The Chimera + Beta is Now Open!

It's been months since I first mentioned about wanting to create a one-on-one course library for members who are interested. I am glad to say that the beta is finally open to everyone. Originally, the beta was supposed to be out on April 11, but I decided to make a little surprise and open it up to everyone. Creating a course library is very overwhelming. There were 3 terms that I followed when it came to designing Chimera +. The three terms were: functionality, organization, and signature design. These three main points are what I used to help myself design the whole purpose of Chimera +. Now, many of you are curious to understand what each of these three represents when it comes to design the course library. Let's dive deep into these three topics shall we?

Functionality

When it first came to the idea of creating a membership library for our viewers. There was one question came with the idea. How are we going to integrate our current website and have a member's section exclusively for our members? Luckily for us, we were able to come up with a members only page that would allow us to achieve this goal. Not only were we able to create this members section, but we were also able to allow our viewers to connect their Facebook or Google Account with our membership. One major downside though that we were not able to do is allow our newsletter fam to connect their emails to our library. Because newsletter members do not have a password connected to their emails, they will have to sign up again for Chimera +. Luckily though, they can just use the same email they did for our newsletter and also include our membership along with that.

Organization

Organization plays a very important role when it comes to sorting out our course library. When I asked myself what I wanted to include in our library, the first thing that came into my mind was obviously our course video. Although course videos was one good idea to include, it just wasn't enough. For this idea, I had to think of this from the audience's point of view. If I was going to put in the time to sign up to be in this membership, what else to I want to see in Chimera + that would make the time and energy worth it. This was when I also decided to also offer free exclusive views of our upcoming YouTube video, before they go public, and also the idea of creating PDF documents. PDF document were not surprise to me as I've done PDF documents before in the past for my blog post. The difference between my blog post to the Chimera + is I wanted to create PDF documents that would also intertwine with our course videos. This means that not only are you able to just watch our videos, but you'll be able to have a PDF file on you as well that will guide you through.

Signature

Although functionality and organization are very important, keeping our signature is also an important factor that plays into creating Chimera +. One thing about having Chimera + is staying connected to our brand. The design aspect was something that was very tricky for me. For some to who needs to be able to attach a lot of videos in PDFS on one page while keeping the signature 'earth tone' of our scheme is something I thought originally was impossible to do. One thing that I did to help me keep track of apply our signature work onto this page was repetition of some designs that I applied on other pages. For example, the fonts that I used are also the same fonts that you've already seen throughout the site. That was one big signature that I wanted to keep when creating Chimera +. By having that 'signature' applied to our course library. You are able to correlate our course library with the 'My Chimera Story' brand which was my goal. It's important to embellish your signature throughout your content. The purpose of this is so that your audience doesn't get lost in knowing what brand you are advertising to your group.

Available Content

Now that the beta is available for you to explore. let's talk about the things that are open for you to see. One thing that I wanted to do is to create this experience as one that will be easy for you to get around. With that, I decided to create a tutorial section that will introduce/guide you around to help you understand Chimera + even more. In that tutorial section, it is divided into three parts. Parts 1 and 2 are available for you to explore right now. For part 3, the video will be available to you later in the beta. Not only is the tutorial available for you, but we also have a community page that can help me stay connected with you if you have and questions or concerns. One thing when it came to the idea of having a membership is, building this connection with all our members who've signed up. By having the community page, you are able to communicate with each other and discuss anything relation to either the videos that were published or, you can also report any issues you have with the beta.

Process of the Beta

With the content available to you at your disposal. You have the opportunity to explore how our Chimera + course works. Please do understand that this design is not the final product as our final release date will still be June 25th. The beta is only open from now all the way to April 25th. Once the beta is closed, this the opportunity for me to see the feedback and allow myself for the next few months to make the changes that need to be made before we fully send our course in our final launch. By having this beta, it has allowed me to test the waters in understand not only the functionality of members accessing our library, but also allowing me the hands on understanding of maintaining our library. Like I've said before, because this is a beta, you may stumble upon errors or bugs along the way, but it is not the end of the world. If you are having a problem accessing the beta or having stumbled upon a bug that needs to be fixed, feel free to report your issue in our community page under the 'Beta Report' category. This will allow me to fix these issues either on the spot or once our beta is over.

In Conclusion...

I am truly happy to see our beta launch to be a success so far. Although that is a good sign, there is still a long way to go until we reach to the official release date of Chimera +. If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out Chimera + now as it's an opportunity you cannot miss. To see Chimera +, you can click here to have access to our page. Thank you again for being patient with more for the past few months. It has been a tedious one, but I am so glad I have been to accomplish this major obstacle...major chimera. Until then my Chimera fam, the next time you may hear from me is once the beta closes and we recap the whole thing. Till the, I will see you in the future!

TL;DR

• Being able to create the Chimera + course library require three terms: Functionality, Organization, and Signature

• Functionality

• We wanted to have everything in one page

• By doing that, we had to divide our content in sections

• In our portal we have, course videos, PDFs, and our tutorial

• Doing this allows our members to have an ease of access to everything in one spot.

• Organization

• Organizing the page was crucial to knowing how to get around

• We wanted to create a system where you didn't have only a jumble of course videos

• This is why PDFS came into play

• We wanted to not only have course videos accessible to you, but PDF documents that you can also view as you watch our videos

• Signature

• For the My Chimera Story, we always display our signature design throughout

• By doing that, you keep your work on brand

• Ways in how we apply our signature work is by:

• font

• colors

• icons

• Available Content

• Here are the contents you are able to access right now in the beta:

• Chimera + Library

• Part 1 and 2 of tutorial

• Community page

• Part 3 of tutorial video is coming soon!

• Process of Beta

• The beta closes on April 25

• If you run into an issue/glitch/or bug, report your issues in our community page

• Under the category 'Beta Report'