16 July 2008

Instructional video example


Quickie: Here's a nice example of high quality instructional Flash video put out by an educational institution. This video-based flash site helps non-technical academics learn how to use audio visual teaching equipment easily. The information is in comfortable and navigable bite-size chunks, and the use of narrated dual-video make these how-to's fun and easy to follow (it's like airline safety demos made interactive! - well not quite). Controls are comprehensive without being obtrusive, instructions are kept short, and an undistracting text alternative to the narration is provided. My only usability note is that the image dissolves within the menu items can make it a bit hard to focus on what you're looking for, and loss of the back button always takes a second to integrate. But subtleties aside, it works swimmingly. See A/V Help videos at the University of Sydney to check it out.