Lessons On My Journey

I'm taking a very basic technical writing class. Interesting stuff. In one of the first lessons we talked about the importance of knowing your audiences.

Really knowing them. You have to do research to understand their motivations, likes, cultural perspectives, learning preferences. The whole shebag.

If you are going to present information you have to take that into consideration and adapt that information to what you want to teach or have them understand.

Advertisers call this process creating a brief. Educators create student profiles. Historical writers research for background information before they start the writing process.

So I was thinking about the questions that many we should ask ourselves:

• Who are you doing the video for?
• Is video the best way to do this?
• What do you want folks to know?
• What do you want them to gain from viewing?
• How can the video be of service?
• What is the best way to transmit this information? Is it straight video, combination of video and photos, screencasting or a bit of animation tossed in the mix?
  

If you want to create videos that serve a purpose, documentary, education or instructive you might have to find a way to duplicate or adapt this process.

It is something to think about.