In the last post, I discussed simplified user interface (SUI) images as a potential solution to one of the biggest challenges that technical communicators face - keeping content up-to-date in the face of frequent product updates. While I've seen some examples of SUI in images, I've noticed far more examples that take it a step further by adding action as animated GIFs.

Here's an example from the Tips & Tricks in-product help for Dropbox Paper. The in-product help provides structure and context for the task being demonstrated (I realize the GIF doesn't make as much sense here), and there is just a small amount of text with this moving image that explains how to assign a to-do.

I'm fascinated by the SUI GIF for the same reasons I love SUI static images. According to TechSmith, "a simplified user interface graphic can often sustain multiple software versions...before needing further updates. The simplified design is more forgiving to minor interface changes and additions, as it is already an abstract representation of the interface." 

A 10-15 second "video" or GIF takes this benefit a step further by illustrating the basics of a single task. From a user perspective, it's much easier to see how to do a task in a glance rather than reading an article or even watching a video with narration and annotations. In other words, with a reduced cognitive load for learning the new task, the user gets some quick success.

Though I recently completed TechSmith's Camtasia 2018 Certification, I've been making screencast tutorial videos since 2011. When I started seeing these GIF images, I knew they could be valuable for my clients. I've started seeing these appearing not only in help centers and in-product guides, but also in nurturing email campaigns when trying out a new tool. 

Even though a GIF may only last 10 seconds, it takes quite a bit of planning, as well as some extra time to create and produce if you want to make a quality image that communicates a task well with professional production quality. 

In order to get clear on the process for developing something like this in Camtasia, I borrowed a sample from Unito, which is a tool that I'm testing for automating Trello cards from one board to another (that's not all it does). Reverse-engineering to build this image from one I already had is a little different from building a GIF from scratch, but it will serve the purpose for defining the process. 

Here's the overall process for designing and developing an animated GIF: 

1. Just like with any instructional content, the process starts by identifying the task you want to teach. Don't try to show too much at once.
2. Next you'll need to plan the visual assets. Each piece that moves needs to be a separate shape or image. You could start with screen shots (especially for the left side) and simplify them using SnagIt's simplify tools, but I found that this was such a simplified version of the real screen shot, it was better to make it with shapes and small screen clippings either directly in Camtasia or in PowerPoint. 
3. The animation design is next. There are about 15 custom animations in this 10-second clip, plus a few additional transitions and built-in behaviors. Before you start developing the GIF, it's helpful to have a clear plan of which parts of the image move and in what way, including handling the looping effect.
4. Now you're ready to add assets to your canvas.
5. Add the animations and transitions, testing as you go to make sure everything moves smoothly and in synchronization.
6. Once you're happy with the result, you can publish the result as a GIF from Camtasia.​

If you'd like to learn more about the simplified user interface, Techsmith has several blog articles, but this is a great one to start.
​

We all know a picture is worth a thousand words. In documentation and customer education, a clear image can make or break how well end users understand the accompanying text.

The problem in customer education for technical products is that frequent product updates can render some or all of your educational images out-of-date.

So what's the big deal? The SUI image takes a bit more time to prepare than a screen shot.

But that extra time pays off big with two main benefits.

1. These images have a potentially much longer shelf-life in your help and other educational content.
2. ​You can scrub any personal or sensitive information.

For example, in the following image, I was able to easily and quickly simulate the Outlook environment by using a real Outlook environment and then masking the information for the purposes of this educational content.

The good news is that SnagIt 2019 by TechSmith has a new feature that automatically simplifies your image. Just grab your screen shot and SnagIt does almost everything else.

Here's a demonstration using that same "real" screen shot from Outlook.

Ok, maybe the image is still not perfect in under 5 seconds. But those colored rectangles can be styled or removed individually, and it's easy to add your own if you can't find the right balance using the Auto Simplify feature. (Tip - use the Detail slider to change how SnagIt interprets what needs to be simplified in the image.)

With just a little more time and customization, here's that same image.

It might not look as awesome as you could do by mocking it up in Photoshop, but it gets the point across quickly and without any advanced graphics skills.

To learn more about why and how to use Simplified User Interface images in your content strategy, you can read ​this article from TechSmith, one of many they have on using SUI.

Author Atul Gawande is a surgeon, among other things (including staff writer for The New Yorker),  but the book reads more like an adventure novel than your typical productivity advice. He tells stories not only from from his efforts with the World Health Organization's Safe Surgery Saves Lives program, but also from other areas - everything from constructing skyscrapers, to natural disaster response, to high-end restaurant operations, and of course, aviation. 

The author makes the case that checklists are important to get things right, even for complex problems (maybe even especially for complex problems). Checklists reduce your cognitive load for the - as Dr. Gawande calls it - "stupid stuff", so that you have your full mental capacity for the task or problem at hand.

Content development can be time-consuming. While every bit of content that I create is different, I know that there are repeatable tasks. If I don't have to spend time remembering or identifying those tasks, I can spend that mental energy on creating more content and more effective learning.

My checklists for creating a tutorial video or converting a PowerPoint to eLearning in Storyline won't save lives (probably), but they do save time. They don't quite follow guidelines from The Checklist Manifesto, but here they are for your consideration and use. 

When I find myself repeating general tasks for one or more projects, I write down the steps and store them in my task manager as a template so it's easy to find the next time I need to do the same thing. 

Please share if you have suggestions for improvement. Our collective knowledge makes us all better and more efficient.

I developed this checklist for creating short (2-3 minute) how-to videos focused on a specific procedure. But it can serve as a template for other types of tutorials.

You can find a slightly different, expanded and actionable version of this checklist on the Nozbe.how site, which was a winner of the Nozbe.how template contest in the Business category in 2017.

I developed this checklist for a specific project in which related PowerPoint decks are being placed online for self-paced training. It's not a difficult process, but can be frustrating if you don't pay attention to details.

I don't have details to share on this one, but am happy to explain if you'd like to use it for your own projects.

While Camtasia does offer voice narration tools, like the course author, I find it more efficient to do the bulk of my narration recording outside Camtasia in Audacity. Camtasia's audio editing tools are passable. The one thing in this area that I learned the hard way is that Camtasia does better with WAV files rather than MP3 (as of mid 2018).  

Once you finish recording, the editing environment allows you to use a number of tools to edit the recording - along with other types of media - into a final video. ​This course/part of the process focuses on cutting and trimming the screen recordings and/or audio or other media. The timeline helps you understand when a particular item begins to show and when it ends. This course also explains how to manipulate items on the canvas.

This course of the certification process is the longest at 3 hours 12 minutes. Part of the reason is that the author chose a really long sample video (about 10 minutes) for the example and practice.  Maybe for version 2.0 of the course, they'll use a shorter example.

Visual effects include things like annotations, scale, opacity, rotation and position of your media.

​There are six different types of annotation tools. Between the captions, lines and shapes, you are only limited by your imagination (and time you want to spend) to create everything from a speech bubble to a scene with multiple moving shapes - such as a truck driving across the screen. Note that you won't get sophisticated animation possibilities like you could in an animation tool, but annotations are great for conveying conceptual information and adding visual interest. The blur, highlight, and sketch motion tools are great for enhancing screen recordings. And you can easily show that you are pressing a key in your video by adding keystroke callouts. Just select the type and press the keys you want to show.

This course is super short - these items are generally used in conjunction with editing and animating items in the video.

We could play with these tools all day, especially the transitions, behaviors and animations. Suffice to say, there are lots of possibilities. What's important to remember is that you can do more than one change with each animation and you can layer multiple behaviors on objects or text to achieve a different effect. Plan some time to design your animations, because this can get time-consuming, depending on what you want to accomplish. ​

No matter how great the audio is from an external source, you may find the need to add an extra pause or otherwise manipulate the audio. It's a super-short course in the certification process.

I haven't done much with captioning yet (but I probably should). ​Now I know exactly how to add closed captions or create an SRT file to upload for YouTube.

Transitions and cursor effects offer more options for editing and enhancing your videos.

I've avoided quizzes and interactivity in videos until now. ​Many of my clients host their videos on You Tube (where these features aren't available), but when the video is hosted on a website, adding interactive elements like quizzes, a table of contents, and interactive hotspots are really great ways to add engagement.

The last course in the process is of course discussing the options for sharing your videos.

Now, you've completed all of the courses, and passed each of their quizzes with at least 80% (it's easy to retake a quiz - I did have to retake one because I'm no longer a Mac user and I skimmed over that part). You can now request your certification, which doesn't take long. And you can get the correct settings to use to add it to your LinkedIn Profile.

If you'd like to watch my sample video from which the opening image for this post was derived, you can find it here: ​http://bit.ly/2xKGu24. I'm not the world's best narrator, but it gets the job done.

The Camtasia Certification courses are only available if you have a Camtasia 2018 maintenance plan.  Find out more at TechSmith's site. You can take courses in their new TechSmith Academy (that don't lead to certification) for free. 

Captivate has always been an option for recording your screen and automatically generating different types of eLearning based on those recordings. But did you know that it also records video demos?

As a freelancer, I often have some flexibility and discretion on which tool I use to do a project. I have used Camtasia for screen recording videos since 2011. I've also created videos with Captivate for some projects, when certain aspects of a project suggest that it would be a more efficient tool for the job. But I hadn't ever tried the video demo functionality until recently.

Let's take a look at the different demonstration and simulation options before detailing the video demo option.

• Demonstration - does not include interactivity, but creates slides for each "step" in your recording
• Assessment Simulation - adds automatically generated click boxes, with options for success and failure captures, as well as text entry fields to check the learner's ability to perform the task
• Training Simulation - adds hints for when learners aren't sure what to do
• Custom - choose from the text caption, mouse movement, highlight, click box, and text entry box options from the other modes

Before you record a demonstration or simulation, you can set Global Preferences to customize your recording and resulting slides.

• Language for automatically generated captions
• Sounds for camera (as a cue while you record) and keystrokes (included in the audio of the produced project)
• Automatically moving new windows inside the recording area
• Smoothing the mouse movements

​In addition to these global preferences, you can set the style of objects to use for text, success shapes and captions, failure shapes and captions, hint shapes and captions, highlight boxes, text entry boxes, rollover areas, and smart shapes. These work in conjunction with your Object Style Manager to set the type, font style, size, color and other aspects of the items that will be generated in addition to individual screen shots. Use these options to save lots of time in getting the project to look how you want it to look.

Captivate makes it simple enough to start recording with just a few clicks, so even beginners can get a successful recording right away. However, as a robust tool, there are many nuances and steps to finessing a recording process that we're not going to cover in this blog post.

The Video Demo option in Captivate records a smooth motion video rather than individual slides like it does for demonstrations and simulations. 

Unlike some aspects of Captivate, there's not much need for addressing complicated settings before you start recording. You choose the working folder location and whether or not to record mouse movements. In the recording window, you select the size and whether to snap to the application window, region or a custom size. You also choose whether to include panning, audio, and the webcam. (So you don't have to be talented enough to record yourself and the screen at one time after all.)

But Captivate doesn't exactly record what you do in real time, which provides some interesting options for modification. 

• You can add a simple pan and zoom, controlling the scale, speed and size/position of the zoom. You also have some limited options for moving these effects on the video timeline.
• You can add transitions to the intro and outro. The transitions include cross stretch, push, spin, split, dissolve, fade to, wipe and page turn, with direction options on each effect. You can also split the video to add the option to include transitions in other parts of the video.
• There are options to trim and mask selected areas of your video. 
• If you included mouse movements, you can edit them by changing the pointer or doubling the size, showing or hiding the mouse through different areas of the video, and smoothing the mouse path movements. You can also reduce the speed of the mouse movements before the click and choose a visual indicator for the mouse click.

For the separate recording from the webcam, you can resize and re-position it, but you can't crop it. If set up before you start recording, you can pick a different background, though I found it didn't do a great job of cutting me out from my office surroundings. Maybe if I had a backdrop with greater contrast or a green screen, that would look better.

When you end your recording, it plays automatically, with a tiny button labeled Edit to access the editing features. You can also process and upload the video to YouTube directly from here if you don't need to edit it. 

However, in addition to the editing options listed above, you can add text, shapes, highlight boxes, images, animation and characters to the video. You'll publish it to your computer with options for controlling the video quality (like frames per second). You'll end up with an MP4 file that you can use just like any other MP4 file. Or you can import the CPVC (Captivate Video Composition) project directly to a slide, working it into a bigger eLearning project.

The Interactive Video options to use overlays and return to a position in the video from elsewhere via bookmarks (such as for quiz remediation) introduce some great possibilities for learning. These are new as of Captivate 2019, but that's a topic for another day. 

Have you ever been kicked out of a good story by a small detail?

​But sometimes I find myself in a book that fails to make the world of that story believable. It might be too many grammatical errors or something that is inconsistent. I might keep reading if the plot or characters are interesting enough, or I might give up on it if I think the quality of the writing gets in the way of the story. Either way, my experience as a reader does not match what I was looking for when I picked up that book.

When creating eLearning, you are building a world for learning. Teaching software or system skills via eLearning can be a great way to teach users how or what to do with that tool to get the outcome they need - solving the problem that led to using that tool in the first place. It’s a great way to provide practice for specific skills in a safe or guided way. 

But as the eLearning designer and developer, you have to be meticulous in recreating that tool’s environment for the eLearning to have a hope in being effective. And to do that, you need to capture the right screen shots in the right way. 

First, let me say that if you have access to Captivate and/or Storyline, you have options to make screen recording easy in preparation for developing eLearning. However, there are pros and cons to automatically generating these simulations, which we'll save for a discussion for another day.

What about when you need to capture images directly because you aren't using the simulation features of the authoring tools, or you have Subject Matter Experts helping you set up scenarios and capture the right screens directly?

I'd like to share a process for capturing screen images to ensure consistent results that help build your software eLearning world.

What size are your screens? What size will your eLearning project be? You need to answer these questions before you get started. Ideally, you would determine a consistent size for the images before you begin authoring your eLearning.

You want to make sure the size and zoom are the same in every screen in the same activity. The aspect ratio is an important part of this equation. For example, if the eLearning is using a 16:9 ratio (or standard HD widescreen to match most displays these days), you might want your images to be 1920 pixels x 1080 pixels or something smaller with the same ratio of height to width.

As a developer, I know this and I know how to set up my screens to make it work right, using tools I have available (i.e., usually either Camtasia or Captivate). But on a recent project working with SMEs who didn't have those tools, we learned that it can be quite challenging to standardize the size of the window when different SMEs are capturing screens for different scenarios.

When I capture my laptop monitor with screens maximized to fill the whole space, the images are a 16:9 ratio, which look great even when scaled down and fill the HD widescreen project without any adjustments. However, my external monitor is off from that slightly, so maximizing the window does not get the screen size results I want.

So you may have to do some creative problem solving to find the best size for your screens and eLearning project. What is most important, is that once you find the right size, to use the exact same settings when capturing screens within each task. If it's slightly different from one lesson to another - your learners will most likely not notice. It's that one click to the next change that needs to be precisely the same size, zoom and aspect ratio.

Before you start capturing screens, make sure you know what you need to capture. Think like a technical writer to try to identify every different iteration of the screen, working through all of the minutiae for the task you want the learners to practice. It may be best to capture all of the screens for one lesson or task in one capturing session to minimize the risk that something is off slightly from one screen to the next.

When capturing menus, the eLearning will need to show before the menu is selected, the drop down menu open, and the results of the selection. So you may need more screen shots than you think. Some of this can be corrected with editing in SnagIt, but it may be easier to capture more than you need and just not use the unnecessary ones.

Here's a checklist for your capture session process:

Then you can use the images in your eLearning project just like any other image file. I hope this process helps you build effective eLearning! Let me know in the comments if you have other suggestions I didn't cover.

In May, I attended Zendesk's one-day conference in Dallas titled, "The Future of Customer Experience". 

One statement that really resonated with me, as a developer of customer-facing educational content and self-service resources, is something said by Jason Maynard, who is the VP & GM of Zendesk Guide and Data Products. He said "Self service is a fixed cost that pays dividends as your business grows."

​The session reported on three typical approaches to launching a help center: 1. the agile improvers, 2. set and forgetters, and 3. patient planners. You can read an elaboration of these approaches here. Having worked with a number of software companies, I can see how the agile approach seems natural and appropriate for developing self-serve content, since many software companies are already using an agile approach to updates. Zendesk's own research bears out that the agile group does best when looking at how well self-service content deflects help center tickets.

I found the Zendesk conference and articles to be very focused on the support audience. And for good reason. I recently read a case study through another tool, MindTouch, about an 86% ticket deflection rate. In that case, the company already had help before (the reported case study), but the help was not easy for customers to use so it wasn't getting the desired results.

Help isn't always enough, but using a well-planned single-source approach to content development benefits not only support, but also can be leveraged for other educational content, like marketing, sales, onboarding and customer success, and throughout the customer's lifecycle. 

So for this post, I'd like to offer a few suggestions for creating helpful help, so that the effort and fixed cost that you put into developing your self-service content is as efficient and effective as possible and can easily be reused for other educational purposes.

I don't want to trivialize the work that technical writers like myself do, nor minimize the value of collaboration with subject-matter-experts who may not be as good at writing. But because I'm also very interested in learning, I hope to start a conversation about how to help people be better, more effective workers - not just the people creating the help content, but the readers who rely on it as well.

​​I'm planning a training session and/or online course to elaborate on these suggestions. I'd love to hear your comments on location, format and any additional topics to include. 

Donna Weber started with a quote I love and had heard before from Tara-Nicholle Nelson, author of The Transformational Consumer: "Most companies are very focused on getting new companies into their funnel. It's...unsustainable as a business model to spend so much money generating new disengaged customers."  Donna reports that well-trained customers have a higher NPS and are 20% more likely to renew, among other benefits, but that many companies are using hope as a strategy instead of creating an orchestrated post-sales journey. She says that great content is not enough, you need to connect the dots for the customer and set expectations about where sales, marketing, training and professional services fit. Instead of existing in separate silos, combine assets and frameworks to make it as simple as possible for customers to be successful.

This panel discussion included:

• Brian Kocsy, Senior Director, Customer Success at DataStax
• Khalid Sahikh, Customer Education Leader at DataStax
• Adam May, VP of Services at ServiceRocket
• Bryan Busse , Global VP Customer Success at Elastic

The panelists discussed how education is viewed within their organizations and the role of their training teams. They discussed what types of information they communicate to executives within their organizations, like revenue, NPS scores, referrals and product stickiness. The metrics are changing, with a confirmation that trained customers have higher renewal rates (as well as fewer support calls). An interesting takeaway from this discussion is the concept that teams have better alignment by having training develop content for sales, considering their common goals.

Dick Braune,  Director Education Development for BMC Software and CEdMA Services Trustee, reported the findings of the 2018 CEdMA Business Survey. Respondents included 70 member companies, with insight into several areas of how different aspects of education are being handled by different companies, such as profit and loss vs. cost center business models, education operating margins, and the role played in Customer Success organizations.  As expected, self-paced content is driving additional education revenues at higher percentages than in previous years. The impact of education again shows that customers with training renew more frequently and churn less often.

Lynn Marie Viduya and Veronica Ruff, both of BlackLine, explained how they have leveraged learning paths to support various training programs in both freemium and premium training for customers, partners and employees. BlackLine U learning paths include general (freemium), premium training, certification, and employee learning paths. The free eLearning includes two learning paths (for user and admin), while the premium training leverages eLearning for CPE and unlimited custom learning paths.  After implementing the new learning paths, BlackLine saw an exponential increase in customers taking eLearning on BlackLine U, as well as over 200 partners certified on the product via self-study.

Okta presented their certification solution, which won the CEdMA innovation award. The core of their innovation is the Discrete Option Multiple Choice (DOMC) methodology, which is patented by Dave Foster, PhD and Chairman and CEO of Caveon. Using DOMC in their certification testing provided several benefits, including:

• items are easier to read
  
• the validity of the test scores is increased
  
• the probability of getting a correct answer by the process of elimination is reduced
  
• the format prevents item theft and cheating

Okta used Scorpion as the tool for question item authoring and SEI as the test driver to serve up DOMC items. This solution is transparent to test takers. Their secured approach has resulted in a 215% increase in customer + partner certifications, with certification in their product now showing up on salary surveys. 

Alyce Gershenson explained how Talend leverages front-line experts for knowledge base content creation. Everyday, they have new articles that are available immediately to an internal audience. Articles recommended for external audiences have an additional process for publishing to ensure quality.  Talend learned some difficult lessons about rewarding contributors and eventually found the balance of motivating contributors for quality content. Ultimately, KB articles don't replace the "official" documentation - they provide more flexible information like use cases. But these articles are seen as a good alternative to training in some cases. 

Jillian Alexander, VP of Knowledge Services and Delivery at Kinaxis, explained how they implemented their partner enablement vision to provide a scalable and complete continuous learning program that drives early adoption and easy access to knowledge, skills and certification globally. In phase one, they found that the solution they built was not being accepted.  They took their lessons learned to improve their offerings in phase two, which resulted in an increase in partner certifications, course completions and total reach. 

Zarogina Azocar, Certification Program Manager of Alfresco, provided some tips on how they used games in a certification exam preparation setting. Accepting that they couldn't cover all of the content required for preparing for the certification exam, they instead implemented a workshop aimed at serious attendees who were responsible for gaining knowledge on their own time. The workshop included a few games to provide an engaging exam preparation experience.

Darryl Quinn, Director of Global Education Services for Alfresco, discussed some of the challenges they had with virtual machine (VM) environments for student hands-on labs. They built an integrated, automated solution even though their new learning management system (LMS) didn't natively support managing the VMs. The new solution includes auto-expiration of VM sessions with region-based VMs that integrate back into the LMS.  

How do you remain relevant? Danielle Campbell, head of Americas Digital Learning Services for Adobe, and Natasa Koledin, Senior Director, Global Education of Pivotal Software, Inc., described new terminology and practices for training and education to survive in today's marketplace.  By fine tuning internal partnerships, you can leverage work that has already been done and be comfortable with the fact that enablement happens with various other groups throughout a company, too. They discussed ways to scale by using industry partnerships with marketplaces like Lynda.com and Udacity. They also talked about ways that metrics being measured are also evolving. 

Ryan Kershner, Senior Manager of PTC University User Experience, shared some fun new videos they recently launched. Using a story-based approach that focuses on high-level concepts rather than specific tasks that may change with each software update, he showed how PTC has created easier engagement with more video consumption that is now a new source of revenue. Their customers love it. PTC University incorporated green screen videos combined with screencasts and used machine transcription to create closed caption files and an interactive transcript.

The Fall 2018 is scheduled October 17-18 at Babson College. The board also made an announcement that membership prices will be increasing and starting in 2019, CEdMA will move to a once-a-year conference. 

I eagerly anticipated this Spring's CEdMA Training Leadership Conference, with a theme of "Driving a Learning Journey for the Subscription World." CEdMA is the Computer Education Management Association, "the premier organization for training executives, managers, and professionals on a management path in technology companies." In preparation for attending the conference, I set up notes for each conference session in an Evernote notebook so that I could already have a place to log my thoughts about what I learned. I made arrangements for my schedule to be off for a few days. And I made my travel plans...

As I prepared to leave Dallas for San Francisco the day before the conference, I had an experience that was a perfect example of how the right customer education at the right time can impact a company's bottom line.

I missed my flight. And for a completely preventable reason. 

For those of you who don't know, Dallas has two airports. Dallas Love Field has its origins in World War I (around 1917), but starting in 1979, was governed by The Wright Amendment, which limited flights outside Texas. It just wasn't big enough to handle lots of flights. DFW Airport first opened in 1973 and is the hub for American Airlines. How these details relate to my story is that in practice, I'm used to Southwest Airlines (and almost no other airlines) flying out of Love Field, and all other airlines flying from DFW.  Even though The Wright Amendment was fully repealed recently, as a Dallasite, that news didn't seep into my consciousness enough to question my assumption that my April flight would leave from DFW.  

So I scheduled my shuttle to pick me up at my home and drop me off at DFW. Unfortunately, my Virgin Airlines/Alaska Airlines flight was scheduled from Love Field.

In some ways, I was lucky. Since I'd taken a shuttle, I didn't have to worry about my car. I grabbed a cab and headed straight for Love Field. The traffic gods were smiling on me, and we actually got to Love Field in about 20 minutes. The mistake at this point was a cost I could swallow: a $45 cab fare. 

When I checked my bag, the ticket agent informed me that boarding was starting in 5 minutes.  "I made it," I thought.

And then I got to the security line. It was not five minutes long.

There were two announcements while I sweated in the security line. "Passengers for flight blah blah blah to San Fransisco should make their way to gate blah blah blah," the announcer said. "Lots of you are missing."  I wondered if I should ask to cut in the security line, or if that would just cause problems with TSA. I decided the best plan was to be patient. I watched the clock and the progress of the line. I thought it would be close, but I would be okay.

When I got to the gate, moments after they'd closed the doors, I found out that 13 other people had also missed the flight. (The gate agent had told me that passengers went to the wrong airport EVERY DAY.)

Now, I'm not one to find someone else blame when things go wrong. I take full responsibility for my mistake as my mistake. You know what they say about assumptions. (In case you don't: "It makes an &#! of u and me.") I should not have assumed. But in all fairness, it was a fairly valid assumption. 

Everything worked out okay in the long run. I was able to get on a flight early the next morning, which worked, but made for a long first day of the conference (and I missed the first/keynote session). But I had to get ready super early in the morning, without any of the clothes, makeup, etc. that I'd packed for the conference that left without me in the checked bag.

But I also had plenty of time to ruminate on how this could have been prevented. Where in my ticket purchase or even on the check-in email that arrived several hours before my flight could I have challenged the assumption that I was flying from DFW?

I went back and looked at my interactions for the flight purchase. And the only thing I found anywhere was the airport code. Dallas Love Field is DAL, whereas DFW is obviously DFW. I should have seen it and known. I never would have goofed had it been reversed.

But honestly, that's a difference that's easy to miss, and for someone who doesn't know (maybe some of those 13 other people who missed the flight), a pretty subtle distinction to expect travelers to get right.

So where could education play a role in preventing this mistake? Again I'm making an assumption that the airline would want to prevent the mistake: while it was marginally expensive and annoying for me, I'm imagining that several people missing flights on a regular basis (if my experience is common) is less profitable than operating with full flights. Not to mention the indirect costs and potential loss of future sales.

And this is the real lesson from this story. Look at this line in the email I received to check in for my flight FROM Dallas. Pay attention to the part in yellow.

Customer education can be as simple as including one sentence in an email to help make sure that passengers have made the appropriate plans to get to the right airport.

And in one of my favorite sessions from the CEdMA conference, Donna Weber shared her insights on how having the right content is not enough. You need to connect the dots for the customer.

In my next post, I'll be sharing other key takeaways from the CEdMA conference on additional ways that education can play a role in both your customers' success and the company's success.

I read David Allen's Getting Things Done in about 2006. I didn't implement it all at first. In fact, as a perfectionist, I mostly dropped it when I didn't have the perfect system. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept coming back to it when I felt overwhelmed by all I had to do. Though I tried different apps and approaches, it took some time before the system I use today evolved into what it is. It is by no means perfect still. But I've let go of the perfectionism enough to see the benefits I get in using this workflow to manage my tasks, complete projects, and work toward my goals. Today, I'd like to share an overview of how the tools I use fit into that workflow. The benefits are lowered stress, increased productivity, and greater creativity.

​The Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology has been extremely popular over the past decade. The methodology is simple, but like some of my favorite tools, the implementation has room for lots of flexibility. Here's a super broad overview of GTD.

I have a physical inbox - usually for forms to sign or store or bills to pay - and I schedule regular time to process it. When I do, some of the items in the box also get added to Nozbe because they are tasks that need to be done and I only want my list of tasks that need to be done in one place. 

I have a reminder to check my voicemail every day, because I rarely get important messages that way, but I handle it the same way if an item in that inbox represents something I need to do. 

​The lightbulb moment for me in using GTD was in realizing this separation: capturing the thought that I needed to do something, figuring out what to do, and actually doing the task are all separate steps that do not have to happen at the same time. In fact, it's more efficient to not do them at the same time, unless the task would take 2-5 minutes or less to do.

When I process my Nozbe inbox, I think about what actually needs to be done. What project is the task related to? How long do I think it will take to complete? Is it really the next task, or a multi-task project for which something else really needs to happen first? This separation of clarification in this step, from the capturing process in the previous step, was key to reducing much of the stress that I felt about what I needed to do on a day-to-day basis. I could capture a thought without having to figure out what it meant, and I could later figure it out what it meant without having to rely on my memory that something needed to be done. 

When you clarify (process), you are attempting to make it as easy as possible for your future self (or a person to whom you delegate the task) to understand what exactly needs to be done. Answer the question "what is the exact action that this reminder represents?" Give it an action verb and move on to the next item.

I generally do my task organizing at the same time as I'm processing my inbox. The importance of the organizing phase is to get the reminder into the right context for when and where you will do the task, or act appropriately for items that are not truly actionable.  
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There are eight possibilities when organizing the "stuff" that comes your way:

You'll want to review your calendar and next actions list as often as needed to get tasks done. When I have a very long next actions list, I like that in Nozbe, I can filter this list in different ways to help me focus. ​

I review project plans in two different ways. When I'm working on a project, I may plan out the next several tasks that need to be done. I may even turn the project into a template if it's something I'll do again. But I also need to do an overall review of my projects so that I remember what projects I have in order to reach my goals and so that nothing falls through the cracks.
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It's also important to review someday/maybe and reference information occasionally.
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The reviews are the part of this system that I still have the most trouble implementing. It's hard when I'm busy to set aside time - and of course, the longer I wait, the longer it takes to get through everything. But I also know that when I neglect my reviews, the uncomfortable sense of unease creeps back into my life, generating the stress of not knowing exactly if I've forgotten anything. 

​This part of the process is when you take action.  If you regularly work through the first four steps of this process, then you'll know with 100% confidence that the things on your next actions list are the things that you need to do to make solid progress toward achieving your goals. And if you've done a good job of clarifying and organizing the reminders, you can use your mental energy on creating and solving problems instead of figuring out what to do.

​Don't be overwhelmed by this process. You can add it to your life a little at a time, as it makes sense to you. I highly recommend giving Nozbe a try if you don't currently have a task management system that's working for you. I highly recommend giving Evernote a try if you want easily searchable storage for resources and drafts. Both tools are very flexible, so experiment with different ways of using them that make sense to you.