Background
ING
financial advisors wanted a a presentation tool that walked through
a story line to demonstrate different investment strategies.
Although financial advisors are brilliant investment strategists most have few design skills, thus ING wanted to enforce a style guide. Furthermore, advisors could install more stores as they became available.
Challenges and Opportunities
Macromedia Director is a great CD based presentation tool and by using the time line method making presentations is relatively easy. However the level of flexibility required by the financial advisors, suggested that the traditional methodologies of using Director would become complex beyond belief.
Microsoft power point traditionally has a significant issues when playing video. This is hardly the image that ING wanted to portrait.
Many of the financial advisors had older notebooks; and as we all know 486 notebooks play back video very poorly indeed.
Options
There were three options:
- Develop the presentation using Microsoft Power Point;
- Develop the solution using Macromedia Director using the time line; or
- Develop the solution using Macromedia Director using a intelligent presentation code.
Solution
The Solution was a SMIL (Synchronised Multimedia Integrated Language) based tool, that could be played either using the Director executable or online using Real Player.
Basically I developed a SMIL player, and worked with junior staff to develop the SMIL XML files. This meant that many people could work on the same project at the same time, a difficult issue to overcome when working with director. The SMIL files were tested in Real Player, even before the Director executable was complete.
Benefits
ING financial advisors use this presentation tool on a regular basis. Although the tool allows a great deal of flexibility in terms of the items that are discussed, at no time is the advisor able to change the look/feel of a presentation.
As the lead programmer on this project I decided to create a SMIL* compliant presentation tool. Depending upon a standard left the development team concentrate on the rendering engine and building tool. The CD was developed using Macromedia Director, although may be ported quickly to training online and presented using Real Player*G2 or Quicktime*4.1+.
