Translation of client’s training manuals into online demos using Adobe Captivate. The original brief was for a series of Adobe Flash movies. However, the use of Adobe Captivate seemed a more promising route. Captivate’s ability to record mouse motion meant that much time would might be saved. It may seem obvious, but it we would have gone a little quicker if we’d had someone familiar with the software present when recording. Once we got the hang of recording, and understood the software being demoed, the recording became the quickest part of the process. What consumed the most time was re-writing the text from the manuals so that it made sense as an animated demo and adding the text to the movies.

Having well written demo text is a huge benefit. Well-written instructions need some thought not least because it’s necessary for the author to place themselves in the mind of the person trying to learn the software for the first time. That’s not necessarily an easy thing to do. Following the instructions, on several occasions I had to make several attempts at a process in order to get it right. This knowledge was incorporated in to the original text.

Getting the speed at which the demo ran required some trial and error. Captivate will makes what are often very good guesses at how long a caption will take to read. What it can’t do is estimate how much time is required to absorb the information being presented. In places the final demos run at about half the speed of the early versions, so allowing processing time for the brain.

The final movies were published online and on CD. For the latter, we made use of the Menu Builder feature, which comes with Captivate, to build an auto launcher and splash screen (top left). Total time for the project was supposed to be one week, Although it took longer than that to complete, I hate to think how long building the demos in Flash would have required. Perhaps more importantly, the end result can be modified without calling on a Flash developer.

Would I use Captivate again? Absolutely. It may at first look like a cross between Flash and Power Point, but it works. In these demos, we only scratched the surface of Captivate’s capabilities. View sample movie (opens in new window)