Aardvark Party at TechSmith today...
Posted on Thursday December 1, 2005 by Betsy Weber
What's an Aardvark party, you may ask? Here at TechSmith we're celebrating the release of the DVD Aardvark'd, 12 Weeks with Geeks, by having a lunchtime screening of the movie!
Our good friends at Fog Creek Software partnered with Boondoggle Films to release a documentary about the software development process Fog Creek went through to release their newest product, Copilot. Fog Creek Copilot, which had the code name Project Aardvark, is a service that allows people to help other people solve their computer problems remotely over the Internet.
We donated copies of SnagIt and Camtasia Studio to the Aardvarks, which they used for documentation and marketing.
TechSmith was also the official sponsor of the usability testing of Fog Creek Copilot. Morae Assistant Product Manager Mike Kujansuu, Usability Specialist Magelone Bollen and I flew out to New York City to conduct usability tests on Copilot with 14 testers at Fog Creek's office. Part of our day conducting the usability tests with Morae is included in the movie! Fog Creek Software Founder, Joel Spolsky blogged about the usability testing on his blog, Joel on Software.
Since Morae records video of the screen as well as the user's video and audio, the Aardvarks could watch the tests in another room and could both see and hear exactly where the users had problems. You can view highlight videos from the tests here.
What's also exciting about this documentary is that I can finally give my family and friends a glimpse of what it's like to work at a software company. The documentary truly captures the software development process from start to finish.
To see what an Aardvark party looks like, here are some pics from our lunchtime screening.
Bravo Zulu Aardvarks, Fog Creek and Boondoggle Films! It was an honor to be a part this project!
Bonus Random Trivia - The man behind Boondoggle Films, Lerone Wilson,, spent most of his life in Michigan and spent some time as a student at my alma mater, Michigan State University, before transferring to New York University.
