The videos are an interesting idea, @leewynne! The one thing I will say is that, having worked with "videos as documentation" in the past, they are very hard to keep up with and maintain (if you change one part of the UI, the video immediately is outdated 😓). I'd almost vote for using videos to highlight different features (the "outdated" video problem still exists here, but you can get away with that more so on pages that describe a feature than on a page that purports itself to be documentation!).
Videos tend to be best for getting started as opposed to deeper issues when you're already started. So maybe if we had a few canonical videos for getting started that we made a point to re-record about once per month?
If we kept the surface area low and actually followed through on updating them, it could be a great component of the guides.
I think that having some "getting started" videos would be really awesome and useful for Forem creators!
Another idea: we could also incorporate GIFs into our guides to help clarify more general issues or issues that don't require an entire video, but maybe a tiny tutorial.
@juliannatetreault
Yeah I really love the usage of gifs to show where something lives or how to interact with something. Gifs in documentation (when it makes sense) can also be fun! They still take work to update but they're much easier than an entire video.
Video tutorials in addition to concise documentation are such a powerful combination! Thank you for the input and examples, Lee. 😄
Great idea!
Adding here that video tutorials should be captioned for accessibility 😊
The videos are an interesting idea, @leewynne! The one thing I will say is that, having worked with "videos as documentation" in the past, they are very hard to keep up with and maintain (if you change one part of the UI, the video immediately is outdated 😓). I'd almost vote for using videos to highlight different features (the "outdated" video problem still exists here, but you can get away with that more so on pages that describe a feature than on a page that purports itself to be documentation!).
that's a really good point....!
Videos tend to be best for getting started as opposed to deeper issues when you're already started. So maybe if we had a few canonical videos for getting started that we made a point to re-record about once per month?
If we kept the surface area low and actually followed through on updating them, it could be a great component of the guides.
I think that having some "getting started" videos would be really awesome and useful for Forem creators!
Another idea: we could also incorporate GIFs into our guides to help clarify more general issues or issues that don't require an entire video, but maybe a tiny tutorial.
@juliannatetreault Yeah I really love the usage of gifs to show where something lives or how to interact with something. Gifs in documentation (when it makes sense) can also be fun! They still take work to update but they're much easier than an entire video.
Yes, my thoughts exactly, @vaidehijoshi ! ✨