In our recent webinar, Video, Screencasts and Still Images – Using the Right Tool at the Right Time, we spent a brief amount of time on the concept of Scope vs. Detail in your customer interactions. What do we mean when we talk about scope vs. detail? All communications have a naturally or arbitrarily enforced time/length constraint. The communication may be limited by several factors:

• The time the person is willing to devote to the communication
• The time the person is able to devote to the communication
• The attention the person is able to give the communication

By being aware of these constraints you can adjust the scope and detail of your communications so that each communication can be “completed” in the available amount of time depending on willingness, availability and attention span.

House Sketch

Let’s look at the process of building a house. The first communication will likely be a sketch of the finished home. This is very high in scope (it covers the entire house) but very low in detail (we have no information on measurements, materials, room size, division, etc.). We certainly couldn’t build a house based on a sketch. We wouldn’t even decide to build a home based solely on a sketch. But it is the first step we take in that decision process. The communication is complete and we are able to decide if we want to move onto the next communication.

Floor Plans

Next we have floor plans. Here we have decreased the scope. We are dealing with just the inside of the home and only one floor at a time. But we have increased the detail. We can now see basic measurements for the rooms, where doors will be, where the hallways will be and where we might put furniture and appliances. Once this communication is complete we will know if we want to continue to the next stage or revise the floor plans to better meet our needs.

Blueprints

Finally we move to the blueprints. This is very high in detail but lower in scope. We no longer have information about furniture, it is all about building the structure to the required specifications.

Are You Starting Out With Blueprints or Ending With Floor Plans?

With each communication you create, be it a blog post, video, screencast or ScreenSteps lesson, you want to keep this idea of scope and detail in mind. Is the communication a sketch of a house? Then it should be very broad in scope and low in detail. Does the communication need to be a blueprint? Then make sure that you lower the scope and increase the detail.

The real mistake happens when your first communication with a customer is a blueprint or your last is just a floor plan. Give the customer too much detail at the beginning and they will be lost. Leave them with not enough information and they won’t be able to successfully implement your product/solution.

In future posts we will look at some real world examples of this principle in action.

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Yesterday we had a great webinar titled “Video, Screencasts and Still Images – Using the Right Tool at the Right Time”. The real question is “Do I screencast or ScreenStep?” A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that sceencasting/videos and still image how-to guides (the kind you create with ScreenSteps) are mutually exclusive options. The truth is screencasts and ScreenSteps are different types of communications for different situations.

In the webinar we laid out a framework for helping you decide when each type of communication is most effective. We looked at several good examples of videos, screencasts and ScreenSteps-like articles.

The real key to determining which tool to use is gauging the users level of engagement. If they are only marginally engaged in the content you are presenting then a screencast is going to be the best option. But if they are fully engaged then a ScreenStep-like article will be much more effective. Check out the webinar to learn why.

The reaction from the participants was fantastic. It was by far our best received webinar yet. You can see the slides below:

You can download the full webinar by clicking on the link below.

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Tomorrow we will be hosting a new webinar that will be really valuable for those of you who have to communicate with users about products you create or support.

Our customers often ask us if they should use a screen recording application, like Screenflow or Camtasia, or something like ScreenSteps (ScreenSteps is a tool for creating step by step guides out of still images).

What they are really asking is “Should I create a video/screencast or a step by step visual guide (what we call a ScreenSteps document)?”

Our answer is, “It depends.”

The truth is, if you are going to have an effective product communication strategy, you need to be using both screencasts and ScreenSteps documents. The tool you use for a specific communication depends on two things:

• The level of engagement your target audience has with your product at the moment you are communicating with them.
• The type of knowledge you are trying to transfer to that user.

In tomorrow’s webinar we will layout a framework that will help you decide when to use a screencast and when to use a ScreenSteps document. We will follow a new user through four levels of engagement with a product and discuss what type of communication is most effective at each stage. We will also provide examples of effective communications at each stage.

The four stages of user engagement with a product are:

1. Product awareness
2. Product interest
3. Product investigation
4. Product implementation

This webinar will be ideal for marketing and product managers, IT and customer support or anyone who has to educate users on product usage.

One of the key features of the Blue Mango Learning System is the length of individual lessons – they are short. Why is “short” advantageous? Several reasons:

1. Short lessons tend to be more focused on one subject. This keeps the lesson material from delving off into tangents that would be best presented in a separate lesson.
2. Focused lessons are more easily reused. A system that contains many short lessons is infinitely more flexible than a system that contains a few long lessons. Short lessons can easily be reordered, combined, and eliminated to create the building blocks to teach additional skills. This creates a learning system that is extremely expandable. A new skill can be taught by simply referencing the “short” lessons that describe the skills necessary to perform the task.
3. Short lesson are more easily consumed. The average attention span is between 15 and 20 minutes. By creating lessons that fall below this range you can make easy for the learner to consume and retain the information that is being presented.

One of the key benefits of the Blue Mango Learning System (BMLS) is the learning model it supports. Studies have shown that the average attention span hovers somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes. The BMLS focuses on creating e-learning modules that take no more than 15 minutes. In fact most of our lessons take under 10 minutes.

Why do this? Because we believe that we should deliver information in a form that is most easily consumed. If a training course consists of three separate one-hour videos the user has to block out three separate one hour blocks. If they are interrupted halfway through they may have to start over. If we take that same 3 hours of content and divide it into twelve individual 15-minute segments, the user has much more flexibility in how they will consume that information. If they have an hour block they can go through four modules. If they have a 15 minute break at lunch they can review a single lesson.

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The problem with most current ultrasound product training systems is that the Application Specialist is trying to function as an instructor. But they are an instructor faced with an impossible task. If their goal is to teach the customer or customers everything they need to know in 3 days of the type of training described in previous posts then they are destined to produce poor results. It is not their fault. It is simply an impossible task.

So what happens with subjects that are not covered during those 3 days? How does the customer get the maximum use out of their investment? What happens when there is employee turnover?

The role of Application Specialist needs to change from that of “Instructor” to that of “Facilitator”. The goal needs to change from training the customer to use the machine to training the customer to teach themselves how to use the machine.

It is the difference between giving someone a fish or teaching them how to fish. The customer who knows how to fish is going to be much more satisfied in the long run.

So what was wrong with the scenario described in the previous post? It wasn’t the Application Specialist’s fault. It wasn’t the sonographers’ fault either. The problem was that the entire training situation was suboptimal. Let’s look at some of the reasons why:

1. Too much time at once – Studies have shown that the average attention span falls somewhere between 15 and 18 minutes. But the Application Specialist was there all day. In most cases you will have a high degree of productivity initially and then retention is really going to drop off. Did you notice that the beginning of the day was when they spent time learning to turn on the machine? By the time they got to more interesting topics later on in the day the sonographers’ brains were probably already overloaded.
2. No pre-training – When the Application Specialist showed up there hadn’t been any pre-training. She was going to have to teach the customer everything, even basic skills such as activating 2D modes.
3. No training resources were left behind – When the day was over the Application Specialist left and the sonographers had nothing that would help them further study what they had learned that day.
4. Too many interruptions – With patients coming in all day the training process was constantly interrupted.
5. No individual pacing – All of the sonographers had to move at the same pace. Those who picked up on things quickly would most likely drift off as the Application Specialist re-explained something to another sonographer. Someone who missed something might feel too embarrassed to ask for clarification on a subject.

In our next posting we will analyze how the incorporation of the Blue Mango Learning System can dramatically improve this scenario.

Currently most ultrasound manufacturers include several days of on-site product training with the purchase of each ultrasound machine. The question is – is this the best approach?

Let’s look at the pros of “live” training:

• Most customers are more comfortable speaking to a person than reading a user manual
• A live instructor can adjust their teaching material to your needs

• A live instructor can answer questions the customer poses

What it really comes down to is a live instructor can Customize Content, Present in a Non-Linear Fashion and Provide Background Information on Any Subject. Let’s define these terms for our purposes:

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Welcome to the Blue Mango Learning System Blog. Here we will be posting ideas on e-learning in general as well as how it can be applied specifically in the Ultrasound industry.

The Medical Ultrasound industry faces some educational challenges now as 3D/4D ultrasound is becoming more and more prevalent in the marketplace. Manufacturers are finding the 3D/4D capapbilities of their ultrasound machines are moving far beyond the understanding of customers and even their own employees.

The Blue Mango Learning System was built from the ground up to meet the needs of the Ultrasound industry. We not only developed technology for developing and deploying educational material extremely quickly but we designed an entirely new model for designing the educational framework.

Our system is built for people who:
• Want to spend as little time as possible getting up and running on a machine
• Want to get the most value (utilization) out of their machine
• Have low attention spans (actually all of us do – I have heard that the average attention span is between 15-18 min.)
• Would rather be shown than told
• Need not only a training tool but a reference tool (how can we be expected to remember everything we were taught in a training session?)

In future posts we will explain how address these issues. Please send us your comments or post them here.