Companies in life sciences face a wide range of demands in marketing, training, and tech support that can be helped by products like Adobe Captivate.  For example:

• EMR firms sales staff could spend less time on pre-sales work by creating demos of their products that prospective buyers could run over the web.
• Hospital training departments could offer web-based training that users could run only when needed useful for new hires or employees who need a quick refresher about how to perform some task.
• Tech support departments might reduce their call volume by creating little movies that answer users most commonly asked questions.

We’ve been able to create such movies and simulations for years but its been a complex, time-consuming, and expensive task. In the last few years, however, tools like Captivate have sped up the process, turning a job that took weeks or even months into one that took days, perhaps even hours.

Captivates main use is to help capture what’s on the screens as you perform a software-based task, such as using a feature in Microsoft Word. That series of screen shots is effectively a set 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 let simulate real software operations. With these features, Captivate lets you create demonstrations, sales training simulations, marketing presentations, tutorials, even fairly sophisticated eLearning.

Captivate movies are Flash-based, but you dont have to know Flash or touch any code. Better still, Captivate is quick and easy to learn compared to traditional CBT authoring tools—two days to get up and running, and cheap (US$700).

This workshop presents a quick overview of Captivates basic features in order to provide an overview of the tool as a whole.  In a busy 3 1/2 hours, you will:

• Explore various uses for Captivate
• 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 some advanced features

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