Lily Lieve, thank you for taking the time to write such a sweet message.
Please know how much I appreciate you! You don’t even have to list your talents—I can tell from any one of your messages that you are brilliant, well-rounded, and ultra-versatile.
You are absolutely right, and your thought exercise of a building where the engineer has personally built the foundation and installed the windows is a good one!
I will (lovingly!) counter with my own comparison: What if the engineer knows all about engineering, physics, construction, material longevity, and aesthetics, but needs to learn AutoCAD, to express what she already knows, but what if AutoCAD is full of bugs and doesn’t do what it says it does? I feel a bit more like that. I know these comparisons are imperfect—but my point is, Adobe has built something which someone like me should be able to pick up and use, and I cannot.
(I have a curriculum which I have taught privately for 10+ years, first in person and then online, to individuals and small groups. So I do have a very good concept of what to convey and how to convey it. Have also studied pedagogy and psychology of learning, so I don’t doubt my teaching skills. So here is a tool, Captivate, which is supposed to help me get my concepts onto the screen, and it cannot. This is where I feel like that architect who knows their craft and science, but the one tool that is supposed to help them, is failing them!)
Working in Rise for less than an hour already, I was able to begin to bring to the screen nearly my exact vision of how my course should look. That is what Captivate should also do. And I am so sad that it doesn’t! (I do wish that Rise had more choices for aesthetic variation—but it is not a show-stopper. For now, I just need to build my course!)
I am sharing this partly so that if Adobe reads this, they will understand how their new Cp is failing.
There is a time and place to hire people to do things for you, I absolutely agree. I am hiring an animator where necessary, hiring someone to consult with on colours and aesthetics, and on whether I get the accessibility issues right, hiring someone to edit my script—I know that there are certain things that will be done better if I have someone else do it or help with it.
In future courses I will consider hiring someone to do the set-up entirely (whether they use Rise, Storyline, or some version of Captivate), in order to free up my time. But for now, a huge part of my script-preparation is informed by what the software can do, so I do actually benefit from being acquainted with the software. Also I would need to be able to communicate to an instructional designer what it is that I want to accomplish, and IMO there is no better way than to show them a course that I have built and say, “Like this! And make it better, too! :-)” It will be an iterative process, and I can always hire someone later to improve my V.1 or to do my V.2 — but for now, I just need to make this thing! 🙂
Lieve, I am so sad and worried for people like you who have invested so much of yourselves in Captivate. You and others have built and centered careers around it. And now it is gasping for air. I understand that this is frightening and stressful and also a real kick to your heart, in your case especially, because you have given yourself so freely. Please know that your gifts have been really treasured by many humans. And please take great care of yourself! You are too important to allow yourself to burn out.
-Lisa
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