Outlaw Design Blog

My buddies over at 45 Royale worked on a project called Screenr. Basiclly, Screenr is a online screencasting tool that allows you to sign up with just your Twitter account. You can then create five minute long screencasts and share them on Twitter or just use the permalink created to share with others.

I’ll admit, at first I wasn’t very impressed with Screenr. Not because it wasn’t usable or functional, but because I didn’t really see the point in creating screencasts to share on Twitter.

My love for screencasting came one day when I had a client who was new to Wordpress and wasn’t very internet savvy. After a handful of support calls that were very basic Wordpress functions, I decided to create a simple screen cast for the client. The screencast walked the client through how to use the theme specific features as well as some basic Wordpress functions.

I have not had a support request from that client since then.

Normally I used to walk clients through how the theme worked over the phone. They would write notes and learn how things worked. No doubt they would forget much of what we went over on the phone as soon as we hung up. The beauty of these screencasts is that they have them to view any time. So, if a month after they have tweeked their theme they decide they want to change something; rather than call me, they can check the screencast first.

I also use these screencasts to talk to my developers and explain to them how I think the theme should work or what some parts of the design may be. I’ll share one of these videos below in case you are interested in seeing it.