DEMO - Version 3 - Search Surveys

We're busy preparing for the 2009 WorldatWork show. There are lots of details to keep track up, including ordering booth giveaways, making sure the booth furniture is ordered, and of course finishing up Version 3 development.

We're making great progress and I had a chance yesterday to make a short demo of the new Search Surveys page in Version 3. I wanted to share the process with you, just in case you wonder how these types of demos are made.

It starts with a general idea of the flow of the demo. I ask myself questions such as:

• What do I want to show?


• What do I not want to show for this demo (trying to keep it short and on point)?


• What do I show first, second, and third, etc.?

I hand write some notes and then I run through the demo, without recording it, a few times. I usually end up practicing the demo between three and five times. Then I'll setup a camera and actually video record myself making the introduction to the video and the closing comments.

Here's my high tech camera stand! I forgot my tripod, so I made do with a box and some books. It worked just fine though.



It was interesting this time since we're in a new office. I had to try a few different locations and angles of the camera. I didn't want too much clutter in the background. Notice that I covered up a few boxes with some artwork, in the background on top of the closed cabinets.



It's little stuff in the video that I'm looking for at this stage.

Once I've found the right angle, I'll actually record the introduction and wrap-up. I may do this a few times to get the wording correct and the framing of the video correct.

Next I'll switch to the screen recording. I'm using a tool called ScreenFlow. It's awesome for screen capturing. It's Mac only, but since I'm running Parallels virtual machine I can screen capture my Windows desktop if needed.

The next step, once the screen capturing is complete, is to add the zoom and pan effects to the captured video. This is a fun exercise and really lets me focus in on the important aspects of the demo. It's also really easy to accomplish with ScreenFlow.

I'll watch the video a few times and I may edit out some segments that seem off point or don't add to the demo. Then I export the movie for importing into iMovie 09.



iMovie 09 is where I combine the live video introduction and wrap-up with the screen capture. I add transitions to the video and titles. This is another fun part of the process because I can be creative with the titling.

Finally I export the finished movie to iTunes in three sizes: mobile, medium and large. The mobile version runs on iPods and iPhones the medium and large versions are used for uploading to the web for embedding in web pages.

The large size video is uploaded to Viddler where it's converted to a Flash video format. I can then embed the video in my web pages for viewing in any web browser.

That's about it. It takes some time, but hopefully the end result is worth the effort. We have many more demos planned and they will all be available on the Help Page in Version 3 under the Videos section and some of them will be available on the Demos page of our public website.

Here's the finished video.