Session Details

For years, software training was largely text-based; add screen shots in a document, add some text with descriptions and instructions, and voila!  The result worked, but how much more effective might it be if “someone” actually “walked you through the steps” on the screen?  That’s where visual help authoring tools like Mimic come in, letting you create that “someone”.

Mimic’s primary use is to capture what’s on the screens as you perform application-related tasks like using a feature in Word. That series of screen shots is effectively a series of frames that users can play back as a movie that shows how to perform the task. To make the movie more useful, you can add explanations and instructions in text or audio form, special effects, even interactivity features that simulate real software operation. With these features, Mimic lets you create demonstrations, sales training simulations, and marketing presentations and tutorials.  And Mimic offers two additional benefits – it supports text variables in text captions, and is programmatically integrated with Flare and Capture, two other components of MadCap’s MadPak suite.

Mimic can create movies in Flash format, Microsoft’s Silverlight, and other formats, but you don’t have to touch or even know any code. Better still, Mimic is quick and easy to learn, two days to get up and running, and cheap—US$299.

This workshop presents a quick overview of Mimic’s basic features in order to provide an overview of the tool as a whole.  In a busy three and a half hours, you’ll:

• Look at uses for Mimic
• Design and plan a movie
• Record a movie to be used as a demonstration
• Enhance a movie with text captions and other frame “annotation” features
• Publish the finished movie
• Look at Mimic’s use of variables and its integration with Flare

The only prerequisites are a basic knowledge of Windows, Internet Explorer, and PC skills in general.