I just had a video game reminiscing moment of walkthroughs…mine was with The Legend Of Zelda Ocarnia of Time – Gotta love that Nintendo 64.

I was brought back to my video game days when you talked about the in-game walk-through. I remember so many games where the first 1/8th of the first level was a controlled experience where they introduced you to the controls in a game-like setting.

bubble saying “hit X to kick items”> and then you do it and a monkey wrench appears bubble saying “hit Y to pick up items”> and then you pick it up and a bad dude walks onto the screen bubble saying “hit Z to wield the monkey wrench”>

And then you were into it!

“while introducing the effectiveness of video games in getting users from zero to fun you cite the exploratory walkthroughs that help introduce controls while still ‘playing’ the game. Are there web service examples that do a good job of this?”

I can’t think of any good examples of web services that do this (well). The first beta launch of Glue had something like this, if I remember correctly, but it’s been so long now since I was on it that I honestly can’t remember what it was like. I can’t think of another service that’s attempted a walkthrough type of experience – wonder why that is…it could be because it’s a very difficult thing to accomplish and isn’t worth the development time in relation to the perceived ROI, depending on how you measure ROI ;-). I do think that there is a definite opportunity for many web service companies to innovate in this space by creating engaging walkthrough experiences. Do you know of any?

“You cite Apple’s tutorial videos as highly effective. But what about examples where the tutorial is integrated into the experience?”

There are instances where Apple integrates links within the application directly to the specific tutorial on their website. I think this is very effective. While it’s not directly a part of the experience of “doing” the link appearing in context (in a menu next to the feature trigger or in a pop-up bubble that appears when you hover over the feature trigger) creates a “learning on demand” feeling akin to a video game start menu that shows a snap shot of controls. The user becomes aware of the tutorial’s existence RIGHT as they become conscious of the feature…there’s a quick pause as the user clicks through, a browser window opens launching the video, and then the user only has to click out of the browser to return to what they were doing. Focusing on surfacing the tutorial in the context of when the user is accessing the feature (via “pop up help bubbles” you can turn off??) is similar enough to “mid-game-play” as you can get in my opinion. Again, this is another area that most companies have not innovated around much – I see contextual, on-demand education as a major opportunity. Also, don’t forget, if you link to a dashboard of ALL tutorial links, the user need only find and click ONE “feature tutorial” link to find ALL and get the full benefit of the awareness boost I discussed in the post.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this…and if you can think of any examples that would be helpful for the discussion.

Question for you — while introducing the effectiveness of video games in getting users from zero to fun you cite the exploratory walk-throughs that help introduce controls while still ‘playing’ the game.

Are there web service examples that do a good job of this?

You cite Apple’s tutorial videos as highly effective. But what about examples where the tutorial is integrated into the experience?