How to make a Demo Video: A step-by-step guide for developers

If you are here, you must have been shortlisted for demo video round. Congratulations!
What is demo video round? This is where you show us what you have built and how you have built. And to shorw it, you have 5 mins!

1. Pick a favorite side project

In case you don't have one, pick the project you recently worked on, in your current/previous company. You may hide the confidential details.
If you don't have finished product, don't worry, any project that you worked for more than a week, qualifies for the demo.

Time Limit: 5 min

2. Decide the content

Let's talk about what kind of content we expect.

Remember!

Show us, don't just talk. Think like you are explaining your project to a new colleague while showing off cool stuff you did in between.

This video will be seen by both technical and non-technical people. So keep your explanations simple, concise and to the point.

Part 1 - Overview
Talk about the purpose or the use case(s) of your application. What problems does your application solves.

Make a high level architecture diagram that gives an overview of what the application does. Talk about the problems you solved/solving and what is/was the purpose behind it.

For frontend or mobile developers:
You can show the website or the mobile app and the user flows that you have created.

For backend developers:
Here is a sample system architecture!sys_arch

To create a system architecture diagram you can use https://awwapp.com/. We recommend creating the diagram in advance before recording the video.

Part 2 - Code walkthrough
This part will be seen by a technical person so you may take liberty of using technical keywords and concepts here. In this part,

  1. Show the code in a code editor.
  2. Explain the code structure.
  3. Explain the architecture, key components, modules or features that you have contributed.
  4. Talk about the challenges you faced during the project, your achievements or anything interesting you want to share about your work.
  5. Talk about the timeline, team and your contribution(how much time did it take for you to build the solution and who else was involved)

3. Record the video

TL;DR: You have to make a screen recording.

  1. Don't try to make a professional video.
  2. We're not judging your video editing skills.
  3. It should be a casual video with no editing, no effects, no music.
  4. We care only about the content.
  5. Make sure that we can hear you clearly.

Tools for screen recording
Use following apps made specially for screen recording

  1. Ubuntu/Linux: RecordMyDesktop
  2. Windows: In built OS feature
  3. macOS: Default OS app: QuickTime Player

4. Share your video with us

  1. Upload it on YouTube.
  2. To make the video private and still shareable, select visibility type to be unlisted
  3. Submit the link to video in your application

Here's how you can upload video which is visible only to people whom you share the link with.
Once you upload, all you need to do is share the video link with us. That's it.

Checkout sample video

Any questions?

Reach us out over email at help at invidelabs dot com.
We look forward to receiving your awesome demo videos. Best of luck and Happy coding!