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November 10, 2005
First time usage, making the learning curve flat.
Our goal is to make great software for groups of people that need to work together closely, even though they are far apart.
While we try to make our software as easy to use as possible for the sporadic user, we also want to focus on the frequent users. Basically, we try to find the right balance to make the right compromises.
Our software is computer and internet based. Our kind of software pushes computers and networks which are normally used for email and surfing the web to a new kind of level. Doing multiparty voice and video with high interactivity uses your computer's resources like never before.
This means that a new user may hit some initial barriers that may come from our compromise between first time vs power users and from the computer's setup. I will try to list some of the barriers a first time user may encounter to flatten the learning curve.
1. MeetNow! Through the click of a link, the Marratech software can download, install, update and launch itself in the appropriate room. While in theory this is all nice, some of you may discover some issues with Java.
Before using Marratech the first time, visit http://www.java.com and click on the Download Now! link. This will install and or update the Java Virtual Machine on your computer and will ensure that Marratech will properly launch right the first time.
2. Network Marratech will work across most home, small - medium enterprise routers and firewalls directly. We also have built in support for NAT.
However, in larger enterprises, firewalls may be closed to UDP traffic. If you read my earlier post, you will find that Marratech relies on UDP traffic to offer the best audio possible. Other solutions will use more firewall friendly TCP traffic but will suffer from degraded voice quality with long delays. This is not acceptable from a virtual office solution for frequent users.
Marratech has secure, easy to explain rules that can be applied to firewalls in order to permit meeting traffic which will give your group the best possible experience.
3. Audio Device Marratech can work with many sound cards. For example, you may have an echo cancelling mic connected to one sound card, your headset to another and your camera's built in microphone. In frequent usage, you may need to switch between these. It is therefore important to choose the proper device from the start. Avoid your camera's built in microphone. It will easily distort and pick up ambient sound.
4. Headset or echo cancelling mic. We are keeping a close eye on echo cancellation algorithms. These have proven pretty efficient on one-on-one scenarios, but tend to degrade in group conversations.
The algorithms are getting better and the processors faster meaning they will show up in Marratech soon. In the mean time, and even when software echo cancellation will be available, the best results are achieved through a good headset or with echo cancelling microphones sush as the duet.
5. System drivers. Drivers are the glue between your computer's hardware and the operating system. Since we push the computer harder than most applications with 16 khz voice (this is not common, 8 khz is usually the norm), many video windows, etc... you may need to upgrade your system drivers with the newest from your manufacturer. This is especially true of Windows 2000 system... which is now over 6 years old.
6. Don't panic! What I just wrote about is not rocket science. :-) In fact, if you have a 2 year old laptop, a headset and a ordinary network, chances are things will work very well.
If not, you may need to bring small updates to your system in the form of Java and your audio and display drivers. If you are behind a closed firewall, it may need to be configured.
The goal of this post is to be honest and make you aware of the steps you may need to take to succeed in using the best group collaboration tool out there.
We are working hard on making the learning curve flatter. If you have any suggestions on how to make this happen, let us know. We have not been first time users for a loooong time!
Posted by Serge Lachapelle at November 10, 2005 10:45 PM
Comments
This is one of the great challenges for any webconferencing solution - how to provide a quality solution for companies with spanking brand new Pentium 4 or G5 computers with Tiger or (soon to be) Vista at one end yet without forgetting the small and micro-businesses, education and government clients that make do with yesterdays computers at the other end.
By way of illustration, in discussions with a potential client in Belgium I learned that while the Belgian government paid for a certain number of brand new Macs and PCs, the schools made up the numbers by buying computers 'third' or maybe 'fourth' hand from Oxfam or 25 Euros a piece! That gives you an idea of the challenge!
Also you can be sure that 75% of users will never read the instructions anyway! So warnings about the processor or RAM needed will generally be ignored the same way clients (and even some resllers!) pitch up to demos with no headset, no webcam and an ancient computer expecting miracles.
Posted by: Peter Cunningham at November 21, 2005 09:06 PM