Much of my design work over the past six years has included meeting clients virtually for a variety of needs, principally through Zoom. I’ve also conducted my share of professional learning events online and have participated in numerous webinars.
I think most of us will agree that the virtual experience could be better for a number of reasons. And while we have adapted (somewhat) to co-existing with virtual meeting platforms, they could be more capable and interesting to use and experience. Beyond the chat, the occasional poll, and the ubiquitous screen sharing of slide decks, there could be more. So, I’ve been looking to improve my capacity to deliver more engaging experiences online. I’d like to share three tools with you (one tool in this post with two to follow in another) that might help you create a more enriching experience for your students or clients. The verdict is still out on all three and how I will use them, but I’m encouraged by the creative thinking that went into these tools and the new capacities that have arisen as a result.
My goal for using these new tools: to create a more human virtual experience.
To get started, I’d like to show you mmhmm:
This is a tool that provides a series of new options to improve your virtual presence - in my case Zoom (it also works with Google Meet, and Chrome or Firefox only). The basic idea of mmhmm is that it provides a virtual camera interface for Zoom that gives you some interesting new features. To wrap your head around this, what you do is launch a Zoom meeting, launch mmhmm (it’s a desktop app) and change your Zoom camera to mmhmm. See the screenshot below.
Once this is done, you control your Zoom presence through the mmhmm interface -so, that means you would have Zoom open as well as mmhmm. For example, I would advance a presentation slide in mmhmm and that change would be reflected in Zoom. Online participants never see the mmhmm app. In the screenshot below, Zoom is to the left with the mmhmm interface in the upper right (the picture of Yosemite is my desktop).
You’ll notice that I have a different type of presence now - not confined to a small window in Zoom. And I have control of my position on the screen, the size of my presence, the transparency as well as opacity of the image of myself. I can control the size of my presentation image (the title slide in the screenshot) as well as my background. You’ll notice the six images in the mmhmm interface - these are jpeg images that were created by exporting my Keynote presentation as images. mmhmm currently does not have the ability to upload a Powerpoint or Keynote file intact - you have to export it as images. As previously mentioned, I control the pacing of the presentation and what image is shown in Zoom by clicking on the image in the lower tray of mmhmm.
In this image I’ve reduced the opacity of myself to be less intrusive in the interface. I can also appear in a circle or a square if I choose.
mmhmm can also virtualize your screen appearance with its onboard tool (used for the screenshot) or you can use a green screen (I use a portable green screen from Padcaster). Note the range of colors that I can choose, in this case, I’ve selected blue.
I have two features that are my favorite. First, with mmhmm you can record your presentation and what is really effective is the recording output. The recording produces a pretty cool interface that allows a viewer to click on each slide to access that slide’s content - so a user has a choice for how they would like to interact with your content. Also, the recording is automatically hosted in the mmhmm cloud (being able to download and self-host would be desirable) and the tool produces a link for sharing. It looks like this:
The second feature that is effective and really cool is that you can control the interface and your engagement by using a PS4 game controller. Yep, I’m serious and it works really well. Like anything, it takes practice but what is really exceptional is the creative thought and execution that went into this aspect of the interface. That suggests a truly innovative spirit at mmhmm and I’m looking forward to seeing what else is in the pipeline. If you’d like to see the what the controller does, check out the help page here.
There are other tools that will improve what you do online. I’m currently exploring the Copilot feature that enables you to present with another person.
Currently, mmhmm is in private beta so you’ll have to request an invite. I’m excited about the product - it represents fresh thinking and it provides me with a new set of tools to make what I do more effective.