Tutorial Software: Expert Selection Guide

[Love Pulse]

Interactive tutorials are a great way to help users to learn new skills and master new software by allowing them to follow along with a step-by-step process on the screen.

However, picking the right tutorial software can be a tricky business - there are so many out there, so which type will work for you?

Different types of tutorial software

It's important to be aware of the limitations of your operating system – not all software works on all systems.

Broadly speaking, you'll be looking at three different categories – two are native (i.e. must be installed), one runs from the cloud:

 
•PC Software: Screen recording or capture tools that are designed to work natively in Microsoft Windows
•Mac Software: Screen recorders that are natively designed for the Mac operating system (Mac OS X)
•Cloud-based Tutorial Software: Solutions that are cloud-based and run out of the browser, making them (essentially) operating-system independent.

On that final category, a word of advice.

Cloud-based tutorial maker software runs inside a browser, which means it can't capture tutorials outside of the browser.

So, for example, if you want to record a tutorial of a piece of software such as Oracle, which must be installed and runs natively on the computer, cloud-based software won't work. You'll have to use a native screen recorder.

That said, if you want to record a tutorial of a cloud-based tool such as Salesforce, Workday or Dropbox, a cloud-based tutorial creator will work just fine for you, as all of the activity happens inside the browser.

To find out more about our award-winning tutorial creation tool (and to build your tutorial in under 60 seconds), click here.

Otherwise, read on to find out about each of those steps…

Chapter 2

How Interactive Should It Be?

Interactivity is something of a spectrum – ranging from users thumbing through a PDF file of screenshots (not very interactive!) to watching video tutorials (somewhat interactive) to actually being immersed in the app itself and being taken through the process live.

Clearly, the learning outcomes increase the further towards the interactive end you proceed – would you rather learn by looking at pictures, or by clicking the mouse and by doing it yourself inside the app?

However, there are tradeoffs in fully interactive guides.

It's harder to control a curriculum, for example, and some effects won't be available (see the next section). You'll need to decide which format best suits the process that you are trying to illustrate, based on the capability and attention span of your audience, as well as the context that you'll be delivering in.