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Captivate Computer Languages Process Visual Aids

Interactivity Brings New Life to Traditional e-Learning

The Work Management Process is an initiative of one of our clients to standardize the process of work identification, planning, and completion at power plants the Company owns and operates. This process aims to transition work activities at power plants from a reactive to a planned mode, thereby improving asset reliability and lowering costs.

The purpose of this training is to present an overview of the Work Management Process either as a refresher for existing employees or as an introduction for new employees.

The training is broken down into six lessons, each of which correspond to a particular step within the Work Management “Wheel.”  Unlike a training course delivered via a learning management system, this training is completely open-ended so learners are free to explore and learn at their own pace.

Although this training is open-ended, some managers wanted their employees’ progress  to be tracked to test their mastery of the content.  Learners can directly link to a short quiz stored within an online learning management system from the Work Management Process Training site.

Goals and Objectives

The original Work Management Process Training existed as a 180-page document that learners had to read.  Once our Technical Communications project team got our hands on that, we all recognized that we had an opportunity to create a unique eLearning experience from this training.

The primary goal of the training site is to create an interactive, online resource that employees can visit to learn about the Work Management Process.  Using a simple design, contextual links and actions, drill-down exploration of content, and leveraging interactive learning experiences, our training site easily stands out as a technology-based learning site unlike any other training initiatives we have created in the past.

Categories
Business Process Writing

Expanding Markets Means Expanding Understanding

Aberdeen Group completed a study earlier this year that indicates when technical communications are approached strategically, companies provide significant customer-facing value. – David Houlihan, Senior Research with Aberdeen’s Product Innovation and Engineering Practice.

Categories
Business Writing

Manuals: Why They Do Not Matter

Christmas, 2009:
The penguin wrapping paper is shredded from an oblong, rectangular package, carefully branded by a stark white apple on black monochrome — The Apple iPod ® Nano. The product is reverently lifted from the case along with the ear buds and sleek quick start guide, leaving the thick, intimidating, and unhelpful paper manual in the bottom — it might as well have been packing peanuts. Why do manufacturers bother with the archaic manual documentation which wastes paper, takes up unneeded space, and adds weight to the shipping fee? The product is blithely toyed with, prodded, poked, and explored without so much as a cursory glance to the woe begotten manual in the box, the user happily glancing through the quick start guide if they come upon any snags in the process of operating their new system. The manual is never read, collects dust, and slowly sinks into oblivion. Let’s explore why the manual falls to such a fate.

Categories
Computer Languages VBScript

Using Visual Basic to Automate PowerPoint Printing

For the past three years, I have been trying to find a way to automate the tedious task of printing two copies of 30 plus PowerPoint Presentations to PDF, first as Notes Pages and then as 3 Slides Per Page Handouts.  Every six months I would spend a few hours testing various batch printing applications to see if they would complete this task for me.  Unfortunately, every time I would find they would only print the standard One Slide Per Page view without the Notes field included.

Categories
Business Visual Aids

Clients, Please Choose: Good, Fast, or Cheap?

goodfastcheap

Clients often want everything, but the simple truth of the matter is that nobody gets everything they want – there is always a tradeoff somewhere, and that can be hard to explain to management types.  This is a struggle that every hired gun will have to deal with eventually, but it CAN be done!

I recently came across an intersting post at Future Perfect which explains the concept very simply using Rhys Newman’s handy graphical representation of the triangular relationship between fast, good, and cheap.  Just remember, the closer you get to one of these, the further you are from the other two.

This is defnitely something you’ll want to keep in your toolbelt when pitching projects to clients.

Happy estimating!

Categories
Humor? Language Writing

Think That Abbreviation Through

As a technical writer, I feel communicating well is the primary focus of my job. Perhaps this is why I found the following email exchange particularly comical today:

Email from <name deleted to protect the innocent … or not so innocent>:

Categories
Business Process Writing

Making New Programs Easier: A Case Approach

It is often difficult to know what the priorities are when creating a successful new program. As a project manager for Shoap Technical Services, I have a fair amount of experience initiating new projects. Over the years, I have developed a few key “rules” for every project. While I could just go through my list and explain why I think each rule is important, I think it is easiest to learn through experience, so I have illustrated them through a case study of a recent project.

Categories
Captivate

More Buttons!

Recently, I was working on a new Captivate project when I noticed that one of my go-to buttons did not show up in the drop-down menu with button styles.  Most of the projects where I used that particular style were created in Captivate v.2, so I assumed that the button styles were unique to that version of the application.

Wrong.

Categories
Captivate

Captivate -ing Discoveries

error1.jpgIf you’ve just started using Captivate, the best advice I can give is the kind that should be printed in big, friendly letters on the front of every technology-related reference guide or manual… DON’T PANIC.  While there are a million and one reasons to use our favorite demo/presentation/simulation software, there are a few issues that you are inevitably going to have to deal with.  In the past I’ve written about consistent, reproducible errors that I’ve had to work around, but once in a while I run into something entirely new and unpredictable.

error2.jpg

After recording a demo today, I went back into the project to edit the auto-generated captions.  I checked the “Apply To All” options and then changed the caption style from Adobe Blue to Haloblue.  The default text size for both caption styles is 12 pts, but when I clicked OK, it changed all caption text to the Haloblue style… at 16 pts.

I undid the change, re-tried it on the same caption, and saw the same behavior.  After closing and re-opening Captivate, I could no longer replicate the issue.

So don’t panic.  Always reboot first.

Categories
Useful Links

Typeface Detectives Do It For You

I don’t have time to write yet another long post complaining about Captivate today, so I figured I would tell you about some useful font-matching tools that I’ve come across lately:

wtf21.JPG

  • What The Font? (above) – upload a sample image containing the text that you wish to analyze, and then confirm the characters shown in the image when prompted.  A few seconds later, WTF spits out a list possible fonts.  It was successful in identifying the font used for its own logo, so it is at least functional, but more extensive testing is needed – still, it is a useful tool to keep in your bookmark file.

fontthing1.JPG

  • Identifont (above) – similar to What The Font, Identifont will ask you around 15 questions about a font you are looking at and then take a guess as to what it is.  Didn’t have much luck with this one (got confused with Times New Roman) but then again I was only using a few letters.  I also can’t rule out user error since some of the questions were worded in such a way that they confused me.  I guess that’s what I get for being an “ESL” kid…

Hopefully these tools will make font-matching a little bit easier next time you need to do something like that.  Enjoy!