In our EDUCAUSE Learning Lab – ChatGPT in Higher Education course, we talked a lot about who uses generative AI and why. The top three reasons we discussed were generative AI’s ability to help with dreaming, drudgery, and design.

Documentation is an important part of communicating the IT message to our customers. It isn’t drudgery per se, but I am a words person –not a pictures person– and I get frustrated with the endless tweaking of screenshots to fit an ever-changing (in my opinion) set of best practices. So when I watched a colleague demonstrate using Scribe to create quick and informative how-to instructions on navigating Concur and other tools their customers use, I was immediately captivated. A generative AI documentation tool like this is definitely on my wish list.

There are several reasons why Scribe is not currently in my generative AI tool kit, but the most important one is my preference for focusing on free or licensed tools already found in a university environment. Admittedly, Adobe products for students might only be available on university computers in labs and the library. But if your environment supports Scribe, definitely go check it out.

If I understood my colleague correctly, the moderately-priced version retains the content and screenshots in the Scribe platform and produces an iFrame to load in your own website. Easy-peasy, but it’s been a long time since I studied website accessibility (doesn’t my CMS handle that?) and iFrames used to have a bad rap with screen readers. The higher-priced version includes the option to download the HTML file so you would actually ‘own’ the content you created through Scribe so you can save the screenshot images and content inside your CMS platform.

Image Prompt

In Microsoft Copilot, try this:

Create an abstract art image showing the profile of an employee sitting at a desk at a large computer screen and surrounded by piles of paper and art supplies, use natural lighting from the office window. It is a sunny day outside. Zoom in on the employees hands and computer screen.

I liked two of the four results very much and keep changing back and forth on which one is featured.