iPOV's Blog Articles

Rich Media PDFs

vic.uzumeri — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:09:03 -0400

Problem Statement

You've seen multimedia that you would love to use in corporate communication. Unfortunately, the corporate IT department is very security-conscious. They resist installing a new server or web application inside the firewall, and they forbid putting corporate information on outside hosts. They 'encourage' everyone use the company's secure document management system (.e.g., Lotus Notes or Microsoft Sharepoint) for all business communication. Is video out of the question?

iPOV's Rich Media PDF

iPOV has refined a way to embed sophisticated, animated Flash videos inside a standard Adobe PDF file. The result is an integrated, thoroughly standard PDF. If you give us a Word document and a video (in almost any format), we will return a polished 'Rich Media PDF' like the following examples. Note: In keeping with their PDF format, these should be downloaded to a local disk and viewed from there. Download times will vary according to file size:

Right Click on Thumbnail and Save PDF to Disk in Order to View	Example Application
	Software Instruction Memo (1.7MB, 1 video clip) - It's pretty common that a minor software problem will get in the way of productivity. Wouldn't it be nice to record a quick fix or procedure change and send a totally unambiguous memo to let everyone know what to do.
	Video work instruction (2.2MB, 2 video clips)- This shows the correct method to perform the sort of factory or distribution task that is used throughout industry. The work instruction design contains two video clips. One shows the task being performed at full, expert speed. The second shows it being performed step-by-step to make the subtleties more evident.
	A video prospectus for a real estate property (11MB, 1 video clip) - Most of the information in this flyer is given in the embedded video clip. Even though the video has no commentary, it still gives a more accurate impression of the property than any text or still picture could ever achieve.
	Instruction sheet for a computer maintenance task (1.9MB, 1 video clip)- This video-enhanced document combines a step-by-step written procedure with an illustrative video clip. The listing ensures that the viewer has a complete guide to the tasks. The video clip ensures that the viewer can put the list of instructions in their proper physical context.
	Procedure for using software (16MB, 5 video clips)- Video clips with screencast movies of a software application have been added to a detailed step-by-step procedure. The procedure provides the accurate details for the task, while the videos provide situational context and a sense of the flow of the transaction. A viewer can remember the transaction flow far more easily than they can memorize a list of steps.
	How to change the oil in your car (4.7MB, 1 video clip)- This is a simple procedure, but it illustrates how a synchronized script can be added to the video clip to make the speech clearer. The companion script could also be used to add extra description or even warnings that are synchronized with the action.

Who would need this?

These PDFs will play on any computer where Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Flash Player are installed. Presumably, anyone who wants to view a PDF will have Acrobat Reader installed and, according to Adobe's statistics, Flash Player is installed on 98% of computer desktops. Companies can handle situations where a multimedia web page is not feasible:

IT security policies make it difficult to put the video on a web site.
Bandwidth limitations make it difficult to stream video to the target audience.
The target computer is not connected to a high-speed network.
Users are carrying laptops into areas with low connectivity.
The company's official documents must reside in a document management system like Sharepoint or Lotus Notes.
The company assembles collections of documents to distribute on CD or DVD to stakeholders beyond the firewall.
The company deals extensively with overseas offices that have slow connections.
etc.

In each of these situations, a Rich Media PDF would offer an attractive alternative. This format will fit in many of those awkward places where a multimedia website cannot reach.

Requirements, Time and Cost

The cost depends on the amount of processing that iPOV must apply to the video. To prepare a video (without additional editing) and place it in a PDF with customer-supplied text (e.g., with the formatted contents of a Word document) typically costs $75/page, or less in larger quantities.
If iPOV is asked to apply its standard video transformations to the video clips, the cost will generally be determined by the transformations. Since the 'flattened Flash movie' is an iPOV standard output, PDF page publication fees are typically waived.
Simple page constructions are returned in 1 to 2 days.

Bottom Line

Rich Media PDFs are a useful compromise between static text and graphics documents on one hand and multimedia websites on the other. They offer rich multimedia, with a level of portability and flexibility that a website cannot match. Finally, they offer rich media in a package that is widely accepted by security-conscious IT departments. If you have text documents and videos that you would like to display together, consider giving us a call.

Supply Chain: Piercing the Invisibility of Distance

vic.uzumeri — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:07:28 -0400

Problem Statement

You receive an urgently needed electronic device. You unpack it, plug it in and turn it on. The control panel is gibberish. You reread the manual and do exactly what it says. Same result. You call the vendor, but it's clear they don't believe you. They tell you to ship it back and they will fix it "if necessary". But you need it now. Will they cross-ship a replacement? No!

The Invisibility of Distance

The root cause is the invisibility of distance. Suppliers can't see what you see. Anyone watching as the device powers up would see that it's broken. But the supplier can't see that. They have your description and their (understandably paranoid) imagination. This scene plays out thousands of times each day. In our global, 800-number, FedEx, e-commerce world, you can't "open the box in the store". You can't ask the salesperson to plug it in to see if it works. You can only ship it back and wait ... and maybe wait some more.

Why not use video?

The answer may already be close at hand. It's called "video sharing" (aka YouTube). For millions of people, it only takes a few minutes to record a short video and post it to YouTube. Moments later, it is available to viewers around the world.

Kids in basements have YouTube to share their thoughts with the world.

Why can't you share video of a REAL problem with a REAL supplier?

There are at least two big stumbling blocks. First, public video sharing websites are designed to be open, free and uncontrolled. Companies don't want the world to see their problems, what they buy, who they buy from, or the nature of their suppliers' problems. Second, most logistics managers aren't web video experts. They would need video sharing that is less hip, simpler to use and well integrated into their business workflow. Public video sharing tools like YouTube have no reason to care about those issues. Fortunately, iPOV has a solution to both problems.

interactive Video Sharing for Supply Chain Managers

iPOV's interactive video sharing for business (iVSB) service offers a simple solution to the supply chain visibility problem. You can record an 'industrial grade' video with a $100 camera and upload it to our dedicated video sharing site. It takes a few minutes more to email a link to the video to an external supplier. If you follow up with a phone call, the problem may be resolved a few minutes after that. You can view this entire scenario in action at our demo supply chain site and in the two video clips that follow:

A Sample Video to 'Educate' a Supplier

The Effort to Make and Use the Sample Video

The first video clip is a short (1.5min) example of an informal, industrial-grade video explanation that you might send to a distant supplier. The video quality is pretty rough, but the message is clear. It is unlikely that the speaker's point will be missed or misunderstood. The second video clip shows an entire sequence of actions that created this example - and put it to use. Sure, the situation is contrived, but is there any confusion or uncertainty? Fast, easy, inexpensive and accurate. How long would it take you to craft a memo to achieve similar results? iPOV's iVSB website for supply chain has two parts: our hosted software and our menu of supporting services:

iVSB Website Software - iPOV will set up and host a video sharing website for your organization. We will customize it (within reason) to reflect your company's look and we will set up a basic set of standard video sharing folders and permission structures. iPOV is committed to continuous software improvement. We already offer a long list of features that far exceeds those of public video sharing sites. Moreover, we are committed to continue innovation that benefits all of our hosted clients.

iPOV Basic Services - iPOV will maintain the site, help keep it clean and uncluttered, and promptly fix any problems that arise.

iPOV Optional Services - iPOV can maintain the list of outside vendor participants and assist them to participate effectively. iPOV can develop customized interfaces and tools to integrate the video sharing site more effectively into your normal business workflow. That may involve the create of special web interfaces and functions and helping to design and implement easy-to-use video capture stations for your employees. Finally, iPOV can apply its video transformation services to material in the video sharing site. One scenario is that you can make a video clip like the one above and iPOV will transcribe your comments, translate them to Chinese, and add them back as English and Chinese subtitles with your movie.

Cost

iPOV offers iVSB as an integrated service so we can help you concentrate on doing your business. We can help you coach your staff and key suppliers, help you maintain participant accounts and passwords, help police the contents, help to re-use content in more professional communications, and help you link the system to other data and corporate systems. Our knowledge is deep and our service and support fees are very reasonable.

The basic site hosting fee is $2000 setup and $950/month. You can end the arrangement with 60 days advance notice.
iPOV charges $75/hr for optional website maintenance services and $125/hr for customer-specific software development services.
If the extra service requirements are predictable, iPOV can negotiate a fixed monthly service package. An example might be where iPOV manages the external vendor registration and passwords and works with the supply chain manager to ensure that the vendor list is always accurate and up to date.

Bottom Line

If you are a supply chain manager, you can have a private, controlled video-sharing capability that will revolutionize your day-to-day communications with your suppliers. The more distant the suppliers, the more impact this capability is likely to have. The applications are limited mainly by your imagination.

Modernizing the Knowledge Supply Chain

vic.uzumeri — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:00:52 -0400

I wrote a blog article a little while ago entitled 'Video Speaks Every Language'. I thought it made a useful point about the difficulty of transmitting technical knowledge across cultural and linguistic borders. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had seen this problem before. Then it hit me. Its just another supply chain.

The Global Supply Chain Analogy

The problems that individuals and companies have in communicating with other languages and other lands are virtually the same challenges that have afflicted the shippers of goods throughout history. If you look at images of previous transportation systems, you will see that nothing really changed over most of human existence. Every shipment was pretty much handled the same way. Stuff was loaded and unloaded and loaded and unloaded. The ships got bigger and faster, trains replaced barges and wagons gave way to trucks, but it was always a laborious, error-prone system as shown in the following images:

source: www.catskillarchive.com

source: www.fremantleports.com.au

Each individual box, bale and bag had to be handled separately, perhaps a dozen times between origin and destination. How many times did a package get lost? How many times was it misplaced? What if there was something valuable or time-sensitive in that package? Tough luck. Think airline bags - but this all changed with the advent of standard containers and specialized handling equipment:

source: www.oocl.com

Once pieces are loaded, locked and sealed in a container, they are never touched until they reach their destination. In between, the entire transportation system is optimized to move and store standard 10ft x10ft x 40ft boxes. To the transportation system, their contents are irrelevant. There are no bags to leak, no boxes to break and no bales to spill. Just a standard box that is handled the same efficient way in thousands of terminals and ports around the world.

How important is this innovation? Almost unmeasurable. If standard containers didn't exist, it is doubtful that we would have anything like the current global economy. Walmart and Target could not exist in their current forms. Products in every part of the world would be more expensive and new innovations would arrive much later to the market. The immense choice that consumers enjoy would be greatly reduced. The quality of our goods would probably be lower. Things would not be the same.

The Traditional Knowledge Supply Chain

So how does the remaking of the global supply chain concern issues of knowledge, culture, language or eLearning? Consider the system by which we transmit technical knowledge across distance, culture and language:

This is also a supply chain - with the same problems that have afflicted goods transportation for millenia. This diagram might have described how a Greek trader communicated with a Roman merchant. Each idea is written, interpreted or translated multiple times, often with a poor understanding of the original context or nuance. It's the pre-container goods shipping system applied to technical knowledge. By the time it reaches its destination, the message can be lost, garbled, de-emphasized or distorted - and the shipper may never know. If my technical instructions are translated into Arabic for someone in Morocco to act on them, how can I know that they are correctly conveyed or understood?

But what if we could find a standard shipping container for our ideas and knowledge. What if we could take our technical information, seal it in a box with standard 'dimensions' and send it through a communication system that is optimized to handle that package quickly and efficiently? What if we could track each shipment cheaply and easily? What if we could inspect the contents ourselves after it reaches the destination? Wouldn't that be as revolutionary as global containerization?

A Shipping Container for Ideas?

As I described in this earlier article, iPOV believes that video offers special benefits to the communication of ideas across distance, culture and language. If we use video as part of the communication package, it can retain its integrity across the full communication sequence:

In other words, video is a standard shipping container for knowledge! Video can convey accurate information without words. You can see the power in this YouTube movie: Japanese instructions on how to peel a potato in 2 seconds. Even if you don't speak Japanese, you can probably figure out how to copy their method. There are enough visual cues to remove most of the uncertainty. The words, if anything, just distract and get in the way. In the following examples, a video 'how-to' is delivered in three different language contexts. The video clip remains the same. Even though the accompanying text and commentary traverse the traditional translation process, the information contained in the video was packed and sealed when the video was made. The video portion will always convey the same message and will always act as a contextual check on the accompanying text and commentary. In fact, the text and commentary in this example represent little more than elaborate shipping labels. Try turning the sound off on your computer and watching the clips again.

Printer Maintenance (English)

Printer Maintenance
(Chinese Subtitles)

Printer Maintenance (German)

This example makes a strong case for the "video as container" idea. There will be many other types of information that are not as easily packaged in an visual format as this physical procedure. Nonetheless, adding video to any communication will put some fraction of the total message into a package that will guaranteed the contents throughout the journey. Even if most of the message is more easily captured in text, an accompanying video clip will increase the odds that the recipient will put the message in context.

Most of the infrastructure and technology to efficiently handle video is already in place. Many tools exist on the public Internet (e.g., YouTube). Hosts of other tools are being developed by web companies, software vendors and in open source projects. For its part, iPOV has developed and assembled a uniquely comprehensive toolkit that is specifically tailored to speed and facilitate this process, including our Video Translation Transformation and our Video Sharing Portal.

Bottom Line

I believe that our global economy is on the verge of an information revolution that will be as profound as the one that transformed goods transportation in the past 30 years. It will take a while for the opportunity to sink in, but gradually people will discover how much it will pay to explain things in a visual form. Adding an informal video to a technical communication will make it more likely that the message will get through and iPOV is aggressively developing the 'virtual' trucks, trains, ports and cranes to handle this new type of information cargo.

Video Speaks Every Language (Updated)

vic.uzumeri — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:50:09 -0400

[the earlier article triggered some interesting offline discussions. I have rewritten parts of it to incorporate the results of those discussions]

Problem Statement

You have a critical, but tricky, procedure that must be followed throughout your global operation. You have vendors in China, plants in Portland and Valdosta, offices in Seoul, Stuttgart and Cairo. So far, you have relied on emails and memos, but there are clear differences in the way they are applied in different locations. Is it language? Is it local preference? Are the memos just unclear? Whatever the reason, you need to solve it. Conflicting procedures are almost worse than no procedures at all.

How can you get everyone on the same page - quickly?

The Global Communications Challenge

The process for communication across distance, culture and language has been virtually unchanged for centuries. To be sure, we have improved it with technology. We now send emails instead of messengers. We are using webinars instead of travelling to meetings. But the basic process is qualitatively the same:

There are at least 5 distinct intellectual steps in the process of transferring expert knowledge to a different language and culture. Each step demands the engagement of a motivated, knowledgeable expert to move the information forward to the next stage. If there is any lack of knowledge, a lack of attention, or confusion, the message may not get to the destination intact.

To an engineer or systems designer, a system like this is a cause for deep concern. Each step is a potential 'single point of failure' that can jeopardize or halt knowledge transfer. Worse, if something goes wrong at one of these steps, no one may spot the problem until the error is seen in the performance at the other end. The error, plus the delay, can cost a lot of time and money. Too often, the only practical remedy is to get on an airplane to go and sort it out.

The problem gets worse for a global, multicultural, multi-lingual enterprise. Global companies don' t have one message transfer process - they may have thousands per week. Each has the same inherent weaknesses. When they are considered collectively, it is virtually certain that an costly percentage of the communications will fail. In fact, it is amazing that so many messages actually get through. In a rapidly globalizing world, the prognosis seems dire and the solutions are all costly. Yet, what choice does a global enterprise have? is there no better way?

Not as long as the process involves the traditional steps (with their single points of failure). Internet technology can help around the edges, but it can't make people conceptualize more clearly, it can't do foolproof translation in context and it can't help people to interpret foreign instructions to fit their work. It can mainly move the (possibly broken) messages more quickly. It can also reduce the time and cost to repair the damage. Webinars and conference calls can at least minimize the airplane fares.

A Robust Communication System

There is an alternative that is both much better and very affordable. iPOV has been pioneering practical applications of this idea for several years. Like everything else that we do, it starts with the idea that video is the key. Suppose we take the message supply chain and, instead of relying on written text, we emphasize the use of video. We're not talking about TV or professional quality video. We're talking about the informal video that might be uploaded to YouTube.

Let's suppose that, instead of being asked to write a manual or procedure, the subject expert is asked to demonstrate and explain the procedure. Let's further suppose that someone knowledgeable attends the demonstration session with the intent of asking questions to clarify the expert's explanation. This video is recorded with one of the low-cost video capture technologies that are springing up everywhere. Finally, let's suppose that the recording, warts and all, is digitized as a Flash movie that can be uploaded and shared from a web server. If those simple things can be arranged, it is possible to explore a whole new approach to multi-lingual and cross-cultural communication. The following diagram illustrates iPOV's implementation of this concept. In our approach, the communication will pass through a series of steps that are similar to the traditional approach, but differ in some very important ways.

The process starts with the capture of an expert demonstration or presentation. The capture is done with screencasting for computer tasks, PowerPoint screencasts for concept presentations, digital camcorders for physical action, or any combination of the three. The resulting video clips move through iPOV's construction and restatement transformations to generate a validated, professional English master. The scripts from the now-validated English master are then processed through the translation transformation to generate a version in the target language. This is the document that the ultimate user must work from.

The diagram shows the feature that makes this a much better, safer approach. Even though iPOV will translate the text to the target language, the video will remain unaltered. In fact, the video will remain constant and identical across every language version that is ultimately produced. The principal part of the information will be immune to error over the full span of the transmission process. To be sure, a translation mistake might occur in the script or voiceover, but the video portion will remain intact. Some viewer along the way will probably spot the discrepancy and ask for clarification. In other words, the consistent video will act as a safety net for the accuracy of the overall communication.

The use of video may carry another, even bigger benefit. In the current text translation process, it is very difficult for the source of the information to verify the accuracy of the translation. Most Americans can't read or understand Chinese, so we cannot tell if our words are translated accurately. We can only judge by the behavior that those translated words create at the destination. If people react the way we expect, we assume that the message got through. With video, we can view the message at every step of the process. If the video remains intact, we know exactly what our audience is seeing. If the video is somehow impaired or swapped, we can tell instantly that the message is being garbled.

Communicating Visually

On its merits, we would expect that video must assume a central role in global communication. This is as true for routine industrial and business communication as it is for entertainment and social communication. However, there are several forces that seem to be holding back widespread use of video in everyday communications. In our experience, three factors are due to general unfamiliarity with the power of current web video:

People are intimidated by the folklore that 'video is hard to make'. That used to be true. The YouTube generation proves that things have changed. Any residual concern is eliminated by iPOV's ability to take mediocre video and make it look professional.
Video files are too big to ship. Once again, YouTube shows that is an outdated concern. As more countries come online with major broadband investments, that concern will totally evaporate.
Risk and Inertia. The idea proposed in this article is not complicated. However, it is radically different from accepted current practice. In a conservative business climate, it will take a bit of courage to try something this different. Fortunately, it is easy to try a small experiment - then scale up if it is promising.

However, as industrial video comes into wider use, there will be a fourth challenge. Most people are uncertain about their ability to present knowledge in a visual form. In most cases, they have never tried to package their explanations to be visually self-evident. While this is a challenge, it also offers an opportunity for competitive advantage. If an organization can coach and facilitate its personnel to be more visual, they can cut their communications costs and increase their speed and accuracy.

It is important to remember that the communication need not be perfectly visual to be effective. The goal is to add a visual communication component that can be cross-verified with the audio and textual communication. iPOV has recorded hundreds of examples of informal video. Some were 100% self-evident from the video presentation. Most were combinations of text, audio and visual elements. In all cases, however, the video component reduced the chance that the text would be misinterpreted. With the right coaching, virtually anyone can craft visual explanations or demonstrations that will supplement and safeguard their standard correspondence. The following examples were all generated by ordinary employees that were not video or graphics experts. To gauge the value of the video content, consider playing these movies with the sound off:

A physical demonstration is almost completely self-evident. To test this, play the video with the sound off.
Software transaction "how-to" illustrates how to perform a software transaction.
Sofware Code Walkthrough contains lots of valuable visual clues to help the viewer understand the structure of the code.
Recording of a PowerPoint presentation - even though this contains a lot of word slides, the audio sequencing and the deliberate pacing of the explanation would make it more easily understood by a translator or a viewer with English as a second language.

In addition to iPOV's experience, there are many other sources. Some of the best ideas and inspirations can be found at YouTube and Google Video. They contain a growing collection of explanatory clips. Try viewing the foreign language videos, or play others with the sound off. It is often amazing what you can understand:

This video shows how how to peel a potato in seconds - in Japanese.
The late Carl Sagan proves that you don't need special effects to explain something complex - like the 4th Dimension. You just need a tabletop with paper, apples and a clear plastic cube.
This screencast explains how to make a complex graphic with software. The video has no sound, perhaps because the author doesn't speak English!
This PowerPoint presentation by the late Cpt. Patriquin influenced the US military to reverse their policy in Iraq's Anbar province.

Finally, if anyone is really bitten by the bug of visual explanation, check out books by Edward Tufte. He has published amazing collections that show how to put complex ideas into pictorial forms. Few people will match his insight, but most people will find inspiration and useful ideas. It would take very little effort for an organization to assemble a library of examples and templates to help its staff build better visual explanations. This is an area that current instructional design staff may find interesting and iPOV will be happy to help.

Bottom Line

If the idea of rapid, error-free, multi-lingual communicatin seems appealing, please give us a call and let us help you to explore it. What have you got to lose? If you do global business, you are almost certainly suffering losses every day. This is one of those opportunities where the possible outcomes range between 'lose very small' and 'hit the jackpot'. Those are pretty good investment odds.

Experts are Going, Going ...

vic.uzumeri — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 12:25:00 -0400

Problem Statement

Donald Travis is the company's go-to expert on equipment and systems that were installed over the past 30 years. He knows the 'why' behind all of the odd configurations, procedures and workarounds. When a weird problem surfaces, he can recognize it instantly and fix it effortlessly. He's seen similar problems 4 or 5 times over the years. His 30-something protoges might struggle for weeks before they figure out what he already knows. There's just one problem. Donald retires in 4 months. He's building a cabin on a lake and has no interest in contract work. Once he's gone, the next weird problem might shut you down. What do you do?

The Brain Drain Challenge

The scenario with Mr. Travis is occuring against a backdrop of concern about the real threat of baby boomer retirements and the resulting brain drain. A long list of reports, studies and surveys agree that a large portion of America's skilled workforce is likely to retire in the next 5 to 10 years - taking important knowledge and expertise with it. At the time of writing, a Google search with'brain drain' and 'baby boom' as search terms gets almost 30,000 hits.

Surveys and studies indicate that a lot of companies, organizations, and industries are very concerned and are currently picking through a catalog of policy ideas to deal with it.

Ernst & Young (2006)* - Survey of HR managers found 62% expected that retirements would cause a talent gap.
Ernst & Young (2007)* - Survey of HR managers found 68% saw retaining key talent was an important concern.

Deloitte (2007) - The aging workforce is a global problem.

Aviation Week (2007) - Aerospace and defense industries will be able to replace half of retirements before 2010.

* requires free registration

So far, corporate responses to the threat seem to be concentrated on incremental responses that include:

extending the mandatory retirement age
creating new employee categories (post-retirement workers, contract managers, alumni mentors, etc.)
expanding mentoring programs for younger managers

With these initiatives, the worry (or at least the hysteria) seems to be abating slightly. Some people suggest that it may turn out to be a bit like Y2K. The threat is very real but if companies apply enough incremental remedies, they will somehow muddle through. We'll probably have to wait and see.

The Individual Departure Challenge

While demographic, society-wide retirement looms as the big threat, key experts are being lost every day for comparatively mundane reasons. Some would retire under normal conditions. Some are promoted or transferred. Some are reassigned to other duties. Some quit to take other jobs. Sadly, some individuals will get sick, injured or pass away suddenly. Although these are normal, individual-level losses, they can still leave a big intellectual hole. Handling these routine, individual losses poses an ongoing challenge and it would make sense to look for generic tools to elicit critical knowledge from departing people and store it where it can be accessed by others. Of course, in a competitive corporate world, the method must also be fast, easy and cost-effective.

Unfortunately, cost-effective elicitation techniques have proven elusive and are non-trivial to implement. A lot of the difficulty stems from the fact that the most valuable knowledge is often the expert's tacit knowledge. They may not fully understand what they know or even how they subconsciously apply it. This makes it a lot harder for organizations to know whose knowledge needs to be captured. Finally, to make things worse, departing individuals are generally short-timers. They may be perfectly willing to leave their knowledge, but they won't want to fight to do it. You ask them to write it all in a detailed manual or report, don't be surprised if it isn't finished before they leave.

With the inherent difficulty of the task, credible knowledge capture methodologies are still fairly scarce. It is much easier to do a survey and write a hand-wringing article than to devise a practical knowledge capture solution. The methodology offered by Larry Todd Wilson and his colleagues at Knowledge Harvesting Inc. (KHi). is the most complete and comprehensive approach that we have seen. This approach has steps to identify, isolate, capture, contextualize and organize critical 'implicit' knowledge from domain experts.

The following diagram (linked directly from the KHi website) depicts the comprehensive nature of their approach.

Several aspects of the kHi process illustrate the magnitude of the challenge. The first task is to locate and identify the high-value individuals that are at risk and have knowledge that is worth preserving. In a large organization, these people are typically scattered across the operations and it is not trivial to do an accurate inventory. The second challenge is to devise a way to identify and assemble all of the supporting documents and information. An expert's opinion won't help if you don't know what the opinion refers to. The next step is to create a setting for the elicitation that is maximally conducive to effective debriefing and to locate collateral domain experts who can help frame the most revealing questions. KHi has published a marvelous "10-page guide to Eliciting Implicit Knowledge" that provides a detailed roadmap to this process. The extracted knowledge must be packaged and organized for use and that application must be carefully planned, organized and implemented. Finally, the entire process must be monitored, evaluated and adjusted to make sure that the steps stay synchronized and relevant.

iPOV's activities center more narrowly on the elicitation, packaging and distribution activities. iPOV is continuously exploring new ways to apply informal Flash/web video to achieve better recording and faster application of the elicited knowledge. We believe that our methods complement the KHi approach because there are categories of knowledge for which a video-intensive solution may or may not be ideal. If the knowledge can be expressed in a dynamic, visual form (e.g., it involves physical activity, manipulation of physical objects, dynamic performance of systems, or has a complex emotional content), it is generally easier to show someone than to craft a written explanation. If the knowledge is mainly descriptive, it is usually easier to read an account, look at a diagram or read a list than to watch someone try to explain it.

The iPOV Expert Interview Process

iPOV's approach to eliciting visual knowledge, is roughly similar to the KHi methodology, with three major exceptions:

Some people are intimidated by the use of video. iPOV has to take special care to make the sessions as relaxed, forgiving and comfortable as possible. In particular, we never want to ask an expert to 'do another take'.
The tools and workflows for processing video are very different from the ones that are applied to text and image materials. iPOV draws its processing from its standard video transformations.
iPOV republishes the resulting video in a Flash/Javascript package to make it searchable with a Google-like search metaphor. Since video is inherently linear, support for random-access search is essential - otherwise the end-user could spend hours looking for a specific nugget of information. In other words, they would never use it.

For the first point, iPOV follows a simple imperative: Make the expert comfortable. If you want to draw information from the expert, it makes sense to do it with as painlessly as possible. If necessary, iPOV can do additional post-processing to correct for any deficiency that this policy creates. Specific techniques include:

Video-record everything.
Give the expert the tools and references that they use every day in their job.
Work with the expert to follow a loose outline, but don't try to control what they say.
If possible, include someone that can ask sincere, interested questions to draw out tacit assumptions and hidden details.
Give the expert plenty of time to develop their thoughts. Tape is cheap and can always be cut away later.
Allow the expert can digress to whatever they think its important.

It is surprisingly easy to satisfy these requirements if you stage the capture session correctly. The key is to set the expert up properly, turn them loose and keep the camera rolling. Once the video is captured, iPOV has a wide range of options for post-processing using its standard transformations. Finally, iPOV has refined a special 'expert interview' media packaging that makes the material more useful to potential end-users. Since the iPOV process is narrower in scope, it works easily with isolated individuals and targeted problems. iPOV is eager to work with expert collaborators (e.g., Aerie Engineering and AvatarMS) to capture knowledge from high-value individuals.

The iPOV Expert Interview Web Package

iPOV's Expert Interview web packaging actually makes it easier to stage the capture session to glean an expert's knowledge. The key is the embedded search capability. It uses a filtered search to make weakly structured knowledge easily findable on your Intranet. You can enter a search term and receive a Google-like list of search hits. You can skip from one hit to the next and immediately replay the session at those points. Like any search engine, it lets the end-user decide which results are relevant to their question. This, in turn, means that the expert can be more relaxed and natural during the recording session. The expert can digress, revisit an earlier topic, or even correct themselves and it will have limited impact on the end-user experience. The iPOV packaging system has three standard components and several optional one:

Standard Features:

Flash web audio/video record of an interview session with a collection of video clips and a synchronized grammar-corrected transcript.
A web interface with embedded search engine. Entering a search term filters the transcript for hits that contain the search term. Clicking on a hit repositions to the correct video clip and plays the video at the corresponding point.
iPOV can act as a safeguard for the expert. iPOV normally shares the session transcript privately with the expert before sending it to the organization. The expert can make corrections or minor deletions in the event that they said or did something that later makes them feel uncomfortable.

Optional Features:

Hidden, searchable metatags can be added to the script to increase the search accuracy.
A list of important search terms can be identified and presented to the user in a browsable directory listing.
Individual interviews can be aggregated in a broader technical knowledge portal. This portal adds a search capability that spans multiple expert interviews.

The following examples illustrate typical result from an Expert Interview session. The search field is in the header and the verbatim transcript is partially visible in the the navigation menu on the left of the page. The search tool filters the transcript to present only the segments that contain the query term. The user can jump immediately to topics of interest - even in a recorded session that is many hours long.

Lean Manufacturing
Fund Raising
Engineered Couplings

Dr. J.T. Black has written six books on lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System. He has a direct style that cuts through the hype and clutter and makes important points in a simple way. It's not just what he says, but how he says it - and how he thinks. Carole Ann Fowler led the initial fundraising that built an art gallery/museum in a university town. Listen to her description of the way she protects the donors' interests. If you had to suddenly assume her responsibilities, it would make a world of difference to understand the style and approach that donors had come to expect. Glenn Pockrandt was a design engineer for shaft couplings for 30+ years. Listen to his discussion in the last clip in the series. He talks about a nasty problem where variable frequency motors may, under certain types of load, run a coupling exactly at it's natural frequency - and tear it apart. If that obscure possibility doesn't occur to you, it will be impossible to figure out why the equipment keeps breaking.

In each of these examples the video recording captured knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to record with any other method. In the sessions on lean manufacturing and fund raising, the presenter's manner and attitude (style if you will) is an important part of their message. In the sessions on lean manufacturing and engineered couplings, the expert is able to quickly explain a detailed technical point using a combination of simple diagrams and human lecture. For most technical experts, this is a very natural way to explain this sort of thing.

iPOV's Expert Interview packaging service is fast and affordable. It is really just a stripped-down version of our restatement transformation. The processing cost starts at $1750/hr of finished video for 1 or 2 hour sessions, but can fall under $900/hr for large-volume projects. If you consider the lower demands for expert preparation and the ability of this format to forgive most recording session errors, iPOV's processing cost largely pays for itself from the savings in expert time and staff preparation.

Bottom Line

At this moment in history, the need to capture expert knowledge is both high profile and timely. However, the need never really goes away. Even if organizations were not facing an imminent demographic threat, they would need to find better ways to identify and retain their core organizational knowledge. While other organizations explore the issue on an enterprise scale, iPOV has chosen to focus on the narrow, but promising, opportunities that we are finding in web-based video and internet search technologies. We see that as a useful and complementary contribution to any larger problem solution.

Engineers Love Writing Manuals! - Really!

vic.uzumeri — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:02:14 -0400

Problem Statement

You customized an ERP module with 15 new fields, 4 new screens, 5 significantly changed screens, a significantly different workflow, and an updated graphics 'theme'. It takes you about 30 min just to walk a co-worker through all of the new features and methods. Now, you're tasked to deliver end-user documentation and training materials ASAP. Your options are:

Open Snagit, grab lots of screen shots and start writing a Word manual - you should have it ready in a week or so.
Give it to the tech writers - they'll pester you with questions, but they might have it done in a couple of weeks
Write a quickie memo and email it to end-users and let them figure it out for themselves - eventually.
Spend 1 or 2 hours on the problem and deploy it in multiple, professional formats a week from now.

Hint: Pick option (4) - except nothing that efficient exists. Right? Well...

The Typical Knowledge Asset Life Cycle

There's an old management maxim: You must manage around your scarcest resource. For many (probably most) technology-intensive companies, the on-task time of their critical experts is a perennial "scarcest resource". Despite that, companies routinely assign high-value talents to routine, mundane work - because they are the only people that can do the task. Nowhere is this waste more evident than in the production of "knowledge assets" like presentations, courseware, technical manuals, and operator guides. High-priced engineers work long hours with high-priced technical writers in one of the most inefficient processes in all of business. Worse, everyone hates doing it. If there is an engineer that loves writing manuals, no one at iPOV has ever met him or her. Yet they must do it because end-users need what they know. Under the best scenario, the task described above might go as well as is shown in this calendar:

If the participants are typical, however, the task will take much longer. The developer will be pulled onto other problems and won't be able to write in a continuous effort. It may be a couple of weeks before the developer can finish the first draft. Then it will take time to schedule the reviews. Then more time to schedule an independent tester to verify that the procedures will work as written. Then the material has to be formatted and integrated into a document that meets the standards and is suitable for deployment. A task that might optimally be done in a week or two can easily stretch out for months. Finally, you could dump it all on a tech writer or outsource service. Let someone else figure things out from the finished application. Someone will still need to manage, review and validate their work. Hopefully they won't pester the developer with too many questions.

What if there were a solution to this problem that was inherently fast, efficient and accurate? What if that solution made almost no demands on the developer's time? What if the outputs were easily packaged in a wide range of deliverable forms: eLearning, manuals, class presentation materials, reference guides? What if the solution was less expensive than any method currently in use - even competitive with outsourcing to low-wage countries? What if the process was simple and incredibly easy to follow? What if that process was intelligent, culturally savvy and adaptable and would make the developer look really smart and competent? What if the developer could do everything he or she needed to do in a few hours after lunch, on a plane, in their hotel room on the road, or at home?

In other words, what if Option (4) really exists?

The Lean Knowledge Asset Life Cycle

iPOV has found a way to achieve the impossible. It just takes a total rethinking of the methodology - and a critical insight: The easiest way to write a software manual is to ask the developer to demonstrate the software and record the demonstration on video. With a thorough video demonstration, the developer can be excused from most of the subsequent documentation production process. The demonstration needn't be smooth or professional. It can have gaffes and minor mistakes (if they are immediately corrected). The sound can be poor. A co-worker can knock on the door and interrupt the session. All of that is OK. There are only two things that are absolutely essential:

A clear recording of the entire computer desktop and the developer's commentary
A thorough explanation of the topic details.

The first requirement is easy to meet with the latest generation of screencasting software (also see this blog article summary). Programs like camtasia and BBFlashback make this process simple and nearly foolproof. Install a standard Windows program and let it run in the background. The second requirement is met if the developer plugs a microphone into the PC and gives a running commentary to the video recording. The audio quality or the speech clarity is largely irrelevant. It's purpose is just to record the developer's thoughts. Flubs and gaffes and misstatements are not important. When these two requirements are met, the scenario in the problem statement can be satisfied with the following process:

In this process, the software developer's only job is to share their knowledge on the video/audio recording. With no need to worry about minor mistakes, most people can learn to produce useful video in one or two takes. iPOV will take the recording and apply several transformations, most likely the construction, restatement, and possibly the extraction transformations. With these, iPOV can generate polished, professional eLearning and documentation materials that closely reflect the developer's original intent. After the initial planning and recording sessions, the developer will only need to be involved in a review process about halfway through the process. At this point, the developer can edit the draft script to reflect what they would really like to have said.

Developer involvement is mostly independent of the content. The only exception is for recordings that rely on PowerPoint presentations or other forms of graphical documentation (e.g, UML diagrams). Preparation takes time - but that is true regardless of the recording method. At each stage, iPOV's process generates interim deliverables that have an intrinsic value. In a crisis, the original developer recordings can be sent immediately. Whatever their faults, they are better than nothing. The review draft will have a script that has undergone significant grammar review and improvement. The final output is generally a SCORM-compliant learning object that is suitable for referencing in an online document or inclusion in courseware in an LMS. Other materials can be derived from this, including foreign language and print versions.

Bottom Line

In over 350 projects, iPOV has proven that this new method really works. iPOV has taken 5 hours of developer recordings and turned them into 5 hours of finished, validated eLearning materials in less than 3 weeks - start to finish. The developer's time commitment was about 3 days! The rest of the time, the developers were busy getting the software system ready for deployment.

Why waste the time of the organization's scarcest resource. Why put corporate initiatives in jeopardy by sidetracking your experts on mundane documentation? Why put projects in jeopardy by failing to distribute the documentation that end-users need? It simply is unnecessary.

(Nearly) Instant IT Training

vic.uzumeri — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:47:45 -0400

Problem Statement

You have a new software package with more menus, tools, windows and recipes than you can count (e.g., Photoshop, SAP or Eclipse), but the learning curve is steep. You open help files, close help files, leaf through outdated books, and constantly switch from one window to another. You copy and paste snippets and commands and you always seem to lose your place. Arggh.

Three Underutilized Technologies

This diary explores three well-established technologies that are grossly underutilized in IT training. It will share some design solution ideas later in the diary, but let's start with the technologies as they are currently being used.

Screencasts (aka screen capture movies)

Screen capture movie software (screencast recorder) has been around for at least a decade. In essence, screencast recorders are virtual computer-screen camcorders. You install them and let them run in the background. When you want to record your onscreen activity, you press 'record' (usually a hotkey) and continue working. When you're finished, you press 'stop' (another hotkey) and a full-motion movie of your activity is stored to disk. If you wish, you can record sound as well, most likely in the form of a running commentary spoken into the PC's microphone. While there are many screencast programs on the market, iPOV has had good experience with the value offered by BBFlashback (and its new v2.0 looks even more impressive).

Public screencast examples are everywhere. YouTube is full of them (e.g., here and here and here and ...). So, wouldn't you expect to see widespread use in large organizations for internal IT training? I suspect that there are at least 4 contributing reasons why it doesn't seem to be as common as we would expect:

Lack of Awareness - Screencast software is a surprising well-kept secret. We can't count the number of times that we have spoken to programmers, program managers, and CIOs that don't know even they exist. If we point them to examples on YouTube, they say: "I wondered how that was done".

Camera Shyness - It takes a certain amount of guts to record a movie that has your voice on it. What if you misspeak? What if you have a squeaky voice? What if you have a thick accent? All sorts of things can go wrong that will make you more nervous. Then you will make more mistakes and get even more nervous. Then you will give up.

Lack of searchability - It takes time to demonstrate a complex software operation. Ten, twenty or thirty minutes is not uncommon. How many potential users have the patience to watch that much video to get an answer to a question? The problem is not getting to the right spot (most screencasts have tracker bars), the problem is knowing there is a right spot to get to. If only you could search the screencasts the way you search Google.

No place to store them - Screencast movie files have gotten a lot smaller - but many are still to big to attach to corporate emails. That means that you need to put them on a web server or CD. If you accumulate a large collection, you will be talking gigabytes. Then how do you move them or find them. That brings us back to the searchability concern.

Apart from the awareness issue, these are valid concerns. Until someone finds a way to overcome them, they will delay the adoption of this powerful and exciting technology.

Dual Monitor

With dual monitor support, you can hook up a second monitor and expand your desktop to double its size. This will give you enough screen real estate to support two applications that are fully open and functional. The application to the problem statement at the start of this diary should be obvious. With two monitors, you can open your application on one screen and the help window on the other. You can view both simultaneously. You can copy and paste from one to the other in one quick motion. You can read instructions in the help file as you follow them in the application.

Every notebook computer built in the past 5 years has built-in support for an external monitor. For desktop computers, you may have to add an inexpensive video card and a second monitor. The total cost is typically less than $150 per seat. The return on that investment for a learner will be huge. Nonetheless, this capability is just starting to get the attention it deserves. You will find dual monitor setups in many software development shops, but not in most offices. Since there is no obvious drawback, it seems to be mainly an issue of awareness - and occasionally bureaucracy. One large company told me that all their IT support was outsourced to a 3rd party computer services firm. The service firm charged $100 per month for each monitor that it deployed! - Oh, nevermind.
Video Sharing Server
By now, everyone is familiar with YouTube and its brethren. It may be less well-known that there are some terrific open-source (i.e., free license) cousins of YouTube that can be installed on almost any web server. iPOV has explored a number of these software tools and has currently settled on a lightly customized application based on the Gallery2 project.

A Pragmatic IT Training Solution

What would happen if you combined screencasts, video-sharing and dual monitors to deliver IT training? If we can overcome the current concerns, the result would be pretty appealing. What would it take to make this happen? Consider two approaches.

Informal Solution

The first idea is targeted at internal, informal tech support and training. In this scenario, software implementers make 'casual' screencasts of transactions, problem areas, solutions and the like. There is an explicit contract that absolves the originators of responsibility for 'cosmetic' flaws. In a small organization, that usually isn't a problem. Everyone knows everyone. If Marco stutters a bit, that's no surprise. Everyone knows that Marco is the go-to expert and that outweighs the cosmetic flaws in his demonstration. A prototype workflow for this scenario is shown in the following diagram:

A software implementer (1) makes screencasts as they finish testing a transaction or module. They upload the video file to a YouTube-like video sharing website (2) like the one in this demo. End-users can view the demos directly from the video sharing sites on one of their dual monitors (3). The end-user can seek through the random-access video clips on one monitor and follow the instructions in the production software on the other monitor. An end user can search the video sharing site for relevant demos or tutorials. Alternatively, the developer can email the link to a relevant video to an end-user with a problem. The entire system is informal, responds quickly, and costs very little to operate.

While the informal solution is easy and cost effective, it doesn't overcome the fundamental problems that discourage developers and users from using video for formal documentation. The informal approach avoids camera-shyness by making the entire process casual and non-threatening. It relies on direct communication between the developers and the users to make material findable. Finally, it deals in fairly small amounts of video that are easy to store and manage. It can work well for project teams and small business units, but it won't hold up on enterprise-class projects.

Enterprise Solution

As the scope of the documentation, training and support challenge expands, the informal approach will break down. The problems that can be glossed over with a few people will become insurmountable with large groups. To succeed at this level, the system needs another element - one that can deal with the issues of quality, camera-shyness, searchability and storage. A design solution for that problem is shown in the diagram that follows.

The enterprise version of this system adds two new elements. In addition to screencasts, video-sharing and dual-monitors, this system adds services to ensure the quality of the delivered instruction (4) and a more robust video repository and learning management system (5). In a large application, the use of dual monitors would be cost-effective, but it may not be practical to provide them for everyone. Employees with laptops only need access to a spare monitory. For deskbound employees, a reasonable compromise would be to set up a couple of dual-monitor 'learning stations' in each office.

For the developer, this system operates like the informal approach. They record tutorials and submit them to the video sharing repository. End-users may view these 'draft' materials if they need rapid response - for example to solve a localized problem. However, the enterprise approach goes a step farther. It takes the developer's imperfect demonstrations out of the video sharing site and passes them through a formal process to generate polished, professional tutorials. iPOV offers services for this task in its standard: restatement and (optionally) enhancement transformations. The restatement process converts the developer's imperfect commentary into a carefully validated, articulate voiceover. Since their commentary is discarded, developers have no reason to be self-conscious. The enhancement process can emphasize key points and mask blemishes. This makes it less likely that the developer will have to redo their work. Combined, these transformations mean that developers can record tutorials in one or two takes, making video the fastest, easiest way for them to discharge their documentation obligations.

Once the validated tutorials are prepared, iPOV can package them for use in a SCORM-compliant LMS as building blocks for lessons in an integrated course catalog. If other types of teaching materials are required, they can be added to the LMS from other sources. It is also possible to systematically reverse-engineer (extract) printed manuals, quizzes and job aids from the information contained in the video demonstrations.

This process can be completed with surprising speed. iPOV can routinely transform an hour of raw demonstration videos into an hour of polished, validated tutorial in 2 or 3 weeks - faster if it is a rush job. If that is too long, the video-sharing site can be ready to deliver an imperfect, but potentially useful version in a matter of minutes. These time frames compare favorably with most contemporary eLearning production processes.

Bottom Line: It's easier and cheaper than you think

As with all of the processes at iPOV, this approach to eLearning production and distribution starts with a movie. However, these movies can be made on any laptop or desktop PC. They can be made anywhere that the target software will run. They can be made when a developer comes back from lunch. They can be made in the hotel on a business trip. They can be made at home in the evening. They can be made ... anywhere and anytime. Once the movie is made, the expert may have just one more task. They may be asked to review the written draft script to make sure it says what they want it to say. Other than that, it is fire and forget.

How much does this cost? It depends. Most software development operations are capable of setting up the informal system without iPOV's help. iPOV's services for the enterprise model are likely to range between $4000 to $8000 per finished hour of video tutorial and may be even less on very large projects. If you are faced with the need to produce lots of eLearning and documentation on software projects, call iPOV. We can show you how to set up a surprisingly fast, low-cost solution.

Industrial Mind Music

vic.uzumeri — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:31:10 -0400

Problem Statement

Remember the last time a manual told you to press a button and nothing happened? So you spend fifteen minutes on the phone waiting for customer service, and then you're told you just have to press it past where it starts giving pressure, but you were too afraid you'd break it? These are details it's almost impossible to capture with simple text.

The Old Standby

Everyone uses work instructions. Some are called 'standard operating procedures'. Others are ISO9001 or regulatory compliance procedures. Some are safety procedures. Some are software transaction guidelines. Some are ... well almost anything. Most work instructions follow an established formula:

Work instructions have been around for at least a century and probably a lot longer. Frederick Taylor and Frank Gilbreth popularized them as a means to implement the "one best way" to do any task. While they can be written in a myriad of ways, they generally include a procedural guide:

Introduction.
Steps in procedure:
1. Step 1
2. Step 2
3. ...
4. End
Test
Release and repeat

At iPOV, we tend to see these documents as the "sheet music" of routine industrial activity. They make the tasks definable, repeatable, and capable of controlled change.

But how are these procedures understood? Can the reader relate them to the task at hand or do they have to spend time puzzling over them? Or worse, being afraid to follow them?

Where Text Fails and Video Succeeds

Most of the time, written instructions are clear, but there are common situations where a written, step-by-step procedure is clearly inadequate. While purists may believe that any task can be described by a well-written procedure, we have seen many situations where the task is very difficult or impossible to reduce to a text and image work instruction. We offer the following video examples as evidence:

Example (click thumbnail)	*Instructional Challenge*
Link to download pdf version of document.	How do you show the rhythm of the task? The whole point of this instruction is to do this task much faster than most people believe possible. To achieve that speed requires two things: You must do the correct steps You must do them at a fast, smooth rhythm The inherent rhythm is a critical part of the expertise. In fact, achieving a smooth rhythm is how you know that you are good at the task. So how can you learn rhythm from a written work instruction? That's hard. A short video clip, however, gives a clear and compelling sense of the correct rhythm. When a worker can do the task with a similarly fast, fluid motion, they know they are qualified for the task. This is the same confidence they will get with OJT from an expert. Except the video doesn't draw wages. (credit: the text portion of the worksheet was developed by Bryan Lund at the Training Within Industry Blog)
	How do you know how hard to push? The human brain is a marvelous estimator of physical actions. When you watch the technician push the ribbon on with two fingers and see that the tendons in the back of his hand barely quiver, your brain automatically judges how much force he is using. Most people can almost 'feel' the amount of pressure that he is exerting. Only two things could accurately convey that knowledge: doing it yourself and, as a minimal substitute, a movie like this. There are physical tasks throughout industry that contain similar elements. Watching safety demonstrations for lifting or washing will reveal the same valuable, subtle physical clues. Clues that will only be available from a live demonstration or a video clip like this.
	How do you show things that can't be seen? A camera can go places that are too difficult or dangerous or complicated for the human viewer. You can make a drawing of these places, but you can't watch things happen. A camera can also go places and see things that hard for the brain to directly comprehend: It can make fast events visible with slow motion It can make slow things less tedious with time-lapse It can see things that are really small or really large It can view action from several angles simultaneously It can see where there is very little light It can go where a human would not dare etc. You can try to write text and graphic descriptions of these phenomena - but to what end? They will tax the imagination of the reader. You can create computer simulations, but how much will it cost and how long will it take? A little bit of inexpensive camera work may do just as well and will be far more believable.
	How do you demonstrate artistry? As technology invades more and more of our professional tasks, it brings a level of complexity and sophistication that is very difficult to explain. In todays' offices, for example, skill at PowerPoint is nearly as essential as skill with a file was for early manufacturing workers. Except that PowerPoint skills are more varied and difficult to describe. This example from YouTube shows how to create a glassy sphere in Photoshop. That is almost a basic skill for budding web designers. Yet it is totally beyond the ability of text and graphics to describe. Imagine a printed work instruction like the ones at the top of this article. It would be ridiculous. The movie at left, while a bit amateurish, is perfectly clear, straightforward and effective. The required actions are shown, together with the vocalized thoughts of the artist. You quickly understand what you need to do and why you need to do it.

Bottom Line: Video is Industrial Mind Music

A few people can read sheet music and visualize the melody. Most of us cannot. We have to hear it being played. As tasks in our technological world become more sophisticated and demanding, it is not enough to hand sheet music (text and image work instructions) to our workforce. We should be sensitive to the situations where the task is complex, rhythmic, mysterious or artistic and use video-based work instructions instead. iPOV proves every day that those instructions don't have to be expensive or time-consuming. They just have to show it like it is. It's only fair to our workforce and our bottom line.

Transforming Subjective Content

vic.uzumeri — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:33:24 -0500

While iPOV can apply powerful visual transformations to client video clips, it really excels at a series of transformations that are more subjective and content-oriented. iPOV has defined and formalized the transformations in this category - and it has developed formal production processes to support each one.

The essential insight behind these transformations is the fact that video is a powerful and very comprehensive knowledge capture medium. If an expert can explain something complicated to you in person, there is a good chance that a comprehensive video recording of that interchange will contain most or a lot of the information that someone else in your situation would also like to know. As simple as the idea seems, it has always been surprisingly hard to make it work in practice. In iPOV's experience with more than 350 projects, that usually comes down to three factors:

The subject experts are often very camera-shy
Their knowledge tends to emerge haphazardly
No one wants to watch hours of video to piece together the expert's knowledge

In the past, these problems have been more than sufficient to deter use of video in most knowledge capture situations. It was only recently that iPOV discovered that there are systematic transformations that can be applied to the subjective content to make those problems go away. So far, iPOV has identified three of these transformations and has developed formal, systematic procedures to pu them into action. The three basic subjective content transformations are described in the following table.

Transformation	iPOV Technology	iPOV Service	Goals
Restatement	Replace the audio track and associated subtitles	Transcribe audio to text script Clean up the grammar Allow expert to revise script Record voiceover from validated script Reassemble finished video/audio/text	Totally control the spoken message that accompanies the video
Translation & Localization	Replace the audio track and associated subtitles	Transcribe audio to text script, or translate existing script to target language Clean up the grammar Allow expert to revise script Record voiceover from validated script Reassemble finished video/audio/text	Generate accurate translation of audio and text commentary
Extraction	Use knowledge and still images from movie to produce other types of documents	Extract images from movie Transcribe spoken commentary from movie Use other authoring tools to assemble salvaged assets into new documents and media	Salvage valuable knowledge from otherwise unusable source video

Although these transformations sound simple (and they are), it's a huge management challenge to maintain quality on large projects. With dozens ,if not hundreds, of bits and pieces of image and text floating around, It is incredibly easy to get them mixed up or to put a commentary on the wrong image or movie. iPOV has developed a suite of specialized software tools to support these transformations in its service operations and we have developed a set of formal procedures and management methods to ensure that information is not lost in the process.

As a result, iPOV can apply these transformations quickly, economically and under tight quality control. We make mistakes, but nowhere near what an eLearning author would make if they had to implement any of these processes on their own. Moreover, we don't rely solely on our conscientious employee. We have developed detailed software and procedural tools and systems to minimize human error throughout the process.

Transforming Video: Non-destructively!

vic.uzumeri — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:07:57 -0500

Video is far more than a publishing or entertainment medium. It can also be a powerful tool to record expert knowledge. Unfortunately, the video that emerges from a typical knowledge capture session is too fragmented, error-filled and poorly structured to be used directly in professional presentations or documentation. A video producer will have to make extensive (and expensive) edits to render the video clips presentable. Typically, the producer will use sophisticated software (e.g., Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut) to slice, dice and dramatically transform the raw material. However, conventional tools create two problems that complicate later revisions:

The edits are destructive - Most editing operations actually change video source. As the producer makes one edit after another, they create a complex trail of changes that is hard to reverse. If, for example, they complete the editing of a video clip and someone spots a flaw, the producer may have to go back to the beginning and repeat all of their work.
Edits are made early in the development cycle - Since the edits are destructive, there is strong pressure to make them up front, get the video right, then proceed from there. Unfortunately, this means that if later work requires a change in the video, the work has to be repeated almost from scratch.

iPOV's approach is totally different. iPOV can, of course, apply any of the familiar destructive editing technologies. If you want special effects on your video, we can add them. However, iPOV has developed a unique set of standard transformations that are inherently non-destructive. Applied in combination, our transformations can totally alter the appearance and content of the source video. As a bonus, our work is easily reversible up to the end of the development process and beyond. This makes maintenance easier and less costly. iPOV's standard transformations fall into two main categories: visual transformations and content transformations that can be combined to create an amazing range of finished effects. The content transformations will be the subject of another blog entry. This one focuses on the challenge of visual transformation.

Visual Transformations

iPOV's visual transformations are designed to alter the visual structure and appearance of a video source. They do some of the operations that are normally associated with high-quality commercial software. However, iPOV's approach is totally different. iPOV has developed a powerful Flash Virtual Playlist Controller (FVPC) that does two transformations that, together, can virtually slice, merge, reorder, overlay, insert, hide, zoom, slow, accelerate or freeze action - without altering the original video clips. The FVPC runs in the Adobe Flash Player that is in the end-user's web browser. In other words, the FVPC applies the transformations as the movie is being downloaded to the web page. That's as late in the development cycle as we could manage.

Transformation	iPOV Technology	iPOV Service	Goals
Construction	The FVPC is a Flash application that assembles, orders, and plays a set of Flash movie clips in any sequence or timing on a virtual timeline. All of the action is driven from external XML specification files.	iPOV staff craft the XML spec files to client preferences for: Choice of sub-movies Order of components Component timings Inserted animations	The goal is to take all of the good bits and pieces from a set of raw movies and Flash raw materials and dynamically assemble them into a pleasing, seamless movie.
Enhancement	The FVPC listens for commands from the XML spec files. The commands can tell it to add subtitles, turn on a layer to mask a flaw, add symbols, or hide and reveal Flash animations and controls.	iPOV staff craft the source Flash files and XML spec files to: Add overlays Mask problems Add dynamic controls Highlight features	Apply the power of Flash layers to non-destructively change the appearance of the underlying constructed movie.

To be fair, a video producer, instructional designer or documentation author has lots of choices. There are excellent software and hardware products that do far more than iPOV's transformations. However, commercial tools seldom consider overall project efficiency. To be efficient, you need to manage the visual changes from end to end:

iPOV has defined formal procedures and guidelines for applying these visual transformations. With its procedures, iPOV can enforce consistency across long video clips or across all of the clips in a large collection.
The spec files for the FVPC can be revised throughout the content development life cycle and iPOV's formal procedures enforce consistency across updates and revisions long after the initial authoring project is finished.

iPOV is very excited about the long-term potential for non-destructive transformations. Our FVPC is just beginning its journey. There are many potential applications that we haven't had time to explore and we are very eager to speak with potential clients that might be want to explore them with us. For example, we know that we could program a server to rewrite the XML spec files dynamically to reflect viewer profiles. That means that two website visitors might see totally different 'mashups' that are tailored precisely to their personal needs. The resulting mashups will each appear to play as a seamless movie. How many potential applications are there for that capability? If you have one, please contact us so we can discuss it.

Lean Manufacturing	Fund Raising	Engineered Couplings
Dr. J.T. Black has written six books on lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System. He has a direct style that cuts through the hype and clutter and makes important points in a simple way. It's not just what he says, but how he says it - and how he thinks.	Carole Ann Fowler led the initial fundraising that built an art gallery/museum in a university town. Listen to her description of the way she protects the donors' interests. If you had to suddenly assume her responsibilities, it would make a world of difference to understand the style and approach that donors had come to expect.	Glenn Pockrandt was a design engineer for shaft couplings for 30+ years. Listen to his discussion in the last clip in the series. He talks about a nasty problem where variable frequency motors may, under certain types of load, run a coupling exactly at it's natural frequency - and tear it apart. If that obscure possibility doesn't occur to you, it will be impossible to figure out why the equipment keeps breaking.

iPOV's Blog Articles

Rich Media PDFs

Problem Statement

iPOV's Rich Media PDF

Who would need this?

Requirements, Time and Cost

Bottom Line

Supply Chain: Piercing the Invisibility of Distance

Problem Statement

The Invisibility of Distance

Why not use video?

interactive Video Sharing for Supply Chain Managers

Cost

Bottom Line

Modernizing the Knowledge Supply Chain

The Global Supply Chain Analogy

The Traditional Knowledge Supply Chain

A Shipping Container for Ideas?

Bottom Line

Video Speaks Every Language (Updated)

Problem Statement

The Global Communications Challenge

A Robust Communication System

Communicating Visually

Bottom Line

Experts are Going, Going ...

Problem Statement

The Brain Drain Challenge

The Individual Departure Challenge

The iPOV Expert Interview Process

The iPOV Expert Interview Web Package

Bottom Line

Engineers Love Writing Manuals! - Really!

Problem Statement

The Typical Knowledge Asset Life Cycle

The Lean Knowledge Asset Life Cycle

Bottom Line

(Nearly) Instant IT Training

Problem Statement

Three Underutilized Technologies

Screencasts (aka screen capture movies)

Dual Monitor

Video Sharing Server

A Pragmatic IT Training Solution

Informal Solution

Enterprise Solution

Bottom Line: It's easier and cheaper than you think

Industrial Mind Music

Problem Statement

The Old Standby

Where Text Fails and Video Succeeds

How do you show the rhythm of the task?

How do you know how hard to push?

How do you show things that can't be seen?

How do you demonstrate artistry?

Bottom Line: Video is Industrial Mind Music

Transforming Subjective Content

Transforming Video: Non-destructively!

Visual Transformations