Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 1 Multimedia in Organisations BUSS 213 Lecture 12 Multimedia Production & Evolutionary Prototyping

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 2 Agenda (1) in the process of developing an actual multimedia system, the sequences of stages used when collecting, creating, processing, allocating and delivering content – known as workflows- need to be considered in great detail get your workflows wrong and there is trouble- ineffective media which does not suit your project needs likely to provided late or not at all related to the issue of appropriate workflows, is the actual systems development process itself… …how to sequence development activities, how to organise development tasks and how to project manage the development of complex multimedia development process is crucial to successful multimedia development and your career success

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 3 Agenda (2) multimedia development is in most cases many times more complex that traditional development because you are dealing with multiple media we describe and advocate the use of evolutionary prototyping as the only real way of delivering what users want faced with the complexity of the development tasks themselves

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 4 Development as Social Process

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 5 Development as Social Process Design Problems & Solutions from a previous lecture we identified that it was the nature of design problems and solutions to be complex and social Problems can’t be comprehensively stated require subjective interpretation tend to be hierarchically organised Solutions inexhaustible number of different solutions no optimal solutions to design problems

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 6 Development as Social Process Analysis and Functional Requirements to ensure that a completed system does what it is intended to do it is necessary to determine what is needed statements about what is needed in a system are referred to system requirements or functional requirements if you don’t have any requirements you will not know what you are trying to building

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 7 Development as Social Process Requirements Evolve over Time it is true that we may never have the final answer on what all the system requirements are at any point in time requirements evolve as a consequence of us attempting to identify them the activity of identifying requirements changes what we thought we knew about what we wanted to do

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 8 Development as Social Process Approaches differ concerning Requirements there is the major distinction between: traditional systems development which assumes that you can find a fixed set of system requirements that are assumed not to change during the process of systems development – and prototyping approaches which assume that requirements change over time

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 9 Development as Social Process Requirements and Systems Analysis regardless of your view on the nature of requirements without an attempt to identify and codify them an effective system cannot be built any information system development project including an organisational multimedia system needs to have methods that help determine the functionality- systems analysis

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 10 Development as Social Process ‘Solutions’ are matters of convenience at some point we may well converge on a solution- in which case we might artificially decide to ‘finish’ part of the system- that’s OK as long as we can also restart the search for modified requirements if we need to the false assumption that you should be able to fix your analysis and design is referred to pre-specification- in fact you can never really know when all aspects of the problem emerged- some may never be fully uncovered

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 11 Development as Social Process Design Process (1) there are a vast number of ways in which we could actually develop a multimedia system need methods to assist us in identifying ways to provide functionality to groups of users must assist different people in a development team communicate with each other because each member of multimedia team brings with them their own disparate sets of terminology and concepts- when we ask questions about how to provide the functionality we are involved in systems design

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 12 Development as Social Process Design Process & Project Management assuming you can decide on what you want to do then supporting this process requires considerable management (as we shall see…) the reason is that design decision are never isolated- design decisions made now will likely effect the results of previous decisions previous design decisions are linked together as if by a web and so design looks like it is constraint based … … and in complex systems deelopment you need project management techniques to assist

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 13 Development as Social Process Design Process is Constraint-based: Example a constraint imposed early in the development process on the maximum size of the video template- a consequence of the text widget…

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 14 Development as Social Process Design Process is Constraint-based: Example influenced the maximum size of the VR on the screen (based on one of its own internal constraints- the aspect ratio of the media)- purple area is the difference between them

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 15 Development as Social Process Design Process is Constraint-based: Example importance of this is that these media come from different members of the development team- videographers and VR photographers and a VR stitcher - plus the interface is being programmed and designed by a graphic artist Communication amongst the development team is important so that they know: which constraints are being effected and they can follow a chain of reasoning which enables them to negotiate the changes

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 16 Development as Social Process Role of Communication systems development, implementation and maintenance is highly dependent on the skills of large numbers of IT professionals communication processes and social interactions within the developer community are of great importance changes in development practices, whether related to technology or organisational issues, are always driven and mediated by social factors

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 17 EDM Branch to a more detailed presentation Evolutionary Development Methodologies Clarke 2000 EDM

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 18 Project Management

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 19 Project Management Relationship to Workflows in order to effectively edit you need to know what you want to achieve knowing the answer to this question determines the choice between two distinct digital video editing workflows know as editing strategies regardless of the specifications of the final output (film, broadcast video, CD-ROM, or Web) any efficiencies that can be gained in individual workflow like video editing improve the rest of the development process CEDIR, University of Wollongong

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 20 Project Management Video Editing Workflow: Media 100 NLE Suite CEDIR, University of Wollongong

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 21 Project Management Digital Video Editing Workflows (b) Offline to Online (a) Online Only Capture at Output Quality Import & Edit Export to Tape or Digital Movie File Capture at Low Quality with Timecode Import & Edit Offline Complete Online Edit Suite Edit Decision List Recapture at High Quality with Timecode Export to Tape or Digital Movie File Source: Based on Bolante (2001, xviii)

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 22 Project Management its Role during Development project Management is essential to determine how efficiently each of the constituent workflows can be organised so that the costs are reduced we can use cost and/or (as one means) of streamlining individual workflows… we saw an example of this with photographic versus digital VR project management must always be present during the development

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 23 Project Management Making Multimedia (Vaughan 1998, 430) Analysis Analyse the Need, Cost, Content, market technology, delivery medium Pretesting Define the project goals, skillset needs, create the content outline, position sales & marketing, create prototype on paper Prototype Development Build the screen mockups, Design content maps, Design human interface, Develop story/messages, Test Prototype Alpha Development Detail the storyboards & Flowcharts, finalise story scripts, produce sound & video, solve technical problems, test working prototype Beta Development Distribute to limited tester list, Respond to bug reports, Prepare user docs, Prepare packaging, Develop gold candidates, Announce to press & PR lists Delivery Prepare technical support, Install sales team, Replicate gold master, Pay bonuses, Hold Launch Party!

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 24 Project Management Problems with Prototyping one risk associated with evolutionary development and all forms of prototyping that can be eliminated with careful project management is a condition known as endless prototyping-where developers and users get caught in a spiral of indecision project management with the sole purpose of ensuring that costs are not overrun is useless to system development and often resented by members of the development team

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 25 Project Management Meta information supports Development the best project management is not conducted to enable managers to control development but rather to assist developers in creating the best possible multimedia system project management is at its heart about providing information about the state of the project- it is concerned solely with meta information- information about the development project

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 26 Project Management Good Multimedia Project Management good project management is possible only if the development project has: consistent content design processes (workflows- see for example the discussion on QuickTimeVR workflows in Lecture 6) consistent interface design my experience is that a product can be produced and is likely also to be produced better: if you know what you have to do now, what you have done, and what you need to do failure to know these things means that content and control can be missing and a prototype would be judged as bad or incomplete

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 27 Project Management Integral to Development Team just as we need high quality media resources in order to make a great multimedia system we similarly need great project management in the sense project management should not be thought of any differently to any other skill needed in the development team participative systems development does not stop at the design team- developers should have a say in how project management is conducted

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 28 Project Management as a communicative process project management just as media production and interface design- must be a communicative process- it must also be reflexive ie. involved in a continuous improvement of its own processes effective project management strategies emerge out of attempting to solve impediments/breakdowns to the communicative process of multimedia design

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 29 Project Management Participation & Deliverables… participative systems development also implies that the design team should have a say in how project management deliverables are designed and used best project management deliverables are ‘light-weight’ and directed at supporting (not reporting) development- that is useful and productive an example occurred in the BHP multimedia project…

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 30 the BHP project is big enough that we can easily forget whether we have completed parts of the project this project management deliverable evolved because all members of the development team needed to know the state of the media for which they were responsible (uncoupled the development team members)…

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 31 Project Management Relationship between Media & Interface similar to your first assignment where we talked about the existence of low-level interface components that could be grouped together to form high-level interface components: at a conceptual level: the relationship between media and user interface design is a matter of constituency- this enables media production staff and user interface designers to talk to each other at a practical level: domain specific techniques and practices enable media production and interface design to maintain disciplinary distinctiveness and so contribute usefully to the development process- this distinctiveness enables activities to be performed independently

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 32 Project Management Development Process must be supported Media Production (workflows, coverage, etc) who did it? what technologies were used? what skills were needed? how long did it take? how much did it cost? Goals: best possible media Means: consistent content design processes (workflows) User Interface (HCI, usability, actability) what events trigger content? how is the content presented? how does the user control the media? what is the degree of interactivity? how does content relate to each other? Goals: great interface design, usability, actability, simplicity, consistency appropriacy Means: high level and low level interface components

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 33 Project Management Relationship to Development Activities Various Kinds of Project Management Deliverables are developed and exchanged between Media Production (content) and User Interface Design (form) activities Media Production Interface Design Project Management Domain Specific Techniques and Practices enable Media Production and Interface Design activities to be performed independently

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 34 Project Management Multimedia Development Process Production Meetings Storyboarding Structured Walkthroughs Media Production Interface Design Project Management

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 35 Conclusions

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 36 Conclusions Just as Development is a social process so to should project management be considered a social process Project management is even more important in prototyping (especially if using EDM) than it is for conventional systems development approaches (Systems Development Lifecycle SDLC based approaches) Project management should be considered the servant of development- if possible its deliverables should be designed to support the work of the team Project management should be seen as a responsibility of the team rather than means by which management can monitor expenditures

Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-12: 37 Readings Bolante, A. (2001) Premiere for Macintosh & Windows Visual Quickstart Guide Peachpit Press