Download CSc 332: Multimedia Design and Development

CSE332: Multimedia Design and Development
Assembling a Multimedia e-Learning Development Team
If you’re not careful, multimedia can be multi-mush!
 The trick is, integrating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts!
 Actually, it’s not a trick: it’s design, both artistic design and software design,
and it requires management skills, both of a software development process
and pulling together a team of people with different talents, skills and agendas
Multimedia development is like yet unlike other software development:
 It’s software (especially when it’s interactive).
 But it’s also graphics, sound, video, animation—
all of which require some graphical and artistic skills.
 Also, there’s a lot more emphasis on user interface design.
Today, we’ll look at the different skills and roles required for a multimedia team;
 Meanwhile, introspect: what skills/roles do you have? Or which do you wish to develop?
[Show the credits at the end of the UM.]
Project Manager or Producer
 Someone with people and resource management skills
 Responsible for overseeing project’s timeline and resources, finances, and priorities,
facilitating communcation and documentation: see http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~jal7/csc432/.
 Vaughan: “Budgets, schedules, creative sessions, time sheets, illness, invoices,
team dynamics—the project manager is the glue that holds the team together.”
 Guess who was the project manager for The Universal Machine?
 Lopuck: “The job can be a three-ring circus because nothing ever goes as planned.”
 Early on in our project, while writing proposals to publishers,
talking to people like Connie Coleman and Professor Tuscher and other experts,
I began to talk about “The Greek chorus”
Does anyone here know what a chorus does in a Greek tragedy?
My Greek chorus warned me about all the unforeseen pitfalls and problems
I would encounter and advised me to increase my budget to allow for problems!
The Greek chorus was right! Even though the result was not a tragedy!
But we did run in many snafus, personnel changes, miscommunications,
conflicting priorities, and learning curve issues
 Who thinks they have or want to develop some project management skills?
(This is where the responsibility is and big bucks, too!)
Graphic Designer or Art Director
 Someone who knows how to organize and communicate visual information
 Juxt: “responsible for creative design and experience as a whole…impressed on the audience.”
 Why is this role crucial to a successful multimedia project?
 Early on in our project, we hired Connie Coleman as our Multimedia Art Director
 Her role was to steer us in our initial conceptual discussions and interface design
Thinking about what would work, visually, for our target audience
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User interface is the overall design of how material of presentation and interaction with user
E.g., Connie Coleman and Chris vanNest inspired spaceship interface and Knobby elements
I clarified the metaphor: problem space is like outer space [Show problem space section of UM]
Exploring space of topics, using hierarchical organization,
is like exploring galaxies, stars and planets.
They inspired and refined spaceship interface and Knobby character.
Vaughan: “an interface designer’s best work is never seen by the viewer; it’s ‘transparent.’”
Why? It gives the user control and access to media without getting in the way.
How transparent is the interface of the UM? (Be honest!)
Why do you suppose we introduced the spaceship interface? (Audience; metaphor)
Of the people here, who thinks they have some skill or talent in graphic or UI design?
Who has any experience developing web pages?
Information Architect
 Someone who can analyze the customer’s needs then design the architecture for a piece
 Juxt: The architecture defines the information structure, content and flow, along with the
technology infrastructures.
 E.g., the organization of a web-based title and any external resources (database, other
programs) that it might require
 Need to consider how to combine aesthetic and technological issues
 For an educational title, this role relates leads to script writing.
Script or Content Writer
 Someone who can communicate through clearly written text
 Vaughan: “content writers...glean information from context experts, synthesize it,
and then communicate it in a clear and concise manner.”
 Our project improved considerably when we hired Jennifer Birch to write script,
even though I still had to do quite a bit of rewriting
 It helped that Jennifer had some expertise in computing:
a script writer needs to understand the content in order to communicate it.
 Who thinks they have some skill or talent as a writer?
 In UM, narration explains the content; Knobby supplements narration with comments.
(Show an example)
 Why is the ability to write concisely important for multimedia?
Can only put limited amount of text on a screen, so reading is not a burden.
 I did a lot of rewriting: putting sentences in active voice, shortening sentences, etc.
 How is writing for a multimedia title (especially when there are hyperlinks involved)
different from writing an essay or a story?
non-linearity of presentation, so a writer doesn’t always control the sequence
always need bear in mind what the audience may or may not know
 Note: script writing happens during design, before programming!
 A role related to script writing is an editor – rewriting is as important as writing!
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Sound designer
 Someone with a good ear for voice-overs and vibrant sound effects
 In UM, all narration was audio as well as text. Why was this a good idea?
 Early on, we thought of using a text-to-speech generator. Pros and cons?
 We also built a small library of sound effects as cues, i.e., for right and wrong answers.
 Why is it important to standardize on sound effects?
 Who thinks they have some skill or talent or interest in sound design?
Videographer
 Someone with a good eye for producing movie clips: making every megabyte count!
 Like sound, video is inherently linear, so it carries over skills from movie or TV production
or perhaps most appropriately, or TV ad production (why?)
 Who has any experience with any of the media development tools?
Who thinks they have some skill or talent or interest in video design?
Animator
 Someone with a good eye for what catches a user’s eyes
 Can be as simple of buttons that change state (pause button) or complex as 3D movies
 Why is animation a particularly important distinctive between multimedia and books?
Dynamics of algorithms, drawing attention to changes of state or sequences.
 Who has skill or talent or interest in creating animations?
Subject matter expert
 Someone skilled and knowledgeable in a given topic area
 Contributes to needs assessment by helping to define program goals
 Helps identify background resources for building the content outline
 Reviews content design for factual integrity, completeness and educational effectiveness
 Points out any gross omissions or inaccuracies, and recommends improvements
 Usually not a designer or developer, but an outside expert
 Every team should identify a subject matter expert willing to invest some time into the
project
Multimedia programmers
 Someone who can implement programs that integrate media elements
 Given a clear design and previously created media elements (graphics, sounds, video, etc.)
the programmer creates the running software for the title.
 Why is multimedia programming significantly different from, say, network programming?
 Vaughan: “A multimedia programmer [is a] software engineer [who] integrates all of the
multimedia elements into a seamless whole using an authoring language or programming
language.”
 Must have an eye for visual presentation and an sense of timing or rhythm,
since not everything needs to appear on a screen at the same time.
 For example, I put a lot of effort into timing how long each screen should appear
before automatically advancing to the next screen;
there was some debate about whether automatic advance was a good idea.
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We wound up with automatic advance as default, but allow user to pause
or turn it off
Pros and cons of automatic screen advance?
May use transitions to cause a graphic to fade in or fade out.
Transitions can draw attention to material; or they can be needlessly distracting.
I added many transitions and also got ride of some.
Programming tools for multimedia are typically higher level than typical programming
languages, include Authoring tools (such as Authorware), HTML editors, Java applets,
Flash, etc.
Who has any experience with multimedia authoring?
Who thinks they have skills or talents or interests in multimedia programming?
Quality assurance engineer/beta tester
 Tests to make sure a title works according to spec and work for users
 In real world, an external, third party
 May involve actual user observations and/or focus group sessions
 Best if testing involves external, objective, third party people who go through the project
with a fine tooth comb
 Why is this role important? How can we accommodate this role in the course?
 Fortunately, McGraw-Hill brought in someone on their staff for this role before
we delivered the product
 Would that this person had been available sooner! Why?
 Who here has the patience to be a quality assurance engineer?
If you haven’t raised your hand yet, you may want to ask yourself if you’re in the right class!
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