

Introduction
Definition
Architecture
Design
Implementation
Summary
Resources & Credits

Create the Design

Your Role

In the Design phase, your role as faculty member becomes more supervisory. You've put all the content together, now you'll meet with the people doing the graphics, audio, video, and programming. You may be responsible for producing certain media elements, but your main role will be to meet with and give feedback to the media production specialists. You'll want to make sure that they are taking the product in the direction you want. There's a lot of experimentation and testing in this phase as the team works together to design samples of each media type, identify production tasks and build more advanced prototypes. You may also be asked to find a group of users to test the prototype(s). Meetings during this phase can last anywhere from a 15 minute check-in to a multi-hour production session.

Identify
Prototype
Content

At the end of the Design phase, we'll have an advanced prototype that will look like the final product and incorporate most of its functionality. Along the way, we're also trying to figure out the best and most efficient ways to create the media that makes up the project. Developing the protoype is like making a practice run. We need to decide which content to use during this practice run.

It's best to identify and work with a subset of the final content. It's important to select a section of content that represents the largest range of functions. Consider a textbook. Each chapter is structured similarly, but some chapters have tables, charts and exercises and others do not. We want to build a prototype that has a least one table, one chart, and one exercise -- just to make sure we know how to handle each kind of element. This will also help us get better feedback from users because they'll be able to evaluate every type of interaction.

Develop the
Look & Feel

We'll take the sketches and storyboards from the Architecture phase and give them some personality. Usually, this means having a graphic artist create a mood for the project. A lot has to do with the content. For example, if your content has to do with 18th century poetry, the project will probably look different than if it were about modern biology. Bring any ideas that you may have. If you've seen other products that you like, bring them (or at least some screenshots) with you when you meet with the artist. The artist will develop samples based on the prototype content identified in the previous step.

Create
Other Media

In addition to the graphics, the team needs to create samples of all of the other media that is to be included in the prototype. Text is written and formatted, video is shot and digitized, sound is recorded and edited, and programming structure is put into place. It's important for the people creating the media to take notes and document the process used to create each piece of media. For text documents, text processors should write down fonts, sizes, leading, styles, etc. During video shoots, someone should keep track of camera types, tape formats, and lighting arrangements. After digitizing the video, the video person should write down compression formats, frames per second and window size. For sounds, the sound engineer should write down formats, sampling, channels, bit depth, and compression. Programmers should be commenting their code. These production notes will help tremendously during the Implementation phase when the rest of the media is created.

Create a
Naming
Convention

Six months from now, how will you be able to identify a particular QuickTime movie in a folder of hundreds? By its name, of course. But what if you haven't been consistent in how you've been naming your files? It turns a seemingly easy chore into a nightmare. The team leader or production manager should create a naming convention that will make finding media much easier. Names are arbitrary, but they should be short and logical. Let's illustrate with an example. If you have a movie that you wish to play during Part 3, Test 1, Question 4, a logical name would be "p3t1q4.mov". The programmer will be very thankful and so will you when you have to find that file in 6 months.

Build
the Prototype

It's time to integrate the sample graphics, audio, video and animation into a sample product. Until now, the programmer has been working with "programmer art" to get some of the features working. Now he or she will insert some real art and finish programming the features you want to test in the prototype.

Usability Testing

Usability testing involves seeing how easily your product can be used by your intended audience.

The preliminary prototypes in the Architecture phase should have eliminated many obvious problems. We're looking for this prototype to help us identify the not-so-obvious ones. User observations, focus groups, and questionnaires are some of the tactics we can use during usability testing to get the information we need to improve the product. Give your users a task list which indicates very clearly what you want them to do or find. At the very least, you should have a list of written questions or issues that you can refer to as you watch your users go through your product. Most importantly, this is not a demo. If the product is meant for individualized use, then your users should be able to use it without your help. If they can't, there's a problem.

A word of caution here. You will never obtain 100% agreement during testing. Most developers use the 80/20 rule of thumb: If 80% of the users understand it, don't touch it. Of course, you'll have to consider the importance of the feature. You and your team should discuss whether these sections of your project should be reworked or left alone.

Moving On

As you can see, the Design phase doesn't just include graphic design. It includes making samples of all the media types that you are going to have in the final product. When all of these samples are designed, we make a prototype to see how they all fit together. We may have to go through portions of this phase several times before we get it right, but at least we're doing it on a small piece of the project. When we finally do get it right, we've accomplished our task -- we've given the product a personality.

This isn't the only phase where design takes place. User testing and feedback should be a part of each phase, which means you'll be doing a certain amount of design and redesign during the entire process. But be careful -- the later you make changes, the more time and effort will be required to implement them. And sometimes if you wait too long to get feedback, it could mean going back to the Architecture phase to make changes. That's why prototypes are important. They force you to stop and evaluate where you are before going into full production mode. After the advanced prototype is completed and tested, we can finally move on to the Implementation phase.