Every so often we get a comment from someone asking us why we create screencasts and videos when our screenshot application, ScreenSteps, is specifically designed to work with static screenshots. We always tell them that ScreenSteps isn’t the only communication tool we use. We use whatever tool is most effective for the specific type of communication we are creating.

For introducing new users to our products or introducing new features to our existing users, we find videos and screencasts to be very effective. With a well produced screencast we can communicate the benefits of our products in a short and engaging video presentation. But until recently, we didn’t really appreciate the importance of short in “short and engaging”.

According to this post over at Wistia, user attention rates drop off dramatically as video length increases. We recently started using Wistia to host our videos. They have this great “video heat map” feature that lets you see not only how many people are watching your videos, but how much of the video they are watching. (more…)

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.

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