Recently, I was heavily involved in creating a specific Team Performance Exchange (TPE) website which was designed to join a group of specialist rugby people from a variety of backgrounds, including coaching, officiation and analysis. These people were being encouraged to join the Referee Communication Forum, a TPE site which would enable healthy discussion and debate around referee decision-making on the pitch during the current Six Nations tournament, in order to assist with the overall development of Rugby Union. Members were asked to consider the closed environment (invite only policy) as a positive opportunity to voice opinions with communal perspectives from other experts in their field.

Prior to this invitation, the site had to be designed so that members would quickly learn how the site functioned at it’s most basic level by viewing some images embedded onto the start page along with a link to a tutorial video. I’m involved with a lot of team’s TPE sites, acting as a Digital Manager to assist and improve team’s workflows on their sites, but this mainly involves communicating with the analysts/coaches and instructing them on how certain features work etc. Because of this, the database of tutorial videos I have made for English users of the sites have all been focussed towards the team members who will be providing the content and not necessarily the ones who will be using it most often!

So this got me thinking…

Coaches/analysts don’t often have a lot of spare time (as i’m sure you’re aware!) , so anyone/anything that can decrease their workload is a blessing in disguise (as i’m sure you’re also aware!!) .  This reasoning was the initial catalyst for creating the tutorial videos so that people could quickly refer back to them rather than spending precious time playing around and working things out for themselves (although I feel this is a technique which everyone should use when dealing with most types of technology!) . So this may save time for the coach/analyst when providing site content, but what about the time spent teaching players etc. about some of the finer points of the site? Surely they could be shown in a simpler fashion? Through the power of media and the internet perhaps? A step by step video guide? Maybe some pictures and text to summarise the video?

Interactive start page to the rescue!!!

Cue music and flashing lights…

Cut music, dim the lights, add a tutorial video link and some step by step picture guides. Simples.

In the words of Gordon Ramsey: “Interactive start page…..DONE .”

JB