Good morning goodie good afternoon wherever you are and wherever you're watching from. My name is Matt Pierce and I'm the host of Visual Lab. And it's been 300 times since I started saying that. And that's something crazy to think about that 300 episodes have gone by that we've shared information from experts, professionals, people in the learning development space, customer education, and more. So I'm here to do a little, hey, look at us, 300 episodes. Who would have figured that when I started way back, uh the podcast officially started in September of 2020, but actually there were some lots of episodes before that that never got turned into the podcast. But so I've been reflecting a lot about what do you say when you hit milestones and what should milestones be. You know, we did something at 250, now here we are at 300. And honestly, the number doesn't really matter because the goal is to keep going, to keep sharing information, knowledge, thoughts, thinking around visuals and creating video. But I've gotta say the world is changing. Things are a little different than they were five years ago, and that's okay. But we gotta keep looking towards progression and how can we evolve, adapt, and uh just kind of keep keep changing. So here's what I want to do for this episode. If you're listening at home or watching or wherever you might be, I've got 10 lessons, and we're gonna do this. Uh, I'm a fan of the 90s talk shows, David Letterman style is a top 10 list. So, top 10 things I've learned from the Visual Lounge.

#10: You probably don't need better gear

Number 10, you don't probably need better gear. Now, I started talking a lot about gear early on, and gear is essential when you're making certain types of video. Obviously, we talk a lot about microphones, we talk a lot about cameras, we talk about gear that you might need. But here's the reality the complication that gear adds is immense. I'm using a setup that's different than my normal setup, and I can tell you I've already had issues and challenges and things I needed to figure out, and that just adds time. Now, that's not to say good gear isn't nice, that it doesn't add to the production quality, but what it does do is just makes things a lot harder. But what you need is stuff that's gonna make your stuff good enough. If you're making a Hollywood video, go get a $40,000, $80,000 red camera plus lenses. But if you're making a video for your organization, maybe a cell phone is good enough, but do add maybe a microphone. And so uh we you've probably heard me say it before, but you know, the best gear is the one that's the one that you got with you. So don't worry so much about the gear. Worry about the content. Worry about what you're saying, what's the message, what's being made, and how is that gonna actually impact the people that you're trying to have an impact on? Are people going to be able to do the things that you're showing them how to do? Are they going to be able to feel something and respond to it? Are they going to understand? Gear doesn't do that. That's in your message, and a little bit of strategic thinking about how you put it all together.

#9: Make it as short as possible, as long as needed

Number nine, make it short as possible, long as needed. This is a mantra we've been saying on the visual lounge since the beginning. There's always the question that comes up, how long should my video be? Well, and there's always it's like, what it should be shorter, or now we've got video viewer study data that says it can be longer. But the reality is that's never the right answer. The answer is always short as possible. Don't give more information than you need. Our tendency is to overexplain, to over-process, to try to give you everything. It's just kind of nature of most people I work with in instructional design, learning, and development, we're giving people. But the reality is people don't need it all. They need this much, or maybe they need this much. But guess what? They don't need it all. And so you gotta pull back on some of those instincts. They don't need to know every workflow, they need the best workflow. Or you need them to do the workflow that's gonna allow them to do it the best way possible, fast as possible, with the least amount of waste, or whatever it might be that your goal and objective is. Yeah, you gotta set the goal and objective, but that allows you to say, you know what, everything outside of this lane does not

#8: Polish is not the same thing as quality

matter. Number eight, polish is not the same as quality. Now, don't get me wrong, I love a really highly edited video that looks really good, cool special effects with AI, you can do all sorts of things now, but that's not the same as something that is just really helpful. When I have a problem and I turn to a YouTube how-to, and it's like a guy holding his camera, barely able to focus on the thing that I need to see, but it shows me exactly what I need to do in a way that I exactly need to do it, that is super helpful and worth its effort. But if it was an animated drawing with special effects and all this cool stuff, but it didn't really show me how to do that thing, it would not help be helpful. It would not matter. You can polish all you want, but it does not mean it's something that's needed or effective. And so I think we just need to be really mindful about that and help our leaders, help our organizations, our learners even, to understand that just because something looks cool or looks fun doesn't mean it's gonna be the most effective. And we we have to have judgment and taste. We have to be able to say, this is good judgment, and this is when we're gonna not do something. That's really an important distinction. And then we're gonna have to say, this is why we do want to do this thing. This is why we want to add pizzazz and flair and some effects, because it does have a purpose, but you need to be thinking through that purpose. So again, polish, not always the same as effectiveness.

#7: People don't have short attention spans. They have little patience for irrelevant content

Number seven. People don't have short attention spans, they just have little patience for irrelevant content. Now, I've argued about this. We've heard the goldfish study, it's not real. First of all, it is not real, right? Goldfish don't have short-term memory loss. You know, they're not like going around 10 seconds. I love Ted Lasso, but it's wrong. Uh, you know, people do have attention spans still. We haven't shortened them so much. Obviously, people do a lot of scrolling, a lot of flipping their phones. But here's the thing: they just don't have attention spans for things that are irrelevant. If it doesn't apply to them, it doesn't meet their needs, it's not fulfilling something for them, they're not gonna pay attention. And so when it comes to learning development, as it comes to thinking about our customers, we have to think about when are they going to be accessing this content? What is the challenges that they're facing, what might be the other pressures that are upon them at that time that are gonna cause them issues? Because you might have made a really great tutorial that takes 30 minutes, but they might be thinking, I don't have 30 minutes, I just need to know how to do this one thing. You know, in one of the episodes a long time ago, we actually talked about one of the reasons why people stop watching isn't always because they're bored or because they don't like it or it's you know not the right tutorial for them, it's because they got their answer. And I think that really speaks to this idea that people have attention spans, they just have a need. And you are there as a creator of content to figure out what is that need and also probably to convince them that they might have that need in some cases. Compliance training, why do they need to know this? Why is it important that you help them to understand this policy, this procedure, or the way this thing happens to work? Whatever it might be, people don't have short attention spans. I just think that's a such a misnomer that people think this. And it's by evidence it kind of looks that way. But in reality, we see people will spend hours watching, consuming, doing things that they love or are interested in. Now, I'm gonna nerd out for just a second. There is a show that is a live stream show playing Dungeons and Dragons. It's a very popular one. Some of you probably watch it or have heard of it at least. But it's like four to five hours of content. I haven't watched it in a long time. I I've moved on to other things, but when I was watching, I would, I would consume four to five hours of a show. Now, was I wrapped in attention the whole time? No, I was often multitasking, but I had attention span for that long that I would pay attention to the storylines. I would be able to keep the thread in my mind. And so I think what happens is when we look at training and learning and serving our customers, honestly, sometimes our content's boring. Sometimes our content, it's like, why do I need to know this? Or how is this actually helping me? You showed me how to do the thing, but when do I do the thing? Or you showed me how to do the thing, and I kind of know when I want to do it, but I need a reality of like actually doing it, like something that's real. Like help me make it not only a thing, but make it look good. So if you've gone this far, you've got a decent attention span. Don't don't fall for it. Just remember, short as possible, long as needed.

#6: Use story when it helps

Number six, use story when it's helpful. Look, learning and development is not the same as movies. It's not Hollywood entertainment, which is all about stories. We've had a lot of authors on here who have talked about story, and I believe them. Uh Rance Green, Mike Fasolo, who was the uh writer for Robot Chicken. All these guys talk about and gals talk about using story. And sometimes it can be like, well, I don't know the story that I'm gonna tell about teaching someone how to do XYZ procedure. And so don't use a story. Don't have a scenario. But when it makes sense, you can lean in and let people see themselves inside of the thing that you're talking about. Help them see why it matters using the story, what impact it might have, what the end outcome is. Sometimes I think we put training out there and we expect an outcome. Like we're gonna reduce waste. That's a great example when Bob Pike talked about what can training can do, right? But if we're like, here, take this training, did it reduce waste? Well, maybe, but tell the person. Use the story and the examples that you have to help them understand what the outcome we're going for. When I'm aligned and I understand the outcome I'm going for from a training and learning procedure or course or whatever it might be, I am much more likely to lean into that thing and say, like, oh, I see how this fits, I see how this works. Story is powerful. It allows us to empathize, it allows us to put ourselves in place of and say, Oh, I can see how that relates to me. But it doesn't work for everything. You don't need to stretch it. But when you do, lean into it. Make sure you use it well, get good character, follow the advice that we heard from these great storytellers, great story creators, and lean in because story is, again, it's one of the most primitive, powerful things that we've got. It's been around, story's been around for millennia. It's one of the ways we used to teach people all the time is story, right? That's why there's fables, and that's why people would sit around a campfire and they'd probably tell stories in ancient days. So we don't have to use them though. But you can, and when you do, try to use it

#5: Accessibility is about being human

well. Number five, accessibility is about being human. Now, accessibility is an area that I often feel like, gosh, I just don't know enough. I don't understand all the things that I need to know to make all my content accessible. I I fall short often. And I think about that a lot, and I think, gosh, how can I be better? But the thing about accessibility isn't just a standard. There's there are great standards, and those are important standards, and we should be striving to get to the highest standards. But what accessibility really is, is about connecting to other humans, other humans who have different challenges than I have, other humans who may want to access the content, but it's hard. It becomes a challenge because we don't think about all the steps that they have to go through to maybe do that. I know I'm someone who speaks fast, and I know that can cause challenges for people. And so I need to think about accessibility. It's it is about following the standard, but it's also about remembering on the other side of that piece of media, content, whatever it might be, is a human. It is someone who has a desire to access the cont the content that you have. They have a desire to or need to access that content. It is up to us to be thoughtful about that process. It's up to us to be thinking about what I can do to make someone's life a little easier, a little better, a little bit more included. Because that's what that's what it's about. It's about human connection, it's about being human and thoughtful and caring and kind. It is not necessarily about the standard. The standards are important because those are proven things to help. But it's really gotta go beyond that. And so as you're making your learning content, your customer-facing content, whatever it might be, be thinking about what I can do to make this a little bit more friendly to the people who are gonna watch it.

#4: More content is rarely the real goal

Number four, more content is rarely the goal. So you might be thinking, gosh, there's all these great tools, we can crank out the content, and AI is going to allow us to crank out the content. However, more content isn't the answer. It's the right content in the right time at the right place, right? So it's that someone has the access to that content when they need it. It's the content that's gonna allow them to get the job done. It's the content that's gonna help them level up and grow. It's the content that is going to do the thing, whatever it is you're setting its task to do, within reason. Because we know that learning development isn't the only answer, right? Like we talk, we should be talking about human performance. We should be talking about all these things that make a difference in the system. You know, if uh systems start breaking down, it's probably not a training issue. It could be, but maybe it's something else. This is a fundamental belief I've had. Uh I went through a graduate program long time ago called Instructional Systems Technology, and we looked at not just training problems, but we looked at performance issues. We looked at the bigger scope of what could be the problem. You know, maybe someone's not motivated, and it's not a training issue. It's things are going on in their life that are hard. Or maybe there's a misalignment with their skills, and the gap that they have to be able to do the thing you're asking them to do is really big. And that's not maybe a training problem. Maybe it's a motivation problem that is inspired by uh something else. There are lots of ways to look at this. And I I love training, I love creating video content, and I think it has a lot of application. I think it'd be used in a lot of places uh as a supplement. But it cannot be that we're just making more content to make more content. The backlog you have, of course, is things that are requested from stakeholders, from subject matter experts, is probably valid. But you've got to ask yourself, is this content really going to solve the problem? Is it going to really help us move forward to our goal and objective? And there are things that it's like, yep, that's a checklist. I just need to check that bad boy off. Because then they're compliant. We're in compliance, we met our standard, our goal. Great. But then there's gonna be other things that you're gonna have to really look at the bigger problem, look at the bigger system, and say, hey, we can provide training that will help X, Y, but Z is a different story. And what I'd recommend is this. And that Z answer might not look like a video. It might not look like documentation, it might not look like a job aid, it might not look like anything that you're typically dealing with. You might actually have to partner with others in the organization to say, hey, this is a problem. How do we solve this? It's not a training issue. We know that. We think it's a benefits issue, we think it's an alignment issue, whatever it might be. So, with that said, just don't make more content to make more content. Make good content that solves specific problems and that training is good for.

#3: AI makes judgment more important, not less

Number three, AI makes our judgment more important, not less. So here's the thing AI is gonna allow us to do a lot of things. It's gonna allow us to speed up creation, content, it's gonna allow us to make content maybe we couldn't make before, it's gonna allow us to do things faster, easier, maybe without a lot of intervention, although intervention is really important, keep the human in the loop. But where AI is not able to really step in is because it is generative or it is agentic, whatever nature you want to look at, the bots are doing the work or you're generating stuff, it doesn't necessarily understand what's good. It has a sense of kind of the amalgamation of all the content in the world, and it's gonna base it off of that. But what it doesn't have is always taste. It doesn't necessarily know if something's right or good. It is just generating and predicting what can happen. For us, we need to be the judges. We need to be looking at something and saying, you know what, that doesn't work, or hey, this looks too rote. It looks too repetitive, it looks whatever it might be that our judgment is stating. And so we have to be careful and thoughtful about that. That the job of the AI can be it can write the thing, but if it's writing the thing, you have to review the thing not just for correctness, but for judgment. Did it write something that's awkward or reads in a way that just doesn't really make sense? Like it's technically right, but maybe it doesn't feel right. And I think that's important because as a human in the loop, your job is to do a lot of things. You might cross-check it, but it is also to say, is this worthy of the hire? Is this worthy of giving this to my fellow coworkers to consume? Like, are they going to be able to consume this in a way that's going to allow them to take away from it what they need? And so judgment becomes ever more important that we have to be the ones to look at the content and say, yep, this is really good. Or nope, this doesn't work. Or, hey, this is pretty good. We're on track, it sped me up to here. Now I'm gonna take it and apply my judgment. And judgment's hard. You know, um, I've had a long career at Tech Smith, and I I've known people who are really good with judgment on like visuals, and people who just had no real idea that that wasn't their strong suit. And understanding that about yourself is really important. But even if you don't feel like you're very capable at this point, go out and learn. Learn some of the basics, learn the fundamentals, teach yourself about good design, teach yourself about good learning practices. So that way, when you have whatever it is that the AI generated, you can look at it and say, hey, based on what I understand, this is what I think should be true. And then, of course, questioning yourself, you know, uh run it. You could even run it through the AI and say, here's what I think is feedback. What does it tell you back? It probably will agree with you because a lot of AI is right now, it just seems like it just agrees with you. Whatever, you're right. Oh, I was so wrong. Uh, so you gotta be careful. But your judgment, put it and apply it and be the curator of good content, not just all content. You don't need everything. We just need good content. And go out and find examples that you like. Something I love about Tim Slade is I've talked to him a number of times about his process and where he gets inspiration. And he'll just always be looking like he, you know, like, oh, I'm thinking about infographics. Where did he see some infographics? In an airport, right? Like on a screen and saw something that he liked. He was able to incorporate that. So just keep looking. Go watch content, go view content, go be a consumer of content so that you can improve your judgment. Because judgment really does matter, and it will make the difference between AI slop, AI okay, and AI human in the loop great. So AI, it's good. I don't think it's gonna be, it could be terrible, who knows? But I I think we just need to be much better at being really good advocates of good versus just more.

#2: Your audience doesn't care how hard your video was to make

Number two, your audience does not care how hard a video was for you to make. There, I said it. This video is probably gonna be a lot harder for me than others. Do you care? No. You just want good content. If your video is gonna be really hard to make, most people don't care. They want to know about timeline, they want to know about budget, they want to know about outcomes. But the fact that you had to go through like 17 different hoops doesn't really matter. Because what they care about is the input output, right? They care about what's being what is created. The process is for you. Now you should care about how hard it is. You should be looking for ways to speed that up. Like, what can you beg, borrow, and steal from? What can you reuse? How can you reduce the overall time? Like what steps can you take? But in that process, it doesn't matter if it takes you an hour or three weeks or Six months, now your boss might care. But it doesn't matter because everyone's gonna look at the outcome and and and that's what they really are gonna judge it on. Now, internally, industry-wise, yeah, we do care about those things. We like sharing about those things. The visual own we talk about a lot of ways, hopefully, to make it better so you can be faster. But ultimately, we we just don't care. You you don't care about the the meat and the guts of of what it took to put it together. You just want it to be good as you consume it. Sometimes it's fun to deep dive, and there's a group that you can commiserate with, do that, but don't bother. Let me tell you a story about what I I learned this lesson, uh very similar uh application. Working on Tech Smith Academy, I I really wanted to share some history. We're talking about lighting and we're talking about barn doors. If you don't know what barn doors are, they sit on a light and they help control how much light is coming in or out from the light source. And I really wanted to share the history of the barn door that Thomas Edison has the Black Mariah, which is a barn, literal barn, and they had these skylights and windows and doors that they could open and close. And as they did so, it affected the way it looked and the lighting for how the camera was shooting. I wanted to share that story in a video that was essentially about how to do three-point lighting. And good friend Andy Owen kind of took me aside and said, no one cares. And I was like, but I just spent all this time writing this script and doing this research. I think it would be good. And I we may have recorded it out of he humored me. We did not use it. Because ultimately, when you're there to learn about three-point lighting, no one cares about the history of the barn door. They don't care about Thomas Edison at that point. They're like, I've got a job to do, help me do it. And same with the making of your video. Sorry, just it's not that interesting to the end user. Unless it's a Hollywood movie that someone's really geeking out about film. And I know it's hard to hear, and I know it might feel a little cold, but I think it's important to know a lot of people don't care about how you made that articulate online rise course. They don't care about the LMS guts. They just want to be able to find the course and get it done. Now, others in our community, we do care. So know that we got ya. You want to tell me your story about how long it took you to make a video? I would love to hear it. You can email me at the visualounge at textman.com. We'll set up a call. I want to hear it. But most people don't. That's it. That's number two. People just they want the outcome. I know it's hard, but trust me, we're all better for it when we just know that that's the case.

#1: Great visual communication is really about helping people understand

Number one. Great visual communication is really about helping people understand. That's it. We talk a lot about images and videos on the visual lounge. It's called the visual lounge because we talk about images and videos. But the end goal isn't to make visuals and video. They're an outcome of helping people. They're an outcome of helping people understand something more than they understand today, or refreshing their memory so that they are reminded not to do the things they shouldn't do or to do the things they should do. Visuals are a tool in our toolbox. They are something that is there for us to use to convey meaning, to convey messages. But beyond that, they can be decorative, they can be inspiring, they can be lots of things. But from our perspective, as we focus on helping customers, helping learning development folks, uh, you know, in our in our teams, uh we're helping our organization grow and develop, ultimately, visuals are a means to an end. They should have purpose, they should have focus, and they should do a job. And you're hiring your video to do a job. It's to convey information across time and space and in a way that involves movement and engages people and helps them see with their own eyes the things that you want them to understand. Particularly, I think about, you know, uh learning a software program over the shoulder, it's hard to do, right? But as a screen recording, I can re- I can rewind. I've sat in classrooms and watched and learned, you know, but the times I really learned is by when I saw it and then I did it. Uh screen recordings are great for that because I can watch it and then I can go do it. I have time on my time to do that. So when we think about visual communication, we think about visual learning, we think about all these things, visuals are a mean to an end. They allow us to get to meaning hopefully faster and with more clarity. That's the goal. Faster, more clarity, better understanding. If you use a graphic that, you know, line drawings, cool. Using fancy animation, cool. Use some AI generated piece of whatever that does that thing and it makes more sense than what you could create, okay. But you have to be thinking about why am I using a visual? Why am I making this a video? Is this doing the job? And I'm not trying to say don't. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not trying to say don't do those things, but what I am saying is visuals are there to do the work. They're there to help create understanding. And it's probably in mixed media, right? It's not just going to be a visual. It's not just going to be a video. There's context that comes around that. There are parts and pieces that you might need to have that support that. There's probably a need, if you're doing a video, for a job aid that goes along with the task so that someone doesn't have to go back and watch the full video to understand what they need to do, or to remember that one trick step that was like, oh gosh, that's pretty tricky, right? And so think about visuals as just a tool. That's all they are. And we've been talking for 300 episodes about visuals, how they work, how we can use them better, how to hook people in your videos, and all that is important. But at the end of the day, it is just a way to communicate. It is just a way to express meaning. And hopefully, what you've learned, if you've listened to any of the episodes over the last 299, is that you gain some semblance of how to do it a little bit better. I hope that the podcast has helped you and will continue to help you think through maybe some of these ways that you can start to apply video in more meaningful, effective ways. That maybe you can get a little bit better here and a little bit better there. You can think about the story a little bit more. You can think about how the gear impacts the understanding that someone has when they can't hear it or they can't see it well, or it's not well lit. All these things have a place. But our end goal is not just to make videos. Our end goal is to help people. It is to help our customers to be able to use that thing that we built. It is to help our organization to get more effective or more efficient or to avoid problems or to be compliant. And I dog on compliance a lot, but it's really an important step, right? We need our organizational members to be compliant. Because why? Because otherwise the organization gets dinged, and whatever that means, that might be fines or penalties or shut down or whatever it might be. We don't want that. You probably want to keep working.

Matt's Final Take

So here's what I'd say in conclusion for this episode. I hope that you take lessons away from the visual lounge. I hope you walk away and are feeling like you can be a little bit better, that you can do a little bit more, that you're a little bit more thoughtful about how visuals and videos work, that your understanding has grown a little bit deeper by the conversations that I've been able to have with the many guests that have joined me, by the episodes where I'm sharing just what I've learned over a career here at TechSmith of over 20 years. I hope that you've been able to absorb some of that and apply it. And if you've got things that have worked, I would love to hear it. If you've got things that you disagree with, I'd love to hear it. Because I think there's more opportunities for us to learn and grow than there are not. Even in the age of AI, there are many more things we need to learn, more opportunities to grow our skill sets, even without using the AI. So what I hope is that you are literally growing and developing because of the things that you've heard. Or we've caused you to question or think deeply about something. And if nothing else, I hope you've at least enjoyed listening to the conversations that I've had, the questions that I've asked, the responses of these amazing people. Too many to list. But they're amazing. These are amazing folks. These are industry leaders, and I hope to have more. I hope to have more voices, more perspectives, and more opportunities for you to learn from. For now, let's let us there's something there for you. Go back into the archives, find something that you don't know about, give it a listen. And that said, take a little time to level up every single day.