DEMOSHIELD ARTICLE

DEMOSHIELD: A QUIET REVOLUTION IN THE TRAINING INDUSTRY

By John Massey

Training Editor, I News Agency

February 10, 2003

As a trainer I like things that are simple and yet powerful. That way I don’t have too much teaching to do and I can still look like a star. The Demoshield product certainly fits the bill, simple and yet powerful.

I began evaluating Demoshield with a mild interest in a product that I believed from its name created product demos and small tutorials. It didn’t take too long however to realize that I was looking at a product that takes a normally difficult endeavor, creating computer-based training, and makes it downright simple. With Demoshield it is easy to capture a professional look and feel while creating effective products surprisingly quickly.

The concept behind Demoshield according to Greg Goldsmith, Demoshield product manager, is to allow subject experts to create their own final products. Currently it takes a small army of people to create CBT using the traditional method. CBT authoring products tend to be so complex that learning how to use the application becomes a subject comparable to learning a programming language. When I tried to learn Authorware from Macromedia, the number one CBT authoring program on the market, I ordered a book that was 942 pages. It still sits in my pile of never-to-be-read books that helps me add ballast to my life. With Demoshield I took a different tack and started just pushing buttons, poking and prodding. After a few hours I could pretty much do the things that I wanted to do and discovered a few neat things that I had never even thought of doing.

My occasional forays into the help function were helpful but at times a little bit less so than I would have liked. Fortunately the program itself is intuitive enough to allow me to figure out what I couldn’t understand from the help function. You don’t really need a book to understand Demoshield, which is good because there are no books on the subject except for their training manual priced at $175. That said, if you are going to be a serious user of Demoshield, you would probably do well to bite the bullet and buy the book. I did find it informative at explaining some of the more complex tools.

WHAT DEMOSHIELD DOES

If there is one thing that I don’t like about Demoshield it is the name because it tends to place it into a “creator of software demos” pigeonhole, but Demoshield does a lot more and does it well. There is no reason that you can’t do full-length training with the current version of the product unless you need your training to be SCORM (an industry standard for CBT) compliant. The latest version now has database support, which allows a bookmarking system (bookmarks allow the user to continue from the last place they were on the course to bridge between sessions).

According to their literature the number one use of Demoshield is creating product demos. Demoshield also has great features that allow you to build a professional GUI interface for your software product installations. Installshield, the undisputed installation kings and the creators of Demoshield, have included enough installation utilities to make it interesting but not enough to make you skip buying Installshield if you want to use their application to do your install. Demoshield for instance can search your registry for installed components and use this information to trigger installation actions. If your product requires a certain codec or driver or perhaps Adobe Acrobat you can automatically find out if that stuff is on the computer and install the required components. The best way to get a quick idea of the many things you can do with Demoshield is to look over the collection of demos on their website:

http://www.installshield.com/ds/showcase/ds_product-tour.asp.

CREATING QUALITY TRAINING

Currently most CBT creation requires subject matter experts, training developers, artists and software experts to interact which creates a time-consuming and expensive process. I think that the Demoshield interface shows us the future: that after a few hours of training on Demoshield, the subject matter expert or trainer can sit down and bang out a high quality professional-looking training in a fraction of the time that it traditionally takes. I don’t suppose that this picture is a pretty one for everyone in the training industry, but then I doubt that many typesetters looked kindly upon the laser printer.

There aren’t many training tools that Demoshield now lacks since they have added database support in this latest version. The program easily creates simulations, quizzes, and a fully interactive environment for a powerful training experience. What I liked most about the product is its ability to coordinate sound, video and screen video. It comes with a cut-down version of Camtasia, the leader in screen video production, which is plenty for most projects and allows you to purchase an upgrade if you want to have expanded capabilities

As most in the industry know, it takes far more than great authoring software to create a CBT that works and is not dry, boring and confusing. There will still be many knowledgeable people involved in the creation process but with a product like Demoshield that is both easy to learn and use and creates a professional look, we find the process of creating CBT is getting far more simple and streamlined than ever before.

On the client side of things is the player, a fully mature program that is a 200k single file (exe) that does not write to the registry. What this means is that it is not likely to ever cause any problems for the computer it is being loaded onto. If your demo is to be played over the web, the client-side player will be loaded automatically once the user confirms that he would like to install the player, much like Flash . And I have found Demoshield to be just as flashy as Flash in its performance.

IN CONCLUSION

While it is doubtful that anything named Demoshield will ever dominate the CBT authorware marketplace, the real value of the product is unmistakable and highly underrated. With a few additions to the package, like SCORM compliance and integration into an LMS (learning management System) who knows. Companies always like things that are cheaper, better and more effective, and I do think that Demoshield falls strongly into that category. With an MSRP of only $699 the product is truly a bargain.

John Massey

Training Editor

I News Agency

Bio: John Massey focuses on building training courseware that reduces the learning curve. He is President of Tech Know Engineering.

HELPFUL LINKS

Demoshield main website:

http://www.demoshield.com

Online Brochure (requires Adobe Acrobat):

http://www.installshield.com/downloads/ds/aag/DemoShield_AAG75.pdf

Product Tour/Overview:

http://www.installshield.com/ds/showcase/ds_product-tour.asp

Technical FAQs: