times more likely to make a purchase if they choose among six rather than among 24 flavors of jam. " Hence the question I posed in the title of this post, "Is offering 31 Flavors bad for business?"
The reason I found this so fascinating and so relevant is that I am a Quality Assurance Engineer, who often has to either design parts of the user interface for our new products, or critique parts of others designs and we are often presented with this problem. The problem is trying to allow a product to be flexible to meet everyone's needs without making the process of getting there completely frustrating to the majority of users. We have a general rule that we go by when we are designing new parts of our application, you want to make the default choice for users the option that 75-80% of your users is going to choose. This might seem simple and obvious, but you have to ask yourself this question multiple times a day when you are looking at software design. By designing to make life as easy as possible for the 75-80% of the users we hope to make the software we hope to keep them from having to make endless choices when using our tools. This however doesn't mean that our software is not flexible, its just that we try to keep some of the more obscure choices that you need to make outside of the main workflow (in areas like the options menu). We even offer an Articulate Presenter SDK for those who don't just want the 31 choices of ice cream but want the possibility of having a 140 different flavors of ice cream that the ice cream makers had probably never dreamed of. So by moving the endless choices out of the main workflow of a product we are able (hopefully) to satisfy the simplicity needs of the many while still offering options to satisfy the other 20-25%.
AICC
Articulate Presenter SDK (2:03)
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