What is Interactive Video?

Can it actually be useful in business, training, and real life?

Interactive video is an emerging trend in business, training, entertainment, marketing, and sales. But you don’t need to invest in an expensive enterprise platform to make it work. In this post, I compare several popular eLearning tools that can be used to create interactive videos.

You’ll see demos of different types of interactive video and discover a technique to make sure your video gets a good return on investment.

Watch the video here:

This post is NOT sponsored. Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I'll receive a small commission.

Interactive Video vs Regular Video

Everyone knows about regular video. You press “play” to start. You watch your show. If you have to go to the bathroom, you press “pause”. Sure, you can scrub through or skip around to different scenes, but that’s about all the interactivity you’re going to get.

Interactive Video is a game-changer. When you play an Interactive Video, YOU make the decisions. And your Decisions determine what scene you’ll see next. Ultimately, your decisions might lead to a tragic ending. Or they might lead to a happy ending. Everything depends on YOU.

Traditional Training Videos (And Why They Don’t work)

So let’s think about this. How many of you had to sit through long, boring training videos for work? Worse yet, how many of you were the CREATORS of those long, boring training videos? OK, put your hands down - we won’t tell.

The truth is, there are a lot of boring training videos out there. But they aren’t all bad - in fact, some content in those videos is actually quite good. The problem isn’t the content. The problem is the FORMAT - traditional videos don’t have any interactivity.

With traditional videos, the audience can totally zone out. They’re just passive viewers. They don’t have to make any decisions beyond pressing “pause” or “play”.

Choose Your Own Adventure (Scenario Based Learning)

But now let’s say this training video is interactive. When they come to a decision point, they have to think. They have to choose. And if they choose poorly, they experience a poor consequence, just like they would in real life. This is scenario based learning and it’s one of the most effective ways to make learning stick.

It’s like “choose your own adventure” for real situations - and it takes audience engagement to the next level. Imagine if you could create interactive training videos for employees and simulation training sessions where the decisions really matter.

People could make their mistakes in a safe environment, then go back and play again. These branching scenarios allow them to learn from their mistakes, which really is the best way to learn. Imagine how THAT kind of training could impact your organization.

3 Things to Remember About Interactive Videos

There are three things to remember about interactive video:

1) Interactive video comes in different formats: there’s live video, animated video, and video made from still images.

2) Interactive video can be used for many purposes - employee training, onboarding, customer education, entertainment, internet marketing, and sales. It also can be used for scenario based learning and training simulations.

3) There are many different software platforms you can use to develop interactive video. I’ll include links to some of these resources in the notes below.

3 Types of Interactive Video

Interactive Video (Live)

If I add interactivity to live video footage, the training becomes more like a video game. Take a look at Confident Contractor, an interactive video I created for training landscape contractors. Here I added a story arc, decisions, a timer, and scoring to a traditional training video to make it interactive. These gamified elements increase engagement and also make it possible to track the player’s score in a Learning Management System (or LMS).

Interactive Video (Animated)

A second format to consider is animated interactive videos. This format is good to use when live video footage isn’t available. Animation software like Vyond - formerly known as GoAnimate - make it easy to customize characters, backgrounds, and props. When I built The Breakthrough Board for the Association of Talent Development, I used Vyond to create the animated video and then used Storyline to add the interactivity.

Interactive Video (Still Images)

A third format to consider is interactive video using still images, like photos or illustrations. For instance, when I built Workplace War Zone, I used custom illustrations to showcase my client’s brand and product. Then I added sound effects, professional voiceover, several decisions, and three alternate endings.

eLearning Video Examples

Now let’s talk about how interactive video can be used. It’s not just for games and entertainment. Interactive video can be used for business training, onboarding, marketing, sales, and real life.

Confident Contractor is an example of how interactive video can be used to train contractors or employees to complete a specific task. Breakthrough Board was an orientation program for nonprofit board members. Workplace War Zone educates potential customers about product benefits.

Here are a few other examples: Anna Sabramowicz and Ryan Martin created Broken Coworker to help people learn how to deal with an office bully. And LifeSaver by Martin Percy is an award-winning interactive video that teaches people how to perform CPR.

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Interactive Video Marketing

Some companies, like Ted Baker, Ikea, and Benetton are using interactive video to create shoppable ads. The customer sees hotspots associated with the product or person shown in the video. When they click the hot spot, they can see more product information, or they can instantly buy the product.

This is a relatively new form of internet marketing that’s really starting to take off. Let me know in the comments below if you’ve seen these kinds of shoppable ads online.

Interactive Video Software Platforms

There are several software platforms you can use to create interactive video. On the high-end, you’ll find enterprise platforms such as Wirewax and HapYak that can cost several thousand US dollars per year. However, there are more affordable tools such as Storyline 360, Vyond, Camtasia, and Spott.ai.

These interactive video software tools all have a drag-and-drop interface, and you don’t need to know how to code in order to use them.

Articulate Storyline 360

Storyline 360 is an eLearning development tool that allows you to create branching scenarios, buttons, decision points, and alternate endings. It has a huge library of photo realistic and illustrated characters with customizable poses and expressions. It also has a powerful built-in review system so clients can easily give you feedback throughout the development process. When you publish your interactive videos through Storyline 360, they’ll seamlessly run in any environment: Mac, PC, web, mobile devices, or an LMS.

The Storyline 360 subscription comes bundled with several other Articulate products, like Articulate Rise. There’s an education discount for students and teachers, and they offer a generous 60-day free trial.

One important note: The Storyline 360 platform itself doesn’t run in a native Mac environment. So if you’re a Mac user, you’ll need to install virtual machine software like Parallels first. Parallels isn’t too expensive and I’ve found it works really well. Storyline 360 is an industry-leading tool and I use it for most of my interactive video development.

Vyond / GoAnimate

Vyond, which was formerly known as GoAnimate, is a powerful tool that can create animated video in several different styles. There’s the animated whiteboard style, commonly used for explainer videos... The business friendly style - this is the style I used in the Breakthrough Board... And Contemporary style, which has a clean, modern look. Each style has backgrounds, characters, and props that can be customized to match brand colors.

You can change facial expressions, poses, activities, and movement for each character. One of my favorite features is lip-synch. Simply record or import a voice file, connect it to a character, and that character’s lips will automatically be synched to the speech waveform. You can create custom characters, import your own graphics, and add camera movements such as zoom and pan to increase drama.

Vyond is primarily used for animation. At the time of this recording, it doesn’t have any features to allow you to add decision points or interactive elements. But you can export the animated videos as mp4 files, and import them into another tool like Storyline 360 or Camtasia to add interactivity. I find Vyond to be a great companion to these other products.

Vyond has a free 14-day trial, monthly or annual subscription pricing, and several price tiers so you can choose the package that best suits your needs. Since Vyond cloud based, it runs on both Mac and Windows. One thing to note: the contemporary style is only available with the Premium or Enterprise plans. I often use Vyond for creating animated interactive videos, especially when live footage isn’t available.

Camtasia® by TechSmith

Camtasia by Techsmith is an excellent tool for screen recording and video editing. I use it when I need to record a demo of how software runs on my computer, or when I’m editing live video footage. However, you can also use Camtasia to add interactive elements by using the “hot spots” tool. This allows you to create clickable buttons and hotspots, branch to other places in the video, or jump to external locations like a landing page or a website.

To make the interactivity work, you need to publish your video in one of three ways. You can publish it to Screencast.com, which is Techsmith’s video hosting platform, and then share the link. Or you can publish it with the Techsmith Smart Player and host the videos on your own website. A third option is to publish your video as a SCORM package and upload it to your LMS.

Using Camtasia to add interactive elements has several benefits. It’s less expensive than Storyline 360 and it has a 30 day free trial period. Also, it’s not a subscription price - you pay once and then you own the software. Another plus is Camtasia runs on both Mac and Windows.

However, Camtasia doesn’t have all the features of Storyline 360 like a built-in player, customizable characters, or the ability to use variables, which is why I usually use Storyline 360 for my interactive video development. But overall, Camtasia is a pretty powerful screen recorder and video editor, and I frequently use it for those purposes.

Spott.ai

I’ve only recently started experimenting with Spott.ai, and so far, I like what I see. Spott seems to be specifically geared for developing interactive videos for online marketing and sales. You can create clickable hotspots that allow customers to instantly buy a product, or pop-ups that provide more information. You do this by adding pre-built widgets, such as shoppable price cards, discount tags, or social media Call to Action buttons.

Since I specialize in online training, learning, and development, I’m not currently using Spott with my clients. But if your business focus is retail sales or marketing, Spott is definitely worth a look. Their clients include large brands such as Elle and Benetton, and they’ve been around since 2014, so it seems like a fairly well-established platform.

Spott offers a free trial, yearly or quarterly subscription plans, and several pricing tiers. The amount you pay depends on how many interactions your video gets, so you only move up to the next tier as your business grows.

Those are a few software platforms you can use to develop interactive videos. You’ll find links to all of these resources in the description below.

The Future of Interactive Video (AR and VR Simulation Training)

We’re just at the beginning of the interactive video explosion. And when AR, VR, and 360 degree videos are added, there’s no telling what might happen. There are a lot of new vendors selling interactive video platforms, so be sure to evaluate their staying power and stability before you invest in their software. This is especially important if you’re creating interactive videos to support business training or operations, because you need to be fairly certain that the vendor will still be around five years from now.

How to Make Interactive Videos with Good ROI

Here’s a technique to ensure your interactive video is effective and produces a good return on investment.

Focus on the ACTIONS a person needs to take, not what the person needs to KNOW. And keep those actions focused on achieving a particular goal. For instance, if your business goal is to increase sales, figure out what ACTIONS a salesperson should take when talking with a customer, and what mistakes commonly lead to lost sales. The Actions and Common Mistakes are what you use to create your decision points.

This is based on action mapping, a technique outlined in Cathy Moore’s outstanding book Map It.

Could Interactive Video Work for You?

Interactive video is a powerful emerging trend in learning, training, and development. To find out if interactive video is the right solution for your organization, schedule a free 30-minute discovery call with Kimberly.