Tim Green wrote:Hi Hitch,
Rather than trying to describe this in text the easiest thing to do would be to create a small demo Xplain with a couple of slides showing what you are trying to achieve. Then mail it to
support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) with a description of the problem and I'll have a look at it. Doing it like that is normally much faster and easier than describing back and forth without being able to actually touch the thing you're describing.
On supporting challenged users: Since only users having problems are contacting you it's very easy to fall into the trap of trying to write and develop for those users who don't even try to understand anything, which can make your material less usable and helpful for the majority of users who do make the attempt. Look at the total number of your users versus the number who contact support. The great majority who don't contact you are actually doing fine. Compare it to driving: Cars, streets and street signs are designed for people who have taken the trouble to learn how to drive. If your users haven't taken the trouble to learn the basics of using computers and the operating system they are on you can't help them. It's just not possible.
Hi, Tim:
I nearly laughed when I read your reply. I mean...no offense, but If I
could make a demo Xplain, that would show you what I
WANT to achieve, I wouldn't
have this problem, actually. I can't show you what I want, using Xplain, because
it doesn't DO IT. I'll figure out some other way, but in the meantime, I guess I'm going to try to run this and video it with Camtasia and use Camtasia to make this the way I need it to be. That way, while I'll lose some crispness and resolution, I won't lose the very few animations I've used.
My WANT:
Very simply:
I want to be able to make a slide HALT and WAIT for as long as I think it will take someone to read it. So, if I've put a picture, that is just sitting there with an arrow saying "do this," with 3 paragraphs of text in the sidebar, I can give the viewer enough time to read it--that's it. Maybe I've completely and utterly misunderstood everything I've read in this thread, or the Help, or Martin's much-appreciated replies, but I do not see any place where I can say "this slide should display for X seconds." It seems a no-brainer that this should exist, but I do not see it. I've tried "Autoplay show for..." but it doesn't seem to work. Is there some OTHER setting that overrides that? Does the duration setting not "work" in the Preview? I mean, that doesn't seem right, either.
/End my want; now about WHY I'm doing this:
In terms of users--you
grossly misunderstand. It's not a handful. It's a bloody daily occurrence. They Do. Not. Read. They assume that everything will be "intuitive," meaning, they don't have to know anything. Most of my users don't understand that, for example, a "file" can't work if it doesn't have an associated program to make it "go." They don't know how to download files from browsers. They think it's my job to somehow reach through the Net and fix their issues. (And it's not me or my company. Every other individual I know, in the same line of work, has the same problems.) We have between 80-135 "projects" in production at any given moment, and at least 20% of those people will be unable to follow the instructions at all. Another 20% will call me and laugh, saying 'oh, well, I'm really BAD AT INSTRUCTIONS," like that's funny, and I end up reading the damn things over the phone to them. (Yes, really, because God FORBID that they read them.) At least half of the remaining will be unable to do something in the instructions--maybe not all of it, but some.
The bigger issue is quite simply that if they have never used this product before, they have to do several things:
- Download the product files;
- Download programs that will run the product files;
- Download and USE (biggie there) PDFs that show them what to expect, when they run the product files, and,
- Download a Word file that has a table in it, that they use to give us comments on said files, once (ha) they have them open and working.
I am very simply trying to tell them, in some way that will make a dent, that if they actually bother to read the instructions, and use what we tell them, that they'll have fewer issues and frustrations. (Not to mention, me having fewer anger issues.) The single biggest issue is that they read the first paragraph and then blithely ignore everything else and without fail, that causes problems, which I then am forced to deal with, wasting my time. And of course, they blame us. We just had a client that was hysterical, two days in a row. He was hysterical the first day, because he didn't bother to read the instructions past the first section and of course, he couldn't figure out how to do X, which was explained in detail, further down the email. That was 3 emails that had to be dealt with. Yesterday, it was something else--and he was IRATE with my staff--because he couldn't figure out where some progam was, at Apple/iTunes. Of course, apparently, his Google Finger is broken. This is the stuff that's driving me insane.
Equally, as I think I mentioned, we get people that don't download the guides and will spend many hours, writing up comment forms about "mistakes" that aren't. They waste their time and then I have to address it, because they're FURIOUS that we've screwed up their project--not understanding that of course, we didn't make a mistake. They simply don't understand how it works. I'm now at the point where I care a lot less that they wasted their OWN time, but I'm forced to address it, and make a video or screenshots and explain everything that they don't understand because they didn't RTFI and view the Guides and do what we tell them in there, so that they'll understand how the thing works.
Seriously, Tim--if this were a once-a-month or twice-a-month thing, I wouldn't bother. But it's DAILY. Quite literally, daily. And it's not our instructions--every client that actually follows them compliments us on how thorough and helpful they are. And again, it's not just my firm. Everybody in the same business is struggling with the same issues. It's pandemic in this line of work, for some bizarro-world reason.
Sorry...none of this is your issue. But you commented, so...that's why I'm struggling with this. I don't have a large enough staff to sit there and drip-feed the instructions, in steps, to these people, so that I can FORCE them to "go here, download this, then tell us you did it, and we'll then send you step 2," etc. I can't. And honestly, I'd lose my mind if I had to do that, because I'm already here 11.5 hours/day/6/days/week.
so--how can I slate the DURATION of a slide, without messing with making all the animations ridiculously longer?????? That's all I want to know.
Thanks, sorry for the rant,
Hitch