I've been wondering lately: What is the optimal workflow for creating wireframes in a video format? Not interactive wireframes, but a video that looks like a screen recording of a real use case. I find this format can be very helpful for clients for the following reasons:
- Clients don't always know what to do with an interactive wireframe. They don't understand the use cases they're supposed to simulate. So they just click around randomly.
- Interactive wireframes are necessarily unable to mimic many of the most important kinds of interaction. For example, entering text, clicking submit, and having the text appear in the middle of a sorted list is infeasible in a wireframe.
- Videos show a use case in a very concrete, intuitive way. Very little is left to the imagination.
- A video should be able to represent even very difficult-to-program functionality. For example, an advanced conversation bot is exceedingly hard to program, yet trivial to mock up in a video. (Just write a script for the dialogue.)
Does anyone recommend any tools or workflows for creating these sorts of videos?
You can always just do a screencast where you narrate the use case. That way you can give a nice introduction, explain things along the way, and provide a wrap-up.
As you said, having a quick 3-5 minute video along with a boring PDF can go a long way to getting people to actually look, understand and care about what you're working on. Videos can easily be sent around and re-watched, plus even executed have time for them (unlike long PDFs).
There are a ton of options for this. Honestly, you can keep it very simple and use something like keynote to animate assets and still get great results (considering time invested). For more complex needs you can use photoshop+after effects to animate.
- Clients don't always know what to do with an interactive wireframe. They don't understand the use cases they're supposed to simulate. So they just click around randomly.
- Interactive wireframes are necessarily unable to mimic many of the most important kinds of interaction. For example, entering text, clicking submit, and having the text appear in the middle of a sorted list is infeasible in a wireframe.
- Videos show a use case in a very concrete, intuitive way. Very little is left to the imagination.
- A video should be able to represent even very difficult-to-program functionality. For example, an advanced conversation bot is exceedingly hard to program, yet trivial to mock up in a video. (Just write a script for the dialogue.)
Does anyone recommend any tools or workflows for creating these sorts of videos?