After gathering input from several teams, I developed scripts, roughed out visuals, animated in Flash and edited voice over and music.
The iconic illustrations are mostly original with a few simple ones modified from a set of stock icons to speed up the production - those included a few tool icons (screwdriver, wrench, saw, etc.), the forklift, the tractor-trailer, a stop watch and a pad lock. The line elements drifting in the background have been part of the Sage brand, along with the color palette.
Each video targets a specific level of user - from single-user up to enterprise-level businesses.
Sage 50 Complete
Sage 50 Pro
Sage 50 Premium
Sage 50 Quantum
Sage Advisor
I worked with the usability team to develop media for promoting usability, best practices and connected services. Sage Advisor is also intended to promote customer retention and to reduce support call volume. Customer tracking allows for measuring change in behavior and for targeting communications to ensure that messaging is relevant and unobtrusive. I also recorded and directed voice over with internal voice talent.
The long scrolling of the site was at the request of the Sage Advisor director. The characters were created by an agency and the site meets corporate branding guidelines. I also wrote the descriptive copy for each section.
The option to access these videos is triggered from within the desktop product when a customer encounters a task that might be performed more efficiently. Each video demo (The 'Show Me How' section) was created in Flash, and I also designed the player skin, the intro graphic branding treatment (I did not design the character), and I typically animate the character briefly at the conclusion of each video. The musical chime at the beginning was extracted from a song by a friend of mine. The usability team identifies which features should be addressed with a video, and a trainer develops the scripts which I often edit for mechanical errors/improvements. We then record with voice talent by phone using a studio in New York, and I edit and add audio to the Flash video. I add scripts to the html pages that contain each video for tracking purposes - we use WebTrends.
Sage Advisor Interactive Presentation - An alternative to Power Point that helps the presentor explain Sage Advisor - faint interface controls at the bottom, the user can trigger animations as they speak.
