Using Video Guides To Help Lab Users

Training new Lab users on all our benchtop analysers is a big part of our role in the Flow Cytometry facility. All new users, even if they have a lot of previous flow cytometry experience, will have one-to-one training with a member of our Lab. This could be as simple as going over the cleaning and data storage procedures for those who know everything else already. Or it could involve several sessions where we cover the principles of the technique and the entire process from experimental design to analysis and data presentation. Lab users will only be allowed full 24/7 access to the instruments once we are happy that they know what they are doing and, importantly, that they will look after our precious machines!

Inevitably though people forget things, and problems occur when we're not around to help. Over the years, emails have been sent out and our machines have accumulated reminder notices. The problem is though, people don’t always read the signs. If they have been there for a while, they just fade into the background. Also, it can be difficult to explain a physical process with just a few words and a couple of pictures. But any more than that and people may not bother to read it at all. What you really need is a moving, talking human in the Lab. But none of us is terribly keen on being here all night just in case someone forgets how to top up the sheath tank.

To try to solve this problem, we’ve created some short videos. The most recent one shows users how to set up and shut down the new HTS. The HTS lets users run samples straight from a 96 well plate and although they are common in a lot of labs including our Mill Hill site, they haven’t been used much here at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

However, we recently fitted one to our Fortessa X20 and it’s been quite popular with users who don’t want to spend hours sat in front of a flow cytometer just to swap a tube over every five minutes. It's a pretty straightforward system to use and saves time when there are a lot of samples to analyse. But it does require the user to physically change over a few parts on the machine (and put them back again afterwards). So rather than writing a lengthy flat pack furniture style text description (insert tube A into port B …etc, etc.) Joana filmed me doing the swap, I uploaded the video to YouTube and then we made it available to our users:

Making the video guides on a smartphone (Samsung S5) was very quick and straightforward. The guides use a combination of still images and video, edited together on the phone and rather than talking through the instructions there are subtitles. So users don't need sound.

To make it easier to find the videos when they are needed I used free online tools to create shortened URL and QR codes. These are stuck to the HTS so anyone with a smartphone and a QR reading app can just point their phone at it and the video will pop up. It’s a tip I’d seen mentioned on Twitter for putting instructions on a communal coffee machine, something which is probably more complicated to use than the HTS (although messing up a macchiato isn’t usually as bad as ruining 96 samples).

The HTS video is easily accessed using a QR code and shortened URL on the machine

We also have a short video for all our analysers, reminding people how to change the sheath and waste tanks, plus a few troubleshooting tips. 

Of course the videos are no substitute for proper training by a real life flow expert, but realistically there are times when users who should perhaps know better, forget the basics when no one is around to help, especially if it’s a problem they don’t often encounter. So I don’t think we’ll be winning any Oscars but hopefully the video guides and easy access QR codes will help out our users when they have late night problems and save us from finding dried up cytometers or ruined experiments the next morning.

If we ever get a coffee machine that (and the accompanying video of course) might help too.