Snap! by Lectora - competitive position?

Whatever this Snap! is like, Trivantis does NOT have the best, community ever seen on the web. Articulate community's worth, included the consultancy provided by Articulate staff, is unvaluable and unique!!!!!

Merry Christmas to everyone!!!!!! 

Stefano

"Lectora, I've built hundreds of courses with Articulate, I  know Articulate, Articulate is a friend of mine. Lectora, you're no Articulate."

Bruce, have you tried their demos? I did. The $99 app isn't bad, but I couldn't use it for anything I'm building at my company.

Here are some random thoughts on the topic:

• The professionalism of a craftsman can be judged in part by the tools he chooses to use.
• A BMW or a Yugo will both get you to where you're going, but only one of them will do so in style.
• Timex and Rolex watches both do the same thing -- tell time -- so why does anyone choose the Rolex?

In any serious discussion, value beats price. Every time.

'nough said.

Thanks all - some great food for thought

@Dave - appreciate the sentiments, however, many clients just want to "do the job", and by the looks of the demos, it can.

@Tom - no I have not used the demos, perhaps I should...

@Phil - size matters !  I did not know that, I have not worked yet with one company that did not have internal bandwidth issues - including HP and Oracle, so that's a great point!  I will DEFINITELY try and make May, I will be going up the night before, so perhaps beers can be had ?

Thanks all. This is not a "live firefight" I'm in, I just wanted to see what people knew, and thought, and it's always good to be prepared.

Bruce

Oh dear....it could be a long night, especially if we synch up on hotels

Bruce

Sounds good to me, now we both need to get offline, my kids need shouting at!

Have a great christmas Bruce

TTFN - wife is shouting at my daughter for me

And you...

Bruce

@Bruce,

I gave Snap! a look when it first came out and it was obvious that it was a product rushed to market to give the appearance

that Trivantis was in the rapid authoring game.  It was quite buggy and couldn't match Articulate's feature set.  To be more

precise, Trivantis claims to match Articulate's feature set, but if you look specifically at their list, they use up half of the 

comparison by breaking down their quizzing ability (hot spot question, drag and drop question, etc.). This is pretty funny because

Snap!'s quizzing capabilities are pretty poor compared to Quizmaker.  As we've seen from Jeanette in particular, Quizmaker 

really provides a robust authoring environment where you can manipulate graphics, control the timeline, etc.  Snap!'s quizzing interface is pretty basic (think QM form view but no slide view and very scant features).

What Snap! does give you is more of a focus upon tying in to Social Media, making it easier to drop in YouTube videos, etc.  A nice

facet, and one which we'll hopefully see in the next version of Studio, but the overall, the Snap! output doesn't look as professional and the toolset is nowhere near the level provided by Studio (regardless of what Snaps! comparison chart claims).   Their chart is sorta like this...

YUGO!

$99 The price isn't a typo!

But Mercedes wishes it were! 

Mercedes: 4 wheels

Yugo: 4 wheels

Mercedes: Windshield

Yugo: Windshield   

Mercedes: Radio

Yugo: Radio

Mercedes: Engine

Yugo: Engine

Mercedes: Passenger Door

Yugo: Passenger Door

Mercedes: Brakes

Yugo: Brakes

They recently released a new update, Mike. Snap Empower - it's a bit more like Engage in feature set. I've checked it out and I was surprised / impressed. The downside is I don't believe these are necessarily for the same purposes. It seemed like the snap update was a bit more complicated than engage. I think it's worth a look for the price point if you're in the market for this type of tool.

@Mike/@Steve - thanks for the posts.

Here's the thing though - the constant "Mercedes vs. Yugo" and other "Quality" vs. "Basic" arguments are, occasionally breaking down, much more so than 2 years ago from what I see.

Training is often at the bottom of the corporate food chain anyhow, and as many corpoorates STILL just want, ((initially anyway...), .ppt + audio and a quiz, then the Yogos of the World are fine for them.

Now it doesn't always matter to me - I will charge the same per hour price no matter what the tool, however, a really good, detailed feauture-by-feature breakdown and review is something I woudl like to see easily available.

We must never become complacent in our positioning.

Bruce

I always think the real differentiator is the instructional designer, technology is good, but what differentiates my work is me.

I am really looking forward to doing my off the shelf mandatory  fire safety elearning course when I return to work, last year I think I passed without reading the content!

Absolutely - and that's the point...

If a company sees ME, and they see $$99 vs. $1099 - they are going to potentially want me to push $$99 @ 100%, and go for the $99 product.

Of course I sell myself, however, I also want easily available ways to explain why I should use or recommend x over y, and at the moment I cannot see them.

Bruce

I downloaded it and played with it for a few hours.  Here are my observations and conclusions:

• The interface is remarkably similar to AP and therefore using it was quite easy.
• I don't like the lack of diveristy in output options.
• I do like the ties to outside media objects such as YouTube videos.
• It is very inexpensive.

I honestly think the user market is slightly different.  I am an educator who knows enough about eLearning development to be dangerous.  That's why I have been using AP since 2005 (and could never get anywhere with Authorware).  I know a lot of fellow educators who would not be able to take advantage of what AP can do because they would not pay for it out of pocket and their institutions will not purchase a license.  For educators who have no eLearning budget, spending $99 to have this fundamental capability will be incredibly attractiv ... but for eLearning designers and developers, I honestly don't see it as a true competitor to the Articulate Studio suite.

That's my 2 cents worth anyway.

I'm a new member here, but have produced hundreds of lessons over the years and have led teams that have produced lessons for university and high school curriculum. Right now I'm in a corporate training environment. I've used a lot of tools, including proprietary tools, over the years. Articulate is, BY FAR, the easiest and most complete tool for the money. It produces results quickly and, in my opinion, is like the Swiss Army Knife of e-learning software because it has every tool in one convenient package (speaking of Articulate Studio, which is what I use). I also have Captivate, but use it  for different purposes.

One point that is perhaps a bit off the mark, but hopefully relevant, is that Articulate doesn't do a good job with video-based lessons. I can see how integrating more closely with YouTube could be a big selling factor because it relieves the client of a lot of bandwidth. It would be nice to take the student to a YouTube video and than back into the lesson for a quiz or a review. I'm getting more and more video requests and have developed a process to produce green screen video lessons quicker than I can produce PowerPoint lessons. Clients love them because there's something about video that seems more substantial. They get higher perceived value even though it's a lot less work than producing a high quality interactive lesson.

All this to say, I'm hoping Articulate comes up with a stronger video platform in their future release. If they can't add this to their Swiss Army Knife collection, they're going to lose a few believers.

I use youtube all the time in my Articulate courses.  Just insert the link via the the web object.  It plays fine and looks good.

eLearning developers who provide service should be familiar with all tools.  Tools are never exclusive solution.  Sometime the $99 tool is the right choice and sometimes not.  If customer wants the cheapest price that's what you give them. But price isn't only value.

Personally I not recommend Snap unless only price consideration. I think Articulate give better production and customization. I also like Articulate community and all help I get.  I may save money on software but spend more trying to fix problem later.  That is worth a lot.  Also, the publishing quality on Snap is not as good as Articulate.

I not big fan of PowerPoint but I recommend Articulate to all my customers who do PowerPoint learning because Articulate does good support them.  That means me less support.

Snap has template quiz and Quizmaker has customization in slide view.  At conference, David show me sample of quizmaker that I cannot create in Snap.  That is big difference between two.

I think if only look price then you go with less money, but if you look long term value, then you go Articulate.

I like auto example but not Yugo and Mercedes. More like Kia Rio and Honda Civic. Good autos, one is inexpensive and good short solution, one give more long term value.

Thanks Sara. But the integration is not there - it's obvious the web object is not part of the lesson. If I try to display it within the slide, I get the warning, "This content cannot be displayed in a frame. To help protect the security of the information you enter into this website, the publisher of this content does not allow it to be displayed in a frame."

So you're forced to show YouTube content in a separate browser window. All you're really doing is providing a link out to YouTube, where a student can get lost at sea.

But here's my chance to admit I'm not an expert in this area of Articulate, so if there's something I'm missing, please tell!

Although we should know what tools are available, I believe we should be more than proficient in a small set of tools.

I can use photoshop and flash (because they supplement my Studio courses) and also I am very good with Studio.  I can use captivate for screen capture (this will stop once storyline is released).  But I do not use Adobe presenter even though it is on my machine.  I would prefer to be an expert with one tool instead of so-so with lots of tools.  

I have chosen a toolset that does what I need and for this reason do not need Snap!, but as part of my job I need to be aware of what is available!

I think there are a few conversations going here. To Bruce's original question, the issue is simple: the products are not equal and it's misleading to claim they are. I don't mind dropping $99 for a product. I do mind spending $99 on something that says it does something it doesn't. 

Tom, thanks for bringing it back around. My point is, it's sad that a $99 product could have more going on with video than a $1,400 product, and that's a serious consideration for someone who's getting more and more into video. I doubt Snap! will become my main tool any time soon, but, hey, it's worth knowing whether or not it should be part of my arsenal.

I'm a big fan of Articulate (or I wouldn't be here), and have produced hundreds of lessons with it. But I'm open to anything that aids my workflow and/or fills a specific need - in this case, video. I'm betting on the idea that Articulate will have more video options its next go round.

Phil - thanks for the comment. Storyline is an exciting prospect.

Randy, inserting youtube videos only takes a few seconds and has always worked for me.

Hey Randy,

I created a simple tutorial on how to add YouTube videos to Presenter. I prefer the option on slide 2 because it's faster to insert the link than it is to create the iframe page.  

The iframe does give you more control because you can embellish the insert page and add additional content.  I've seen this used where organizations augment the video with descriptions or add more than one video the page.

In either case, while Presenter doesn't have a dedicated YouTube button, adding a YouTube video is pretty simple.

Tom K. - thanks for the insights on your video. So, it is possible to integrate YouTube videos into your lessons and pretty darn easy once you've done it a couple times. For anyone else interested in making YouTube part of your lessons, Tom's video tutorial is a big help. There are several extra steps I wouldn't have known to take - that is, for the truly best integration into a lesson.

Sara - I think our ideas of full integration may be a bit different... and just stating that something is easy doesn't help. If you do follow the steps Tom outlines, I would have loved you to share them.

Apologies to all for steering this thread in a different direction than was originally intended - but grateful I learned something valuable and directly applicable to my lessons.