Week 4 - Web Site and Multimedia Integration

Objectives
Reading
Training
Individual Project
Learning Team Project
Lecture - Multimedia Implementation
Discussion Questions

Objectives:

• Analyze tools for creating multimedia elements.
• Explain the process to prepare graphics/images for Web sites.
• Compare and contrast capabilities and limitations of image file formats.
• Apply advanced Web design techniques such as feedback forms and pop-up windows.

Read Chapters 6 and 11 in Multimedia: Making It Work

Training:

Continue to follow the tutorials found on the Basic Website Creation tutorial page to complete the next set of tasks.

Individual Project - Personal WebSite, Part III

You continue to build your web site this week, incorporating the criteria listed on the Assignments page.

Learning Team Project – The team continues to work on the Team web site project.

Check the Calendar for specific due dates for all assignments, both individual and team.

Lecture - Multimedia Integration:

In Week 3 the we discussed the use of audio and video in Web sites.  As we have been discussing throughout this course, there are advantages and disadvantages to all types of media.  I think a good rule of thumb is to analyze if the content truly calls for a type of media and if so, which type is the best choice.  There’s always going to be trade-offs, so prepare to be flexible.  But no gratuitous use of media – ‘bells and whistles’!  It must serve a purpose and support the content.

This week the text gives more detail about specific areas of web page design, such as affective considerations, user interface or GUIs, language, style, and grammar, among others. Good web page design is a fairly simple concept, but harder to implement than you would imagine.  I will expect to see the basic design principles reflected in your web pages for the assignment.

A Model for Design and Development

The text walks you through a good model for design and development of an instructional web site.  There are two phases, the design phase and the development phase.

Design Phase:

• Flowcharts
• Storyboards
• Screen Design

Development Phase:

• Write text
• Produce media
• Audio
• Video
• Graphics
• Authoring
• Debug

This week you will be incorporating pieces of media into your web site.

Flowcharts are different from storyboards because they are a graphical representation of all of the elements in a web site and how the ‘flow’ of the site should proceed. 

A storyboard shows what will be on each screen. It will include global navigation and section menus, graphics, banners, links, and footer info and where the text will go.

A screen design is one or two designs that show what the index page or entry page will look like and also what the other pages will look like.  It will show the look and feel, colors, graphics, banner graphics, logos, etc.

I generally do a combination of these three where my flowchart and storyboard are blended together and my screen designs are blended into my storyboard.  I usually end up with two separate documents, depending on the project.  For my current project I will have this flowchart and screen designs.  No need to do a storyboard because most pages will have the same layout.

The text talks a lot about working with development teams.  The world of web development has become so complicated in the past 5 or 6 years that it really takes a team of experts to put together a robust site.  When the Web was brand new, there were many one-person development teams.  The designer also coded and visa versa.  But as the technology became more sophisticated and Web users started demanding more interactivity and greater control over information, one person simply could not do it all.  So most teams will have programmers, graphic artists, designers, technical writers, media specialists, and a project manager or some configuration of this.

So we come to project management again.  It almost seems this course should have been titled Effective Project Management for Applications of Multimedia and Web Page Design!  This just emphasizes the importance of managing the project.  Even if you are doing it by yourself, you still need to manage the project to ensure that you will finish it on time and at the level of quality you desire.

I’ve got a Golden Rule of multimedia and web development:  Estimate how long it will take you to develop the project, then double or triple that time.  It always takes me on average three times as long as my original estimate to finish something.  So pay attention to this when you are allotting time to get your projects in by the due date!

Testing and Evaluation

A very important step in the development process is testing and evaluation.  The text points out various levels of testing: there is alpha testing, which I call an internal review.   At CDE we developed one lesson of the course content fully, including the multimedia components.  We would upload to the Course Management System (we were using Prometheus and WebCT at the time) and then have a student and the instructor go through it.  We worked out the initial development bugs in this phase of testing.  It also helped us get a clear idea of the time needed to development the remaining components or lessons.

Beta testing is the next phase when the course is done.  We would conduct an internal and external technical and editorial review.  One of the other designers in the Center would review the course first, mainly for technical errors (graphics not showing, broken links, etc.), punctuation and grammar.  They would also look at the course on various machines with different operating systems and different browsers.  Then it would go to an external reviewer. 

This is someone who is not working at the Center who goes through the course with a fine-toothed comb. Again, this is a technical and editorial review.  This person is also on a dial-up or broadband connection away from campus so that we can test connectivity of the course and detect problems with the media.  I am presently serving as a course reviewer for the center.

The text also refers to Donald Kirkpatrick’s four levels of assessment.  For those of you in corporate or business settings, these levels are used widely across the nation.  They are from his book Evaluating Training Programs.

The temptation of every project is to skip this essential step, particularly if the project is running behind schedule.  But it can be a very expensive mistake for a couple of reasons: 

1.      The initial release is full of errors and bugs, requiring many ‘patches’ to make the program useable.

2.       Long term damage to the reputation of the development company affecting future return and referred business.

When I was a Quality Assurance tester at the health plan I worked at, we were looked upon and treated as the outcasts in the IT department.   This was because we had the authority to delay a deployment if the ‘defects’ we found were not fixed.  Testing is the bane of a programmer’s life, but an absolutely essential step in the development of the product. 

References:

Vaughan, T. (2004). Multimedia: Making it work (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Technology Education.

Discussion questions:

Check the Calendar for due dates.

1. Why do you think you need a thorough understanding of images and color in order to design Web pages?
   
2. As an instructional designer, what are the most important considerations regarding the use of images and colors in educational/training Web-based lessons?