I received useful feedback on the four videos I presented at the DUG meeting last weekend. Audience members included librarians and other university employees, federal employees (USGS), DataONE folks, and others, so there were a variety of viewpoints represented. Most members were naive of the current ONEMercury interface.
Attention-guiding additions such as spotlighting, zooming and panning, and arrows were positively received and will be used in the final videos. Specifically, I’ll be following the DataONE style guide for accent colors (teal, plum, orange) and fonts (Calibri). There is a need for subtitles, especially for non-native speakers.
Interestingly, almost nobody read or found useful the hints written at the bottom of the screen. In lieu of this, I’ll provide a summary of information as a static slide or card at the end of the tutorial, just before a generic plug for the other tutorials. Additionally, feedback suggests that extremely common or basic steps can be skipped for the sake of a tighter, less lengthy video. For example, an icon featuring a magnifying glass with a + is for zooming in almost every map context, so this needn’t be explained verbally, especially considering that the function is obvious when experimented with.
For the final weeks of the internship, I’ll be producing the polished videos for ONEMercury.
In other news, I’ll be attending the Ecological Society of America’s 2014 meeting in Sacramento in August to present an ignite talk on screencasting tutorials and to represent DataONE by manning their booth. I haven’t attended this meeting before, so it’ll be a great opportunity for me.