Are Screencasts Useful?

We’ve recently done several screencasts to demonstrate aspects of Tinderbox and Twig. A correspondent wrote yesterday, urging us to do still more.

And of course we write quite a bit about Tinderbox and Twig in case studies and tutorials and in the new series of profiles on Tinderbox At Work (1 2 3 and more coming soon). And there’s the whole Romero story on information gardening and legal work.

Are screencasts useful? Effective?

QUESTION: How should be allocate resources between screencasts and Web work? And, in either medium, how do we optimize investment in extended discussions vs. brief illustrations? Is there good evidence – not mere conventional wisdom – about the comparative efficacy of screencasts and written explanations?