Taking a Test Drive

If you build it, they will come. But if they don't understand it, they'll leave. That's a nightmare scenario for software professionals who've spent months codifying their intellectual capital into a solution they hope will solve their customers' problems. Unfortunately, what appears obvious to those who have nurtured a product since its inception may be utterly and completely incomprehensible to the customer using the product for the first time. How many enterprise software developers have observed seemingly intelligent executives fumble through what appeared to be a blatantly intuitive way to access a program's functionality? Polarization between developers reassessing their leaders' IQ and executives frustrated by the inoperable nature of a project that's expended valuable company resources can create a needlessly adversarial rift.

Imagine, however, if the user base were properly trained, or better yet, educated on the program's functionality and sample use during the development cycle. The challenge is to ascertain how much time should be spent on product demonstration and training efforts. And, given the range of available software demonstration and presentation solutions, resistance to these training vehicles is disappearing because of their ease of use, low cost and quickly perceived benefits. This guide separates such packages into Presentation, Demonstration and Interaction solutions, according to their flexibility and the amount of time necessary to learn and compile an effective presentation with them. Many of the tools serve multiple masters, from marketing departments to project stakeholders and technical support organizations. Even so, the problem is the same for everyone: how to clearly communicate a message in the most effective context, via the broadest medium and at the lowest cost.

Presentations
Microsoft PowerPoint has become the most prevalent presentation program in today's business environment—the corporate phrase "Send me your deck" is nearly as common as "Let's do lunch." Even kindergarten students are taught the program's fundamental operation. Consequently, almost every one of the packages featured in this guide converts static PowerPoint presentations to synchronized audio and, with certain products, video. One of the simplest applications that embodies this approach is Anystream Apreso for PowerPoint. Unlike other systems that convert the entire PowerPoint presentation with merged audio and/or video elements to a media file, Apreso for PowerPoint splits the synchronized output into separate elements, each contained within a separate area in the browser. While its one-click record, one-click publish option may appeal to minimalists seeking the least obtrusive way to publish a narrated PowerPoint presentation to a website, the exclusive Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher browser requirement and the lack of customization possible to the interface may make Apreso too inflexible for all but the most rudimentary and Windows-exclusive audiences.

Macromedia's Captivate and TechSmith's CamtasiaStudio take a more inclusive approach to both the applications they can present and the platforms they can deliver to. Both allow presenters to capture onscreen activities and compile these actions into a Flash-formatted file. Both programs also support editing the captured presentation, including the addition of text captions, buttons, other media elements and limited conditional paths based on the user's response. However, CamtasiaStudio currently takes the lead for its enhanced abilities, such as screen pan and zoom, customized Web and CD-ROM interfaces, and output to not only Flash, but Quicktime, RealMedia and Windows Media formats. CamtasiaStudio offers far more features and is $200 less expensive than the nearest direct competitor.

One of the most innovative presentation packages is Serious Magic's Visual Communicator. For those who remember the Commodore Amiga-based Video Toaster, imagine that remarkable piece of hardware reborn entirely in software. All versions of Visual Communicator include a 5x4 "V-screen"—a vinyl green-screen matte for inlaying superimposed live backgrounds on the subject being taped in real-time. Other real-time effects include fly-bys, fades, wipes, titles and text overlays, and even a full-screen teleprompter for the presenter to use while they're being captured. The product's interface makes it one of the most entertaining live-subject capture programs. Unfortunately, it's marred by two limitations beyond the program's control: the inability to place the camera in the middle of the screen, diverting the speakers from the center of the camera, and the effect of poor lighting on the green-screened background. Still, its intuitive use is far more approachable and considerably less expensive than professional Non-Linear Editing (NLE) video applications that do most of what Visual Communicator provides in real-time. In fact, Visual Communicator can support up to three simultaneous video inputs, each with separate green-screen background effects for a remarkably cost-effective broadcast studio. While it may not be appropriate for conservative corporate presentations, anti-staid sales and marketing staff will admire the comprehensive set of broadcast features that Visual Communicator has to offer.

Demonstrations
Some would argue that demonstrations are synonymous with presentations. As such, some of the presentation packages discussed could also be stretched to create interactive demos. While one-way presentations serve a majority of communication purposes, some presentations demand a higher degree of interactivity, especially when the target audience needs to actively participate in the learning process. The ideal scenario would be a one-on-one level of instruction, but this approach doesn't scale well when a large number of recipients are involved. To address this problem, several companies have created more interactive solutions while keeping the learning curve and demonstration development time to a minimum. Some of the presentation packages may serve this classification, though the work required to gain adequate interactivity in them may be counterintuitive and time-consuming. One company whose product straddles the two categories is Qarbon, with its ViewletBuilder Professional program. In addition to creating Flash-based presentations, ViewletBuilder Pro can hook into enterprise Learning Management Systems (LMS), collect data in text fields and even keystroke captures, and output to Windows, Linux or Macintosh executables for playback.

InstallShield, a company recently acquired by Macrovision, offers a product called DemoShield, designed to execute stand-alone software demonstrations. DemoShield uses the same metaphors the company's created for its popular InstallShield software installation product, and can pull selected text to and from an ODBC-compliant database using its Query Database Action function. As such, DemoShield can be used as a rudimentary front end to a database-driven learning system.

Another company specializing in the demonstration of software-based products is TurboDemo. Like DemoShield, TurboDemo can generate a stand-alone Windows executable that contains the demonstration as well as Flash and video formats that can be encoded into other formats or brought into a video editing package for incorporation into a larger video-based tutorial. Unlike DemoShield, TurboDemo can also generate a Java-based compilation for cross-platform delivery, and is ideal for enterprises with investments in client-side Java applications seeking a Java-capable application demonstration system. Yet, while these demonstration applications bring audiences much closer to an ideal educational experience, their simplicity limits their usefulness. For the organization committed to dedicating resources to a customized learning experience with extensive programming logic and greater presentation and demonstration flexibility, interactivity is key.

Interactions
Sometimes simply branching and navigating audiovisual segments just isn't good enough. Whether it's a highly customized training scenario or a stand-alone kiosk application that must dynamically collect data for deeper analysis and interact for more targeted audience comprehension and retention, systems designed for presentations and demonstrations are often too inflexible or incapable of delivering all the features a cost-conscious marketing or training organization may seek. Solutions in this category are highly scriptable and generate stand-alone executables.

Indigo Rose, a company best known for its software installation and update products, offers an interactive media development environment called AutoPlay Media Studio 5.0 that uses Lua as its scripting language. Lua (Portuguese for moon) was designed by the Brazilian team at Tecgraf, the Computer Graphics Technology Group of PUC-Rio. While not object-oriented, the language uses a concept known as meta-mechanisms for implementing classes and inheritance. Anyone who's worked with Visual Basic or JavaScript will be able to quickly learn and apply the Lua syntax in AutoPlay Media Studio to produce highly specialized productions.

For those who seek the ultimate in interactivity and can afford the best interactive systems that money can buy, Macromedia offers its flagship Authorware title, the main program comprising Macromedia's eLearning Suite 2004. This application is well outside the range of simple screen recording and playback. It's a complex tool that offers tremendous flexibility for the eLearning and kiosk application development crowd. It sports a vast number of features that clearly edge it into the enterprise development category, reinforced by its hefty price tag. Nevertheless, with its extensive hooks into external function calls, DVD playback hosted within a stand-alone shell, visual flowline displays, Section 508 accessibility compliance, JavaScript support and extensive LMS support via Authorware's Knowledge Objects, Macromedia's eLearning Suite 2004 is unquestionably the head of its class.

One last outlier in the world of digital interactivity is the virtual medium by which such presentations and demonstrations are delivered. Stand-alone canned presentations can't compete with a live performance of the material. For those organizations fortunate enough and fiscally capable of using these virtual meeting spaces, employment of such facilities helps ensure that higher levels of understanding are achieved faster. The two most popular virtual meeting and delivery vehicles are WebEx and Microsoft LiveMeeting (formerly known as Placeware prior to Microsoft's acquisition). However, Macromedia has recently entered the market with Breeze. Breeze rounds out Macromedia's Flash Everywhere mantra by providing both the platform and output from its comprehensive product line of Flash-friendly products. (See "It's a Breeze" for more information.)

Evaluation Criteria
The tool matrix summarizes the products discussed in this article, and by no means does it represent all the software presentation, demonstration and eLearning solutions available today. In fact, the realm of eLearning assessment and measurement tools intended to evaluate the effectiveness or "stickiness" of a presentation or tutorial is beyond the scope of this article. There's also a unique, hybrid category of new business development and demonstration tools designed to prototype the functionality, look and feel of an application before a single line of code is written. CodeMorphis's Synposis product is an example of this new approach. To help differentiate the products discussed in this guide, I've highlighted three criteria to help readers choose the most appropriate solution for their needs:

Distinct Features. I've pointed out standout features either best implemented or exclusively available in the product. This is especially helpful information when you're evaluating the crowded market of Flash-centric and PowerPoint presentation compilers.

Market Buzz. With this somewhat subjective measure, I've tried to describe the amount of excitement the product is generating among the press and the committed customer base. I've also assessed the company's longevity and commitment to its product and customer success. This category also logs criticisms about the product.

Cost. This is often the most scrutinized, but not necessarily the most important consideration in any software investment. Several of the products mentioned offer editions of varying levels of sophistication and additional feature sets. Many of them encapsulate functionality that was available only in cumbersome, expensive and unnecessarily complex computer-based authoring training systems in the past. In fact, the majority of the included products cost less than the entry-level prices of the most rudimentary CBT authoring tools available only a few years ago.