Adobe Captivate is an elearning authoring and course design tool (or LCMS). It supports mobile HTML5 content. Captivate’s users are commonly midsized businesses to enterprises. Adobe Captivate includes some prebuilt assets as well as customizable workflows.
Captivate is well suited for instruction designers who want to build attractive, personalized, interactive, energetic lessons. It's also a good choice for someone who wants to build something innovative because Captivate gives the developer so much control over so many aspects.
But if someone wanted something built quickly, generically and didn't care about holding the viewer's attention, then Captivate might be an expensive tool. That person might be more satisfied with a cheaper and easier to learn authoring tool.
UserZoom is well suited for usability testing, I found specifically around test websites and marketing materials. I was able to invite others to participate and watch as well as screen share so that it was an interactive session. Other tools I have used have been a little better with the video output and transcripts of each session so that we could capture notes quickly, but overall it was a good tool to use to test.
Quickly adding in graphics, text, and interactive buttons.
Has extensive variables and branching for additional customization, beyond the competition.
Has 360 degree capability which competitors don't offer (I have not used this feature).
High degree of customization and personalization.
True responsive screen display on all devices, viewable as you are creating the training. This is different than some competitors - some just shrink the screen, but Adobe Captivate allows actually removing or moving or changing items at different screen sizes.
If you like Flash, it has Flash output, although it's going away in 2020. Personally, I think this is an outdated technology.
Many advanced capabilities. I chose this product due to the capabilities.
Comes with assets, templates, people, head shots, and full body—excellent.
Adobe Captivate is the authoring tool. It integrates with Adobe Captivate Prime - which I highly recommend if you want to truly take advantage of all of its features in reporting, administration, compliance, and social learning. (I didn't use Prime because you essentially need 100+ students to affordably use Prime.) If you look at my chart of what Captivate is capable of, I can't say that Captivate has a lot of the reporting features because they are part of Prime/SCORM, although, with Captivate's customization, you might be able to do most of them if you are up to it, but I did not.
Quantitative testing can be done on the cheap compared to other quant tools or vendors... once you buy the license, you only pay for additional recruiting and you are managing the project, so there isn't the high cost of having other vendors doing the project management or running a survey etc.
Farily robust means of tracking and recording data. I also relied heavily on the excel spreadsheet of all the raw data, which you can have UZ customize for you to get what you need.
Great support system from the UserZoom team - they have researchers who can help with coding and also provide research support for a very good price.
Also they have tree testing, card sorting, survey capabilities (in addition to usability testing)... and mobile testing. and they seem to be continously be developing the tool to support additional methods.
Clunky interface, it takes a lot of extra clicks to get places compared to other Adobe apps and competitor's eLearning software.
Would be nice if it was part of creative cloud, or at least in the group of apps you can add through Creative Cloud.
More regular and meaningful updates. Compared to flagship apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Captivate is like the read headed step child. Competitors excel at providing regular updates with clear change documentation. How are we still using Captivate 2019 in 2022?
The interface feels like it is still stuck in the 90s, would be nice if it was more modern and better in-line with flagship adobe offerings.
Variables and associated menus are a nuisance to work with vs some of the clever drop down and content-sensitive options in Articulate Storyline.
Compared with some other tools, because their video conferencing platform is web-based (vs. using Zoom, which has a desktop app), I find the connection buffers a lot and it's kind of annoying
Their screening tool on the UserZoom side (not Go) is clunky. Just let me select May, Must, or Should not for criteria rather than the weird interface design they have now.
Logic panel is a little confusing, sometimes I do a double-take, sometimes it's wonky and resets itself. It's just not as easy to use as it could be.
They haven't integrated UserZoom and UserZoom Go (formerly Validately)
It's expensive!
We signed up for a high sample size license with unlimited tests, but we're finding their panel doesn't fill as fast as their biggest competitor, UserTesting. We've struggled to fill n=100 sample tests with fairly general criteria.
A lot of their licenses only allow limited concurrent studies, whereas UserTesting had unlimited tests that you could launch at a time. It's slowed us down.
We have hundreds of courses that were created in Adobe Captivate. It will take us a while to convert to Articulate. We'll need a license for another year and/or until Adobe comes out with a true update to the software.
I'm actually trying to get a license for my current job at my current company (recently moved to a new company). I gave it this rating because I am about to go to our executive to ask that we purchase it! I know that there will be value because we are forecasting a high volume of research next year
Adobe Captivate does take some getting used to. There are features that are much more convoluted than they need to be, but overall it is a great product with a some excellent features. Being in a pretty small market, Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline dominate the space. They are not the same software, but allow for eLearning authoring. Each has their benefit and their downside, but, for me, Adobe Captivate edges out Storyline.
Overall, it was fairly easy to use. Especially if you are familiar with this type of product. We were able to use it for testing pretty much right after we got it (same day) and didn't have many issues figuring out how to invite, test, and share which was great.
It is difficult to get in touch with Adobe Captivate support. With a seemingly limited number of resources, mostly outsourced, getting in contact with someone to help troubleshoot an issue is challenging. Typically wait times are long, and the desired path to resolution is to use an existing knowledge base or a self-help guide. It is certainly not a user-friendly experience.
From my experience, the UserZoom team has really done a great job answering the limited questions we have given them thus far. I think the platform is popular enough that many of my questions have been answered by their help pages - or other online content with helpful tips and tricks. I think the community has done a nice job of providing end-user tutorials for those who are new to the platform.
I'm only aware of the problems Adobe Captivate had with SumTotal LMS and Upside LMS, requiring extensive contact with both internal and external support staff to fix the problems. We had no problems at all with Articulate.
I think that Articulate360 is more user-friendly and has a cleaner, more updated look. If you can edit a PDF, then you can use Articulate 360. Adobe Captivate may be more challenging for the designer, but it has more features. We chose Adobe Captivate because we want the option to create interactive learning environments. Adobe Captivate plays well with the other Adobe design products including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premier. Additionally, Adoe Captivate is highly compatible with Cornerstone, our preferred Learning Management Systems.
Client selected it due to how they used it, pricing, and what it could do for them. It's about the same as these other tools but UsabilityHub let's you run multiple types of task in one test, and UserTesting still has a bigger panel I think
Adobe Captivate has allowed our instructors to engage students in ways we never have before.
Instructors who have used Adobe Captivate in our organization have reported higher levels of engagement with their courses and their students, theoretically leading to improved assessment of student performance.
Making informed decisions: repeat testing before launching the app/website to reduce errors in the future
Guarantee customers' satisfaction: ensure the errors are reduced to the minimum so that the purchase process is smooth and there will be no need to reach out to our customer support team
