I’ve been thinking about user-led learning lately. I have a set of tutorials that we refer to as “tours.” I imagine this term was chosen because the object is to give new users an overview of how to use the various parts of the application to accomplish the main task.

Some Background

Let me give you a bit of history on these tours. Before I was assigned to maintain the project’s documentation, these tours were built as PowerPoint presentations and run through a Breeze engine to create a Flash presentation. (I don’t know if Breeze in that form exists anymore.) Some pages had short videos created in RoboDemo. The presentations contained links to move forward and backward, so the intention was for the user to go from start to finish, similar to taking a tour in a museum: You begin in one place and move through a linear experience.

When I upgraded to the version of Breeze that came out after I took on these files, I found that somehow, multiple videos could play simultaneously. I could start a video on one page, then go to the next page and start that video. I would hear additional mouse clicks. If I went back to the previous page, that video would still be running.

Messy.

I manually moved the content into a new set of HTML pages because I knew that one page loads at a time, so it would be impossible for multiple videos to be running at once. I took the opportunity to learn CSS so I could lay out the pages that way.

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The rollout manager for one of the projects I’m with asked today for some way to provide trainers with a method of showing the application’s functionality in a controlled environment. It needs to be part of a presentation but not have room for surprises (those errors that appear at exactly the wrong moment, such as during demonstrations to the stakeholders).

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I’ve been doing my own voiceover for a series of Captivate software demonstrations I’m building. I write a script, record the demo without any audio, and then tweak the script as needed based on what I recorded. Using a free program called Audacity that I found on the Web, I record the voiceover to my computer in separate pieces, manipulate the tracks, and export them as mp3s. Then I import them into the slides in Captivate.

I tend to speak in a quiet monotone, so doing voiceover takes some extra effort. I have to shut myself in a room so that as I read the script, I can speak up loud enough to get varied tones going. That went all right, but it still didn’t sound natural. So I tried something a little different.

I started gesturing a little with my hands while recording. Interestingly, it made a large difference. My tone sounded much more relaxed and conversational. Tonal changes happened in better places. I also read the script with fewer mistakes. So there’s a trick for my bag.

Speaking of something I learned about doing demos, the manager of one of the projects I work on asked me to show one of the demos to the team in a meeting last week. I had included the built-in keyboard tapping sound for typing animations, but I shortened the animations so that the typing went a little faster. The result was about 5 characters per tapping sound. There were some jokes and laughter about this, so I decided it’s probably better to do away with the tapping altogether.

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I needed to come up with a way recently to put some Captivate demos in a place where stakeholders could review them for accuracy, without putting them out somewhere on my domain where anyone could stumble on them during the review process. For a few moments, I thought of simply putting up some password-protected WordPress pages. But then I realized (an instant before Tom Johnson suggested it to me) that I could use SharePoint.

With a few clicks, I created a site and was off and running.

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Not long ago I found a nifty little program called Force Window Visible (download here). I use a dual-monitor configuration at work, and at times I have to take my laptop into meetings. (To avoid undocking problems, I shut down, disconnect from the docking station, and start back up.) If I have to spend some time working away from my desk, I have problems with some windows and dialog boxes not appearing on my laptop monitor. Or, after I’ve gone back to my desk, things are not showing up on either of the two monitors.

Sure, if you’re using Windows like I do, you can try right-clicking on the program’s taskbar button, but I found that this didn’t always work for application windows. It also doesn’t work for dialog boxes, since they usually don’t give you a taskbar button.

But I downloaded and installed Force Window Visible, and then I put a shortcut to it in my system tray. Now, whenever I have a RoboHelp dialog appear off-screen, or (as recently happened) Captivate’s record window doesn’t show up, I open Force Window Visible. You do have to wade through a really long list of things that don’t seem to correspond to open windows, and there are some generic window names, so you may not be able to distinguish what they represent. But click an item, and bang—it shows up on your screen.

If you’re expecting a dialog and your program instead locks up, try hitting the Esc key. If Escape livens your program back up, you are most likely getting dialogs off-screen. Use Force Window Visible to get those critters back where you can see them. It’s a great little tool—and it’s free.

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