Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Myyyy Eyeeeeees!!!!

OK, I'm tired of being thrown into epileptic-like seizures as I sit through demos and walk-throughs of user interfaces.

I'm referring to speakers who twitch and jiggle the mouse, or who do a mad paint of the screen with the pointer as they search for the target they want to click.

Tip for anyone doing software training or demos:

Don't touch the mouse until you have made eye contact with the target. Then tell the user what you are going to click, and then go there smoothly (and directly) and click.

Thank you in advance.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks, I'll be creating my first Camtasia video in the next month or so and can use all of the tips such as this that I can find.

(At a previous employer, one of the managers used an animated cursor projected for all to see during meetings - just about drove me crazy.)

Jean Toland Johnson said...

I remembered this as I was giving a demo today in a webconference.
Another tip that I received as feedback:
When you're in a webconference, (I was using GoToMeeting) the screen shots lag a little for the other viewers. If you click through the screen too quickly, it is even worse than clicking through too quickly in a face-to-face demo.

Rachel said...

You are so right! This is hard to remember when doing live meetings. However, when recording demos, Captivate lets you edit the mouse path (and how fast it moves) in post production. It's been a life saver for me.