Yes, we also had to memorize the periodic table and calculate equations, and yes, we’d sometimes wonder when we were ever going to use these scientific concepts.

Waters Corporation has been putting science to good use for more than fifty years. They’re a leading maker of analytical instruments for measuring fluids and substances used in healthcare delivery, environmental management, food safety, and water quality.

So it’s a good thing the people at Waters paid attention in science class. If you eat food, fuel your car, or use medicine, equipment from Waters probably had a role in ensuring the safety and effectiveness of the products you use.

Would you guess that their internal learning programs are a little, shall we say, involved?

Brian SanSouci is Senior Technical Writer at Waters, and he is responsible for making sure that new products and features are well-known across the company. Waters has more than 5,000 employees worldwide. Whenever they launch a new technology, it’s Brian’s job to create learning presentations and materials to educate the engineering teams.

Recently, I talked with Brian about how he uses KnowledgeVision to support learning programs for their field and in-house personnel. You can watch the entire Waters interview here, but I want to recap some of the highlights and draw some lessons from the discussion:

Combine Multiple Formats: Waters needs to educate people all around the world, whether they are in-house or on site with a client. They use presentations to provide an in-depth overview of products and features, with video, slides, supporting materials, and links to make learning more effective.

“Just recently we finished a large introduction of an update to an older product,” Brian told me. “It dealt with a lot of history to bring the newer field service engineers up to date.”

Give Viewers Control: Brian found the asynchronous nature of a KnowledgeVision online presentation helps ensure that everyone has the ability to view it according to their schedules, and navigation so viewers can control the experience. He finds this raises the viewership and response rates.

“We decided to do some tracking,” Brian told me. “We found that there were many people who spent a lot of time watching it all the way through. It’s going to give us an idea of the impact of these presentations.”

Make Presentations Portable: Because KnowledgeVision presentations can be downloaded and viewed locally instead of online, they’re great for using in those places where WiFi is a bit spotty. This was a surprise that Brian was able to put to good use.

“Much of our field and sales organization travel throughout the world. In many of these countries, the internet connection may not be that great. I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, by the ability to download the KV presentation onto your hard drive or thumb drive– you can play this presentation anywhere, from your laptop, a desktop, even project the image onto a large screen.”

Support Your Audience: When getting started with KnowledgeVision, Brian found the client success team to be extremely helpful and responsive. This is a model for Waters as well, because their own teams provide a top notch level of support and services to their client organizations.

“The service organization at KV has been terrific. The training sessions that you’ve offered in-house have been great. Sue Murray, Matt, and Christian have provided me information almost as quickly as I have asked the questions. It’s that good.”

Plan For The Future: At Waters, using KnowledgeVision presentations for technical overviews and product launches is only the beginning. Brian has been planning for future expansion of KnowledgeVision presentations for the entire organization.

“The global service support organization saw the last product launch that I did. They thought it would be a good idea to use these in the future for some of the training of field service engineers,” Brian added. “You simply do a presentation, show them how you did it, and now everybody wants one. It’s that simple.”

In science, experimentation and analysis is critical to finding new ways to do things. This is true in content as well, whether an organization uses content for internal learning programs, like Waters, or content marketing and sales support.

Brian SanSouci is exploring the future of online presentations to add value to Waters’ products and services. View the entire interview here.

Originally published on the KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog.

That’s how I taper

Okay, here we go…

There was no starting gun, because that’s starting to seem a bit weird, after the moment of silence. Instead, somebody blew a horn.

I last ate two hours ago at a Providence Dunks. Bagel. Whole grain. No spread. Been guzzling electrolytes like a- do fish drink electrolytes? It is way too soon for these thoughts.

Here comes mile 1. Aaaagh! 7:08! Nonononononono dial it back! Rein it in. Discipline. Discipline. In your Liam Neeson voice, “Discipline.”

I think the runners next to me heard that. I don’t usually have to do that until mile 6. Oh, who cares, they have their own little tics too.

This is NOT a good start. So, do fish drink electrolytes? I looked this up last week when I wrote this, so- I wonder if I’ll be thinking exactly this at mile 2. Wow, we’re getting meta…

Mile 2. 7:24. That’s still too fast, bro.

So, we were getting meta… who’s we, kemo sabe? It’s just me out here, right? Are we doing that Gollum/Smeagol thing again? I mean I’m the one who trained for this, since December. I’m the one who…

Well, there’s the family. There’s my wife, who put up with me getting up at 4AM nearly every day.

Since December.

Hey, mile 3. 7:28. Okay, much better. I hope we didn’t kill it in that first mile.

I mean, she put up with a lot. Sleeping in meant 6AM. It was her who did all the work once I was gone for a three-hour run. She got the kids up, dressed, ready to go wherever, and here I come staggering in, needing food.

Serious food. And a shower.

Speaking of food, water stop. Water? Gatorade? Both? Yep. Do fish drink electrolytes?

Mile 4. 7:22. Marathon Pace, it’s called. The pace I need to keep to get to that all-important 3:13. DO NOT get too far above this from now on, and DO NOT go below 7.

Hey, a porta-john. Do we need it? Nope. Thank god. Who’s this we again?

Mile 5. 7:19. Good. Good. Palpatine voice now, “Good.” Okay, now stop that.

So it turns out those treatment tablets for fish tanks have electrolytes, and seawater is stupid with them. They give the fish their slimy coat and the power to keep swimming.

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Thanks, Dory.

Mile 6. 7:14. The next mile is a little tough. That’s code for “uphill”.

Good. Love hills. Uphills. Downhills. It’s an excuse to rest on the uphill and cook on the down. BTW, here comes the hill.

But don’t cook it. It cooks you. One mile uphill. About 100 feet of vert. Steepest in the first half. Just take it easy. Easy.

Top of the hill, I think. You’re always winded at the top. That’s okay.

Mile 7. 7:23. That’s the hill talking. But we’re headed down now. Don’t push it too hard.

But it feels so GOOD. Don’t cook it. Geese flying overhead. North or south? Looks like west-northwest, or northwest-by-west. Flapping. Just keep flapping.

Mile 8. 7:12. You cooked it. Okay, that’s cruising speed. Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned off the seat belt signs, feel free to walk around. It’s a freakin’ plane. What are you looking around at anyway?

Geese. They fly for hundreds of miles at a time, wings never tiring. That’s you, pal. Just keep spinning those legs. The Flintstonian leg-blur. The roadrunner. Meep meep.

Mile 9. 7:14. Okay, we’re cruisin’. Really, giving people a high-five or a smile seems so easy, but it takes a little too much energy we’ll need later.

Just keep swimming. That is, until mile 24. Like we’ll even be considering that then. Just keep swimming. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

BTW, mile 24 actually is a bridge.

Mile 10. 7:18. Not bad. Just keep it up. Dig in, forget you’re running. No! Don’t forget you’re running. That’s how you screw it up.

Stick with this pack. I like them. We’ve seen this guy in the green tank before, was he in New Hampshire last year?

Okay, this pack is a little fast for me. That’s what I want them to be, too fast. Let them go. Back off. Not too much. Hey, need a gel? No. Take it anyway. No, don’t. No, go ahead.

Mile 11. 7:14. What is it about these flat sections that look like they’re uphill both ways? Look back and check. No, don’t. Trust me, it probably looks like it’s uphill.

Cruising speed. Folks, if you look to your left, you’ll see houses and cars parked in the yard. People out in front of their houses. Kids. Kids with cowbells.

I love seeing kids out here. Let’s give ‘em a thumbs-up. They love that.

Mile 12. 7:09. Too fast. We’re into the middle miles now. Hardhat time. This is when you just punch in and do it. Forget the world. Forget your name. Just run. It still feels good. Just another means of transportation. Head down.

Mile 13. 7:09. Too fast. Didn’t I already say that? So there are some more kids. Wave. Don’t say anything. You need the air. Let’s take another gel. God I hate this flavor. Why did I buy it again?

There’s the halfway. It matters what the time is at the half. I have to do math now. Let’s see, 1:35:16. That’s half of 3:10: something. Math is hard. Don’t try to do it. Too much energy wasted.

Mile 14. 7:12. How long can I keep up this pace? It’s time for serious inspiration. 7 miles. No, 6 miles to mile 20. This is the mental part right here. Why mile 20?

Mile 20 is the cutoff point. That’s where we’ll know. It’s either 2:30 and out of the running, or 2:25 and still in the mix. What’s our plus/minus by the way?

Plus/minus? That means people we pass after the halfway minus people who passed us.

Mile 15. 7:29. Uh oh. Bullshit. You have this. Its flat. Mostly flat. Boring? No, it’s a rail trail. You know rail trails. They’re pretty. Trees and stuff. You got this. You worked for this.

Since December.

Mile 16. 7:03. Overdid it? I dunno. You worked harder than ever. Did intervals. Negative splits. Can you negative split today? Who the hell knows. You got to 60 miles per week, a few times. You crushed your own PRs in training runs.

Mile 17. 7:11. Just keep thinking about the work. Don’t waste it. You have this. You own it. Own it. Just keep running. Just keep running.

They’re making another Nemo flick, by the way. I think. About Dory. Why not Crush? “The EAC. You’re ridin’ it, dude! Check it out!”

Mile 18. 7:13. I like these numbers. Think about how much training you did for this. Think about those bombs in Boston that day. That day when you might have brought the kids downtown to see the race. Right at the finish line.

Instead, you took them to a playground in Wellesley, right next to mile 15.5 on the Boston course. 25k. The big downhill into Lower Falls. You watched the leaders crush asphalt. You watched the fast guys in the first wave. All of them amazing athletes.

Mile 19. 7:15. I think our plus/minus is positive. Hrm. Hrmmm.

Those faster runners in Wellesley all crossed the finish line an hour before the bombs. Then you saw the rest of the crowd run by. The jugglers, the guys in Snoopy costumes. Women in wedding gowns. Still running faster than me. They also crossed before the bombs went off.

Mile 20. 7:19. The clock reads 2:25:16. Huh? For real? Goal time. I have this?

The bombs. I took the kids out to get ice cream right around two o’clock, then headed to Lower Falls. I was probably standing at mile 16 urging runners on as the explosions rocked the city ten miles away.

I had no idea. I took the kids back to the playground and got a call from my wife. She was terrified.

Mile 21. 7:08. The hill again. Just keep…

“Where are you?” She yelled. “Where are the kids? Where did you park?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“There was an explosion downtown. They said right at the finish line.” She was watching TV, and the news seemed to offer practically no detail. I figured it was a transformer or something. They need a lot of electrical power down there. No big deal.

Mile 22. 7:26. As she kept watching, she sounded more scared. I explained that we were in Wellesley. Ten miles away. Under a bright blue sky surrounded by budding trees and laughing kids. Then the news obviously became more clear. “Just come home,” she said.

Mile 23. 7:12. So I got the kids into the car and headed for the highway. For the first time in several years, I turned on news radio. I mean, news and talk radio were always useful in a crisis, but I did everything I could to avoid feeling like there was one.

Now there was, and it was inescapable. Somebody had attacked the crowd at the Boston Marathon, a major athletic event I’d only in the last few years come to understand. Now I had trained for a chance to run it.

Mile 24. 7:03. Let’s do this. Let’s drop under 7. That’s why I want this. I mean, I always wanted to qualify. I just never thought I could, but this year it began to feel possible. I want to go from dream to belief, and from belief to knowledge. I worked up to a VDOT of 51. From 40-something, and I feel like it can go even higher.

After the bombings, I wanted it even more. Every runner does. New runners suddenly decided they wanted to be part of it. Boston isn’t just a road race.

Mile 25. 6:58. Only one more. Yeah, that’s what the crowds are yelling at us. We have this. There’s that we again. Who’s we?

It’s everyone. It’s my family, my kids, the runners I see a quarter-mile ahead. The runners I can’t turn around to look at behind me, but I hear their footsteps. We’re all in the same race. We’re all crossing the line for many reasons. For ourselves, for our charities, for the people who need us, for those who were hurt, and those who were killed. That’s why we stood in silence some three hours ago. That’s why we trained. That’s why we lined up. We don’t quit. We just keep running.

Mile 26. 6:49. Only in a dream. Only in a dream. Sprint, dude. Kick it. Can you? Can you torch this 385 yards?

Let’s find out.

I’m not sure this even qualifies as a problem. Maybe it’s a “First-world problem”, but here it is: How can we create great content without sitting at a computer?

What kind of innovations exist out there to help us multi-task? Can we use voice-to-text, mobile tablets, or specialized headgear to develop content that people will love?

Turning Thoughts Into Words

Here are some of the technologies that, believe it or not, we’ll all be using in the near future to create content:

Voice to Text Apps: You’ve heard of voice notes, where you make a recording of your random thoughts when you’re not in a position to type, like when you’re out on a morning jog. The idea is that those thoughts are going to be worthwhile enough to transcribe later (provided these aren’t thoughts recorded at two in the morning while watching the Cartoon Network).

And of course, why transcribe? Isn’t word-recognition technology able to record directly to text? For phones and tablets, there are numerous voice-to-text applications. Maybe that guy in the car next to you isn’t ranting at the radio or muttering conspiracy theories, but writing a post for his sports blog. You can even have Apple’s Siri Eyes Free installed in your car.

One major glitch: Voice to Text apps don’t make driving any safer, according to a recent study by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. It turns out that looking away from the road isn’t the only distraction; it’s thinking.

VR-Style Headgear: Remember when Virtual Reality was the coolest thing ever? The problem was that these funky headworn devices only played back content. They could not create it. Something like Google Glass will let you record your voice and snapshot everything you see with no effort. Even Robert Scoble is now a believer in Google Glass.

But Glass and devices like it (like Vuzix) still have some obstacles to overcome, such as pricing and concerns over privacy. Store and restaurant owners are already deciding whether to allow the headworn futuristic things into their establishments, and there’s no doubt some litigation and legislation to follow. I believe that, like tablets and smartphones, they’ll attract a limited stratum of superuser. Then once someone discovers the killer application, we’ll all wonder how we survived without them.

Mobile Tablets: Naturally, the iPad, Android, Kindle (oh, and Microsoft Surface) tablets have changed the way people view content. First, they’re now more likely to browse while watching television, as well as carry the things into restaurants to amuse their fidgety children (guilty!). But there’s no reason they can’t be considered tremendous content-creation tools as well.

Tablets are fine for writing, but because of the tablet’s touchscreen, they lend themselves readily to graphics production and editing. Specialized tablet apps like Adobe’s Photoshop Touch, and something like Sketchbook Express let you edit photos and create graphics. And of course there’s a phalanx of apps that let you share them on the web pretty easily, even from a phone.

Don’t Leave Without Your Gloves: By now you’ve seen Minority Report, and while, like me, you probably can’t remember the story, I’ll bet you remember Tom Cruise’s computerized gloves. They were simply the interface for a gee-whiz transparent display, but they captured the imagination of tech geeks everywhere.

Shouldn’t it be possible, someday, to use gloves like this to interface with a computer or other type of screen, to create all kinds of content? You could type away at thin air and see the results directly on your Google Glass display while sitting on a beach.

People who create content are always looking for that spark, an inspiration, and that often happens to us while sitting at the ballgame, hiking a mountain peak, or using a playground slide. These technological marvels will let us continue to search for inspiration, and take advantage of it immediately.

It’s The Thought That Counts

So these devices may make it easier to multitask and create on the fly. But if thinking is the problem, as the Texas A&M study reveals, can you create great content while using a treadmill? Anyone can ingest news and other content on the overhead televisions at the gym, and many people read books on Kindles and (gasp) paper while working out, riding the train, walking the dog, and doing all sorts of other activities.

Can it work the other way around? Can you create compelling content while crushing calories? Or is mental focus as critical to creativity as it is to driving? Arguably, most people will probably create higher-quality content when they are sitting quietly and undisturbed.

But what about those brain flashes that hit you while you’re inspecting avocados in the produce aisle? For instance, I’ve written entire blog posts while strolling through a mall. That doesn’t change the essential rules about identifying an audience, using research, and calling for action. For that, whatever futuristic device I’m using better be connected to the internet.

But no matter how easy it is to create content on these awesome tools, let’s just keep them out of the car.

Originally published on The KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog.

In fact, distance education dates to 1728, when a Boston when a local educator began offering distance correspondence courses (by post or mail). The first correspondence degree was offered by the University of London in 1858.

So the innovators go back aways. They aren’t just the people we read about today, like Daphne Koller, Richard Saul Wurman, or Salman Khan, who are certainly innovators in their own right. But they are standing on the shoulders of people who long ago realized that students didn’t have to be present to learn.

And someday, somebody will stand on theirs. But what kind of learning innovations will they dream up?

What’s Next In Online Learning?

Let’s parse out some critical components of distance education on which the next ideas will be built on.

1. It will be flexible. If the fact that distance education began in the 18th century tells us anything, it’s that technology has little to do with it. The printing press, the postal system, the phone and fax machine, the internet, the social sites, mobile devices and virtual environments and devices like Google Glass shouldn’t matter. Any learning system should probably be built so that the next big thing doesn’t mean throwing the whole learning model out.

   This means there should be a focus on the lightest footprint possible for a course, whether it means crowdsourced data, cloud storage and delivery, or use of a peer-to-peer network. The course should be available on many platforms without too much modification.

2. It will be enduring. Every item out there on the web is available to view and learn from. Many articles we find when gathering information may be several years old. That doesn’t mean they’re outdated. Despite advancements in healthcare, software, robotics, and other areas, many core principles remain stable. This could mean that the fundamentals of any curriculum area are easily translated to online learning, even years after the course was created.

   So there is no need for an innovative course platform to emphasize a finite duration overall, only for the individual learners. As long as teachers are available, numerous courses can run for long periods of time and educate thousands of users in an asynchronous manner.

3. It will be measurable. Communication is critical in any kind of learning system, and a distance education makes it even more important. Besides having numerous ways to coordinate efforts between teachers, students, and other parties that have an interest in their education, an innovative course platform should include ways for the trainer or teacher to review feedback from students as well as monitor their progress. It should also give the students ways to see how they are doing over time, as well as see up-to-date responses from the teacher.

   Some online learning tools emphasize one type of measurement system over another, largely based on which kind of technology is their bread and butter. Content-based platforms focus on viewership stats, while tools that are communications platforms at heart focus on statistics related to discussion. True learning tools will include that, while focusing on feedback and outcomes as a snapshot and over a time period.

4. It will be accessible. This word means many things. The learning tool should be easy enough to use that it doesn’t hinder the learning process, and it should be readily used by people who are disabled. It also means an innovative tool should not rely on one kind of device. If people are able to use technology they already own to take part in the course, that’s the best approach.

   The accessibility of a learning tool puts a great emphasis on the design of the course platform. Even more than the user-experience design practices favored by website and e-commerce designers, a learning platform needs to make clear what students are supposed to do throughout the process, as well as allow teachers to create and modify their courses easily.

5. It will be visual. Whether that means users share a presence in video, animation, images, or graphics, making it easy for them to create ideas in a visual format will be paramount. Visible concepts are more readily grasped, and are more widely shared. Yet, most graphic design tools are still seen as the domain of professionals who specialize in their art. Infographic-building tools are on the rise, as well as visually-focused sharing platforms, and it’s no stretch to imagine that learning can take some pages from the social media and content marketing realms.

   A learning tool should include a way to gather data and details and display it in an immediately-publishable visual image. Barring that, the tool should integrate with other graphics-development platforms that emphasize ease and share-ability.

Obviously, these rules don’t have to be taken as dogma. It’s possible that the next big advancement in distance learning will be built for one type of platform, be difficult to use, be almost unmeasurable and yet be wildly popular. Stranger things have happened. I believe the ideas that will endure over time will be those that follow at least a couple of these ground rules.

At some point, we’ll be reading about another innovation from a visionary building on the accomplishments of those who have captured our admiration today.

Originally published on The KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog.

That’s disruption.

On the train ride to Boston’s North Station, I used a new payment system provided by the MBTA; mTicket, a mobile app that lets you buy your ticket and activate it when you board. I worried that it wouldn’t work, or that the T conductor had never heard of it, and we’d get tossed from the last car at a low speed. Instead, the app worked perfectly.

More disruption.

On the subway ride to the ballpark, we saw several people reading books on Kindles and other handheld devices. During the game, a lot of people took pictures with their phones, of the game, the players, and each other. I joined in the fun, and we’ve all seen Facebook friends posting pics of themselves at the game. People take mobile pics at rock concerts, too. It harkens back to the (circa 2004) obnoxious use of cell phones while sitting behind home plate.

All of that is disruption.

Innovative Disruption: The New Normal

Innovation has made it possible to disrupt one industry after another, from home delivery of groceries to genetic RNA interference. In the realm of education and training, Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, allow countless users to take part in university courses, which may be regular in-person courses or specialized for online learning.

In business, online video and online presentations have become a disruptive tool for sales and marketing, as more video communications tools emerge and more conferences occur online. I remember when we thought videoconferencing was a killer for the airline industry, but in reality online video and presentations have enhanced live events, while the real killer apps aren’t just about communication, but collaboration.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen has led the discussion on disruptive innovation for years. His books have focused on new technologies and mechanisms that have changed companies, industries, and the world. We think of mobile devices and social websites as disruptive innovations, and they are; but it doesn’t have to be technology. Business methods and ideas can also turn the tables on how things are.

What makes a concept disruptive?

It’s important to note that disruptive technologies and ideas are nearly impossible to identify, except to visionaries. This is because they should be characterized not by what they are, but for what they aren’t:

• They are not a reason for change: Brian Solis says that disruption is a catalyst for change, but not the reason. Look at the current content marketing trend, which is considered disruptive, but it emerged partly because of social media, which required a constant flow of new, original, branded and unbranded content. Similarly, tablets like the Apple Newton existed for decades, without a clear purpose, before Apple launched the iPad and changed everything.
• They lack refinement: Often, new technologies have no single organization driving best practices. MySpace and Friendster began as an expanded version of online chat, and only now, with the emergence of the Facebook Timeline and Google Plus, are we beginning to see design dominance in online social platforms. Or are we? Pinterest is driving a completely different look for social sharing, and Facebook’s frequent updates still drive people nuts.
• They lack performance analytics: Views, shares, likes, retweets, leads, opportunities, influence, and engagement…the list goes on. These terms are still fairly new, and it’s unclear which of these communications metrics actually mean much to a company’s bottom line. More importantly, how marketers can best manipulate these numbers remains a mystery, as does how they can readily use these metrics to drive true business impact.
• They lack an audience: A disruptive innovation is usually a simple fix to a product that is meaningful only to a small group of people, the way content management systems began as a better way to store documents and share them with people across internal networks. It mattered only to IT managers. Today, a CMS like WordPress allows any web publisher to share just about anything with the whole world, using customized designs and access levels.
• They lack an application: It’s usually easy to see something emerge, but be unable to imagine a use for it. Look at the iPad, which sold well at the outset but originally stymied people as to its best use. The complaints included “no keyboard”, “too big to be a phone”, and “too underpowered to run desktop applications”. That didn’t matter. Mobile apps and cloud technology combined drove the success of these platforms, and now people can browse, read, search, communicate, and view videos while watching TV, working in retail or healthcare, sitting at the beach, or riding the train.

In online media, whether it is for communications or social sharing, disruption is driving incredible changes in the way we do things. It’s already hard to imagine how we got by without Facebook, and five years from now we’ll wonder how we survived without something some software developer is creating right now.

But disruption still has its holdouts. On the subway ride home, I saw a student reading Clayton Christensen’s book “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns”.

In hardcover.

Originally published on The KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog.

And it’s not just websites. Designers of operating systems, e-commerce sites, content management systems, online training tools, business intelligence systems, and social platforms always strive to make them more useful.

Why? The most basic driver of an interface’s popularity is that people have a productive time using it.

Usability means e-commerce sites that get found and help shoppers complete the sale. It means marketing automation tools that provide useful feedback for making sales and marketing decisions. It means interactive online games with intuitive controls that are easy to figure out.

It also means online presentation hosting platforms that make content easy to publish and share.

The Basics Of Usability

There are companies and industry segments dedicated to pursuing interface efficiency as a strategy, and there is even a job title: the Usability expert.

We’ve all seen this process, when our perfectly-designed interface still managed to stymie some users. Who hasn’t felt the urge to pull their hair out when users said they couldn’t find the big green button that clearly reads “Buy Now”? Usability is more than ‘ease of use, or the size of the buttons; it also demands that everything be where people expect to find it, and the entire flow of the interface make sense. It prescribes asset load times, plain language, popups, box shapes, colors, fonts, backgrounds, shadows, and consistency.

Leading usability consultant Jakob Nielsen has defined these five Usability Goals: Any interface should be easy to learn, respond quickly, be simple to remember, allow for errors, and give the user an experience that is satisfying and pleasant. We all know of online tools that change over time, reverting us all to beginner status, or don’t give us a way out when we make a mistake.

How To Be More Useful

Taking these goals into consideration, here are basic ways you can make your web content easier to find and use, allowing your audience to be more productive:

Be Found: The first goal of anyone reaching out to an audience, whether they are potential customers or students, is to be searchable. This means using the latest web SEO tactics, and also using smart filenames and keywords that allow a user to search any kind of database to find your product, site, and relevant materials.

Be Quick: Once your products are found, users need to quickly understand how to begin using them. If it’s a training application, it should immediately clear to them how they can start learning from it. In the case of a marketing site or landing page, the call to action should be obvious, and it should also be very clear why they should follow it.

Be Dynamic: Usually, people will understand a course of action better if they see it being used, rather than reading about it. This is why videos and talking landing pages are so popular today. Whether it’s a lecture, an interview, a site tour, a demonstration, a slide presentation, or an animation, moving images help people see what you’re trying to tell them.

Be Thorough: When you give people a roadmap, you show them the entire trip from beginning to end. When you create online presentations for marketing or training, you should take your viewers on a journey that shows them every turn. This means offering materials that include additional links and articles, references, and detailed graphics. For productivity’s sake, these supplemental items should not get in the way, but be there in case the user wants to dig deeper.

Be Present: This means you are available while your user goes through the process. The prevalence of chat popups and prominent contact information on websites is testament to this. You are providing an experience, and when people have questions, you should be ready to respond quickly, whether by email, chat, social tools, or live video chat.

If you strive for usability in the online experience you provide, you accomplish several things: You make your product and materials more readily available and searchable; you help your viewers fulfill their needs more effectively, and you establish trust from your audience.

For your website, learning content, e-commerce sites and applications, it’s best to use communications tools that fulfill these basic needs.

Originally published on The KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog.

I’ve spent thousands of words on video strategy covering everything from production to social sharing to types of videos.

Enough! No more strategy today. It’s time to get tactical about online presentations.

It’s time to just document exactly what I do to put an online presentation together. Let’s pull back that curtain, so to speak, and go behind the scenes. Yes, I know, it’s a cliche.

View The Presentation Here.

It all starts with an idea.

Sometimes it’s something I see in industry news, related to the video presentation or production industry, or social media, or marketing, or sales.

It could be an event that happens, or something big in the news, like company A buying company B and ‘what does it mean?’ for the rest of us.

It could be a thought that’s been bugging me for awhile. Those are the best, because they’re already internalized and don’t have to be cobbled together from new research.

Then the work begins.

Say I, like most people, hate when I open a granola or chocolate bar and get those annoying little tags to throw away. So I google it and find out there’s a better way. And it also makes it easier to avoid all those crumbs.

See what I did there? Real research. So the next thing I do is try to support it by finding other sources of research. Then I’ll pick the two or three I trust the most or are the most relevant to the discussion, and use them as supporting links.

Writing is a craft.

And like anything you can do well, it requires technique. Some of that is the technique we all learned in high school, like paragraphs must flow from one to the next in a predictable manner.

The way to open a granola bar is to pull the wrapper apart at one end and push it through. If you try to tear the crimped, you usually get this annoying tag and the granola won’t come out.

See? That made no sense.

It’s important to discuss the point, support the point, then reiterate the point. It’s that old sales chestnut: “Tell people what you’re going to say, say it, then remind them what you said.”

See what I did there? Humor is not necessary, which is probably what you’re thinking right now.

Once I’ve got an article written, I’ll turn it into a blog post, an email, a set of social updates, a chapter for a paper, and a script. It’s the script I want to show you now. This is the script for this video you’re watching right now.

Let’s Make A Video!

Now, I use a mobile device to import the script into an app called Prompter Plus. There are other teleprompter type applications. The app lets you switch the way the text scrolls and even ties to an iPhone (using Bluetooth) to control how fast it goes.

Then I go to my studio where I’ve got all kinds of equipment. This is the DV and HDV camera, but I’m not using the tapes anymore. If I go remote, like to the parking lot, maybe. But in the studio it’s Firewire.

Straight to the Mac. Why is it always Mac? Because they’re hip and sleek and cool and we all want to be hip and sleek and cool, right?

I run Adobe Premiere Pro, which I’d love to go into more detail on but that’s a whole new topic. Once your settings match the output of the camera, all you have to do is turn the camera on, plug in the microphone through the camera or a separate preamp.

And then you go into Capture mode. Press record and go.

I forgot what I was going to say. Oh, yeah, Teleprompter:

“When designing for mobile devices, the most critical component is intuition. There’s not a lot of room on a tablet, and people need to know intuitively what buttons they are supposed to press to make things happen.”

After the gig is done, the captured video becomes a clip you can edit, while the talent goes on to bigger and better things.

It’s time to edit. Usually, I just clip out the junk at the beginning while I set up. Then I clip the end. If there are any issues with the video, I’ll make some adjustments, save and export the video file. By the way, I make my videos h.264 mp4 in 720 x 540 resolution.

Now it’s time for PowerPoint.

Do you really want to see how I create a PowerPoint?

And that’s kind of it. From there, you can do anything. The sky is the limit. All you need is a camera, presentation software, video editing tools, and an idea.

Oh, and a few granola bars.

Thanks for watching!

Originally published on The KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog.

With so many advanced tools out there, it’s easy to think of communications technology as something we’ve always had. We wake up in the morning, and there’s yet another social media platform to learn about.

Books are written to show us why we should use them, and how we can best use them for… sharing content, making money, spreading knowledge, promoting music and making people laugh with clever pictures of cats.

It should be amazing.

Furthermore, what must it have been like when we woke in the morning and there was no such thing as social media? There was no radio, no television, no telegraph. If we wanted to know what was happening in the world, we had to hike down to the nearest general store and buy a newspaper. To make our own voice heard, we had to write to that paper, or step onto the nearest soapbox.

Today, we can simply post a random thought to a social site and hundreds, or thousands, of people will see it. Maybe more. We can easily take that for granted.

Imagine how ‘viral’ it must have felt when a few people stopped in front of your soapbox to listen.

Imagine how amazing it was the day people realized they could project their voices across rivers, states, and continents.

Imagine waking up in the morning to be overwhelmed by new technology, to see your way of life shifting before your eyes.

When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, that’s exactly what happened. For the first time, sounds could be recorded and reproduced, storing speeches, lessons, music and news reports for posterity. Content. People thought it was magic. The potential for such technology was endless.

And it still is. Today we have the ability to lean toward our notebook computer screen and make a video recording. We can use that recording for sharing ideas, spreading knowledge, asking questions, exploring, or just joking around. We probably think nothing of it. We know it’s not magic, but the technology beneath modern communications tools is nothing short of amazing.

That’s why we have the Edison Awards to remind us that amazement is never far away. This is an annual award given by Edison Universe, an organization dedicated to innovation. The Edison Awards recognize technological advancements that, in the spirit of Thomas Edison, shift the ground beneath our feet and change the way we do things forever.

That’s why KnowledgeVision is extremely proud to be a finalist for the Edison Award in Content Management. The company is recognized for its KVTrack content analytics features, an ingenious way to measure how viewers engage with online presentation content.

The Edison Awards remind us that even though we’re no longer limited to soapboxes, we can still wake up every day to be amazed and astounded by a world that has completely changed.

To be inspired. That’s what innovation is all about.

Originally published on The KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog.

It was a topic of discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It’s even been the topic of a Thomas Friedman column.

What does this mean?

Is e-Learning mainstream? Does the guy in accounting who still uses a Palm Pilot know about it yet? He probably does, and his aunt Gertrude told him (Thanks, Gert!).

e-Learning At A Crossroads

It’s a funny thing, being part of a trend. You feel like the guy at the wedding who starts a new dance routine, and some of the cool people join in. Then when everybody else picks it up you head back to your table. It’s not cool anymore. There’s a sweet spot you need to be in: not the first one to try something; but the one who observes, learns the weaknesses, and improves upon it.

“Oh, I see, let’s tie the bungee cord to the bridge this time.”

This is where e-Learning, including organizations like edX, Coursera, Blackboard, Skillsoft, Udacity, lynda.com and nearly a hundred others choose a path to become tomorrow’s Googles and Apples (or DECs).

Did you know that college enrollment fell for the first time in 15 years, while enrollment in online courses rose for the 9th straight year? The numbers are of course incomparable, but the trends are telling. So is the fact that enrollment in accredited online courses is rising more than 10% each year.

How To Choose Your Next Platform

Whether you’re part of a university, or a company building its own training courses, you should probably think not just about making e-Learning technology part of your programs, but centering your strategy around e-Learning tools. Beyond the standard features like ease of use, LMS integration, SCORM compliance, test management, and internal communications tools, the capabilities you should demand are:

• Mobile-Readiness: These days, trainees and students are going to use all sorts of devices for online learning, and mobile tablets are likely to become a primary tool for them. Unfortunately, mobile devices come in several different sizes and run on two or three major operating systems that don’t use the same technologies for dynamic media. The ability to display your training content in Flash, Javascript and HTML5, as well as the ability to detect mobile devices are all potential requirements for any learning platform.
• Rich Media Compatibility: How are you going to interface with your trainees? Are you going to use video, Flash, audio, Podcasts, PowerPoint slides, PDFs, high-resolution graphics? No matter what you want to use, your e-Learning platform should be capable of integrating all of it into the learning interface. It should also be possible for end users to select the method that works best for them and control the playback.
• Social Integration: It’s possible to use social tools as a major avenue of communications for your online training programs. If you choose a learning platform that can integrate social media into the user interface, you’ll be better able to create a community around your courses and communicate in a way that students and trainees have become used to.
• Cloud Hosting: There is little need to store all of your materials in your own servers any longer. Unless your IT department requires a high measure of security, using cloud storage makes it easier for students to take part in your courses anywhere, anytime, without using a VPN or specialized software applications. Cloud hosting also alleviates your responsibility for the immense storage and memory requirements of an e-Learning program.
• Personalization: Trainees and students interface with your organization and its brand, not the learning platform’s brand. Why should they be forced to jump from the experience you wish to provide to a different one dictated by someone else’s design? An e-Learning platform should be configurable to match your look and feel, and beyond that, it should be possible for the trainees to define their own experience.
• Accessibility: This can’t be stressed enough. Trainees will have different learning preferences and may have trouble dealing with one method or another. Your chosen e-Learning platform should be capable of making courses accessible to people with hearing or vision impairments by using captioning, selectable text sizes, audio controls, and specialized downloadable materials.

e-Learning has hit the big-time, but it’s still only the beginning. You should definitely evaluate as many of the latest tools as you have the patience for, but beyond picking a platform, it’s your strategy that is most important. It should combine the latest technologies, communications tools, and storage capabilities, to stay ahead of the curve.

Originally published on The KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog.

Transcript: How To Maximize The Micro-Learning Phenomenon

Hello again. I’m Tom Bishop of KnowledgeVision. And today I’m talking about the micro-learning phenomenon, and how your organization can take advantage of it for training people.

Micro-learning is not new. It’s when companies and educators create narrow groups of courses or topics, like just teaching about copyright protection instead of business law, or covering a subject for a limited time, or using only a certain process, like flash cards or listening devices.

But the internet is especially well-suited for micro-learning applications, which is why online training and micro-learning are both taking off today.

The benefits of micro-learning include that it’s good for ‘pull’ instead of ‘push’ distribution, that means people who want to learn something very specific, like how to replace the headlamp in a Ford Focus, can easily find it.

Another benefit is that Internet technology such as XML allows you to easily categorize learning content to make it more manageable and searchable.

How do you Maximize Micro-Learning?

In corporate training and education, a lot of things you do already will help. You outline a curriculum, plan course materials and design a schedule.

Online courses mean you can teach people anywhere, anytime. For online delivery of your courses, you may need specific tools for managing materials, like aLearning Management System, or LMS. Universities like Stanford and MIT have fully engaged online courses, in many cases partnering with businesses such as EdX or Coursera. Companies use platforms like Skillsoft to store course materials, creating their own specialized universities.

And the biggest companies have caught on. For instance, Google has recently released Course Builder, an open-source tool, beyond its existing LMS app marketplace. And it’s also tied in with the Google+ social platform, where course providers and participants can use its Hangouts feature. This means online micro-learning just became mainstream. That’s huge.

It also means people in corporate training, who are plenty familiar with tools like Google Apps but not necessarily Canvas or Moodle, can take advantage of academic feature sets.

So you’ve got your course material, now you need people to deliver it. Online micro-learning tools let your content experts become your in-house professors. They don’t need to stand at a podium for 60 minutes to deliver an entire lesson. It may take 5 or 10 minutes to get the point across. The people on the other end may only have that 10 minutes.

Imagine your product leader showcasing a new feature for your product. How long should it take? You want to illustrate a new lunch policy. A few minutes at most. You have a new agency contract clause. A few minutes.

Micro-learning tools are online and easily searchable, so nobody has an excuse for missing or not finding it, and because online course tools let you track viewership and activity, you’ll know who viewed your new policies and who didn’t. Think about that kind of tracking, for employees who are supposed to watch a safety video, students who need a certification, outside sales professionals or agents who need to keep up with contract changes. You got ‘em.

Once you gather the materials and the people to showcase them, it’s time to plan your courses. Write a script, using existing slide materials, or simply turn on the video camera and let your content expert talk passionately about the topic. It’s easy to create the slides from the talk. Now you need a schedule, and a place to host your courses, where you can update and replace them on a regular basis.

You know who’s doing this well? TED talks. They’ve made hundreds of videos on various topics that teach and inspire. And they’re easily sharable through social media.

So what do you need to do to maximize micro-learning? First, determine what kind of schedule you’d like to fill, daily, weekly, monthly and so on. Decide whether to use a course management platform, create a number of topics to cover, get people on-board who can present and keep people listening, create the materials, and publish it.

You do not have to be a huge organization to do this. The Khan Academy started with one guy making a few instructional videos for his friends.

Micro-Learning is a wave worth catching. Hop on.

Thank you for watching.

Originally published on The KnowledgeVision Fresh Ideas Blog