Thank you everyone who has responded to the call for feedback on the
screencast demos.
I'm hoping to get a few more responses from non-OSAF people before
calling it a day for the Preview screencasts.
Changes:
1. I'm working with Bear on figuring out how to amp up the volume for
the voiceover.
2. I understand that there is concern about setting context for
Chandler-specific concepts, in particular Collections, Application
Areas and Triage Status.
I've amended the text for the Navigation-Faceted Sidebar movie by
changing
+ 'Down the left-hand sidebar are collections you define.' to
+ 'Down the left-hand sidebar are collections of notes, messages,
tasks and events you create.'
Something else I've been mindful of is that just as people rarely
'thoroughly read' large blocks of text and instead try to glean
content from pictures and layout cues, people also rarely 'listen
closely' to a lot of talking. (aka Keep screencasts short!) My
approach to the screencasts has been to 'show' rather than tell,
which is (I think) the point of using the moving-image medium.
Here's a collection. Look at all the items in it.
Similarly with Application Areas, I just point to the Application
Areas: All, Mail, Tasks and Calendar. I think this is a more direct /
visceral way to explain Application Areas than trying to define them
in abstract terms: Filters defined around data types? That feels
harder to grasp to me than just pointing at them. Anyone who has used
a PIM or email and calendar applications should have some sense of
what Application Areas are after seeing them in the UI.
Same with Triage Status. Keep track of items with Triage Status. The
3 Triage Statuses are NOW, LATER and DONE.
Perhaps a better solution for explaining basic Chandler concepts is a
prominent home for the glossary on the Features page?
That being said...I know the demos need improvement. I'm looking for
changes that are relatively cheap** and in keeping with the idea of
showing as opposed to telling.
**Mimi's Litany of Complaints: Unfortunately, changing the
collections names for the Smorgasbord and Peepeedee collections would
require re-doing all the movies and re-doing most of the still images
from scratch, which I've done twice already! The source file for the
Stamping movie is corrupted so making *any* changes to that movie
requires re-do from scratch. Just to nail the coffin to the donkey,
all the voiceover sound is split up into 5-6-7 separate audio tracks
per movie, carefully placed to match what's going on in the movie and
therefore hard to manipulate as a single track. Oooh, but I may have
just figured out a workaround for this. Will report back later.)
Final note. I know I keep invoking time or lack thereof as an excuse
for not making changes. I wish I had started on the screencasts
earlier, but the reality is we only decided we absolutely had to have
them after OSCON and were originally hoping to be able to get 1 out,
for Preview. I'm assuming that we will continue to create screencasts
so the set we end up with for Preview just needs to be a net positive
(as in gets people feeling positive about Chandler) and we will keep
working on making better ones.
Thx!
Mimi
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