Key Terms
Analysis
Audience
AV Script
Card Sorting
Client
Concept Development
Copyright
Demographics
Deployment
Design
Implementation
Intellectual Property
Mockup
Planning
Postproduction
Preproduction
Previsualization
Producer
Production
Prototype
S-M-C-R Model
Screenplay
Script
Shannon-Weaver Model
Storyboard
Target Audience
Target Market
Three Ps Model
Treatment
Usability Testing
User
User Experience (UX)
User-Centered Design (UCD)
Wireframe
Among all the types of paper documents, narrative fiction is one of the few that will not benefit from electronic organization. Almost every reference book has an index, but novels don’t because there is no need to be able to look something up in a novel. Novels are linear. Likewise, we’ll continue to watch most movies from start to finish. This isn’t a technological judgment—it is an artistic one. Their linearity is intrinsic to the storytelling process. New forms of interactive fiction are being invented that take advantage of the electronic world, but linear novels and movies will still be popular.
—Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (1995)
We must design our technologies for the way people actually behave, not the way we would like them to behave.
—Don Norman, The Design of Future Things (2009)
Chapter Highlights
This chapter examines:
- ■ The importance of effective planning and workflows in multimedia design
- ■ The Three Ps linear planning model
- ■ Key roles and duties of professionals employed in multimedia design
- ■ Conceptual frameworks and previsualization tools used in multimedia design
- ■ The user-centered design model used in multimedia design and usability testing
A Road Map
A famous adage in advertising and marketing circles proclaims, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” This simple yet profound cliché is a call to the masses to be purposeful and intentional in planning for success. A carefully hatched plan provides direction—a road map for helping you get to your intended destination. Without it, you will have no idea where you are going or how to get there.
Imagine for a moment someone embarking on a 3,000-mile road trip across the country without any planning or preparation. He didn’t pack any clothes or provisions. He has no money or credit card. He didn’t even bother to consult a map or install a GPS for guidance. Chances are he won’t get very far or have much fun along the way. While it’s difficult to fathom anyone like this setting out on a journey so ill prepared, many people approach multimedia design with a similar disdain for planning and process. Give a person a video camera and he wants to start shooting right away. Tell another person to create a website and she immediately sets off to build it. After all, planning is so boring, and we want to get to the fun stuff as soon as possible.
In reality, however, the time and effort you put into planning a multimedia project will determine the degree to which the project, once completed, hits its mark. It matters little what the plan looks like. What matters most is that you have one and that it sufficiently addresses the needs of the client, the design team, and the users of the product. A good plan is one that is thoughtfully crafted, thorough, and realistic. A plan is your road map and serves as the foundational visionary framework undergirding the creative enterprise and communication process.
Creativity
Experts in the field of creativity research generally agree that creativity is a process that “involves the production of novel, useful products.”1 This definition suits us well, as the focus of this book is about making multimedia products designed to communicate a message with deliberate thought and intentionality. It’s not about art for art’s sake, not that anything is wrong with that per se, but it is about the process of creating a meaningful communication experience for the benefit of an audience. Such value will rarely emerge without giving proper attention to planning and process.
Figure 3.1
Creativity is a process that “involves the production of novel, useful products.”
Observe a young child at play and you will see that creativity can flow spontaneously out of an active imagination without any forethought or predetermined goals (see Figure 3.1). Hand a child a drawing tablet and some crayons, and in no time at all the paper will be filled with lines, shapes, outlines, and colors. The recognizability of such primitive doodles will depend entirely on the child’s age and skill. Sometimes children will begin with an idea, but oftentimes they are content to create on the fly without any preconceived notions of where their creativity and talent will lead them.
While there is a place for such unstructured moments of creative expression, aspirations and needs mature as we grow older. A carpenter will not embark on building a house until the blueprints for the design and layout of the construction have been completed and approved. Likewise, a professional web designer must have a plan before the actual coding and design work can begin. A formal process of some sort is necessary for translating any sophisticated idea or concept into a multimedia product people will find useful. A project of any great size will require a process with numerous steps from start to finish and will involve the work of many people with specialized knowledge and skills.
Audience
Figure 3.2
Considered by communication theorists to be the mother of all models, the Shannon-Weaver model of communication was designed to visually illustrates the linear process of message transmission.
In 1948, researchers Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver devised a mathematical theory of communications based on a linear transmission model containing the following major components:
- ■ An information source (or sender)
- ■ A message (content)
- ■ A transmitter (to encode the message)
- ■ A channel (to transmit the message)
- ■ A receiver (to decode the message)
- ■ A destination (the message recipient)
- ■ Noise and feedback
In this model, information flows largely in one direction, from the source to the recipient (see Figure 3.2). While a feedback loop is built into this process, the reality is that because of the technological nature of mass media systems, two-way interaction is very limited. Over time, the Shannon-Weaver model became known as the “mother of all models” and has gone through numerous iterations, including Wilber Schram’s popular version known as the S-M-C-R model of communication. S-M-C-R stands for source, message, channel, and receiver. Linear models of mass communication recognize the source as the dominant party in a communication exchange and the receiver as least influential. For this reason, the planning process for traditional mass media projects typically relies more on input from the producers and message stakeholders than it does from members of the intended audience.
As covered in chapter 1, old media are directed toward a largely anonymous audience. Members of this audience are known only categorically, by shared demographic traits (age, gender, ethnicity, etc.) or psychographic variables (personality, attitudes, values, opinions, interests, etc.). The value of dividing a mass audience into subgroups or segments is rooted in social categories theory, which “argues that individuals within broad subgroups (such as age classes, sex, social, or educational class) react similarly to the mass media.”2 Multimedia producers and designers use audience demographic and psychographic data to hone and customize their products and messages to meet the needs and wants of a specific target audience or subgroup of a larger population.
Great Ideas
Target Market and Target Audience
A target market is a group of consumers a company has strategically identified as having potential to purchase and use its goods and services. Manufacturers seldom produce a product that everyone wants or can afford. Because of this, they will go to incredible lengths to find out as much as possible about consumers who are the most likely candidates for using their products. The more they know about their target market, the more successful they will be in designing and delivering effective messages and product campaigns. When it comes to consumers of media products such as television programs, newspapers, and websites, you’re more likely to hear the target market referred to as the target audience. In effect, these are synonymous terms. By understanding more about their target audience, media organizations can do a better job of selling advertisements to companies looking to reach a specific target market.
Figure 3.3
“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”3 Identifying the target audience or user for your multimedia product is a critical first step in the planning and design process.
In television broadcasting, audience members are called viewers because this term aptly describes the primary sensory function used to experience a TV show. In radio broadcasting, the audience is made up of listeners. Viewers watch television programs while listeners tune in to hear radio broadcasts. Advertisers and marketers refer to audience members as consumers. For print media, such as newspapers and magazines, the audience is comprised of readers. A more committed type of reader fits into the subscribers category, a special designation for those who have invested monetarily in receiving and consuming content with some degree of regularity (as in a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual subscriber). The most radical members of an audience are called fans—those who manifest an extreme affinity for or commitment to a particular program, writer, actor, character, company, brand, and so forth. So whether they’re called viewers, listeners, consumers, readers, subscribers, or fans, the audience functions collectively as the recipient of a targeted media message or experience—and multimedia producers of every kind understand that the greatest key to effective communication is knowing and understanding your audience. The more you learn about the needs, tastes, interests, habits, and proclivities of your intended audience, the greater your ability to produce content that is appealing to a wider circle of people within a desired domain.
Users
While the term audience is still used today by professionals working in the mass media, it doesn’t adequately fit the profile of those who increasingly turn to emerging platforms such as the Web, mobile media, and streaming video for consuming content. Instead, we call them users. A user is a more active and self-aware consumer. New media encourage interaction and, in turn, empowers users to exert a greater influence on the communication exchange. Whereas the mass media are innately linear, interactive media are characterized by a nonlinear structure. Users can peruse and navigate content in often unpredictable and even infinite ways. As Jesse James Garrett writes, “in virtually every case, a website is a self-service product. There is no instruction manual to read beforehand, no training seminar to attend, no customer service representative to help guide the user through the site. There is only the user, facing the site alone with only her wits and personal experience to guide her.”4
As we examine the multimedia planning and design process, understand that there are many models available to choose from. A process that works for a video and film project may not prove adequate for the design of a website, user interface, video game, or mobile app. While competing models may share similar concepts and principles, the terminology, workflows, and procedures will often vary— tailored to the specific medium, genre, workflows, and organizational culture you find yourself working in. As an introduction, let’s look at two models that are widely known in professional circles. The first is a linear process model known as the Three Ps. The second is a more elaborate model known as user-centered design (UCD), an ideological framework that’s based on international standards for human-computer interaction.
The Three Ps
For many years, film and video producers have utilized a popular process model known as the Three P s, a moniker that stands for preproduction, production, and postproduction (see Figure 3.4). Planning can occur during any of the three phases, but it is most highly concentrated on the front end of a project during the preproduction phase. For this reason, and because the focus of this chapter is on planning, more time is given here to a discussion of the preproduction process than to the other two Ps, each of which are dealt with in greater detail in later chapters.
Figure 3.4
The Three Ps production model.
The elegance and simplicity of this three-phase model has contributed to its longevity and widespread adoption as a conceptual framework for planning, design, and production of video, film, and audio projects—such as short-form and long-form television and radio shows, educational programs, movies, commercials, news packages, documentaries, and the like. The model is helpful because it breaks down what can be a very complex process into a series of smaller steps or activities that are logically and chronologically ordered. Like the older media it was designed for, the Three Ps is inherently a linear model. The preproduction phase comes first, followed by the production phase, and then by postproduction, in a relatively prescriptive order.
Preproduction
Preproduction is the planning and preparation phase of a project. Once more using the road map analogy with which I opened the chapter, it involves all the activities that go into planning your trip before you actually jump into the car and start driving. The preproduction phase can be broken down into many individual tasks, processes, and sub-processes, including: problem identification and needs assessment, concept development, research, audience analysis, scriptwriting, budgeting, hiring production crew members, auditioning and casting talent, location scouting, production scheduling, equipment rental, and so on (see Figure 3.5). Preproduction activities are meant to establish the scope, direction, time frame, and cost of a project before spending the first of many dollars on the actual production. When done well, preproduction saves time and money during subsequent phases of a project, which are almost always more costly.
Corporate Producing—the Client and Producer Model
Multimedia production can be a solo endeavor with a team of just one person, but more often than not, it is a collaborative process involving many people representing one of two parties: the client and the producer. In the corporate sector, the client may be an individual but more likely is a business or organization. The client is the content expert—the one most familiar with the mission, goals, and needs of the organization they represent.
Figure 3.5
Preproduction is the planning phase of the design process and includes a broad set of activities required for a successful outcome.
Likewise, the producer may be an individual as well. The market is full of freelance producers and directors who operate independently on a work-for-hire basis. More likely, however, the producer is an in-house communications department, a public relations firm, an advertising agency, a production company, or something similar. The producer is the message-design expert. Producers are the ones most familiar with the process and tools for crafting an effective message and deploying it strategically to a target audience.
While some companies can turn to an in-house department or creative unit to handle a communication problem, others don’t have this option, and even if they did, they will sometimes choose to hire an out-of-house producer to get the job done. Their corporate colleagues may be booked solid and unable to meet the project deadline, or perhaps they just want the objectivity and fresh eyes of an independent producer who is free of company bias and old ideas.
Entertainment and News Producing
In the entertainment and news industries, the title and role of a producer can vary depending on the type of organization he works for and its management style and structure. To begin with, let’s look briefly at the distinction between the roles of executive producer and producer. In a film studio, television network, or news division, the job of executive producer (EP) is usually a top-level management position filled by a person who oversees multiple projects or programs simultaneously. A producer, on the other hand, is typically only in charge of one program or project at a time. While for smaller projects, the EP may play a role in the creative aspects of a film, television, or radio venture, they are primarily concerned with business matters—things such as investor/board relations, profit and loss estimates, return on investment (ROI), budgets, schedules, advertising and distribution, sales/ratings, personnel decisions, and so forth—and for this reason are likely to report up the ladder to a corporate CEO and/or CFO. They help ensure quality control of individual projects so they consistently conform to corporate standards and expectations.
A producer takes on a more active role in influencing the content and creative aspects of a production project. You will find them where the action is—in the writer’s bullpen or newsroom, on the set, in the studio, or in the field interacting with the writer(s), director, reporters and, in certain cases, even doubling up in one or more of these roles, while also managing many of the day-to-day tasks involved in the production process. You may have noticed that local television stations broadcast several newscasts throughout the day—a morning show, one at noon, several in the early evening, a late night edition, and so on. Each stand-alone newscast has a designated producer who is responsible for determining the content and order of presentation for their particular program—ensuring there is good flow from story to story—and sometimes writing the script news anchors read on-air during a live broadcast. Producer roles and job functions vary widely as each setting, genre, or organization brings with it a unique set of specific needs and challenges.
Previsualization
Legendary photographer Ansel Adams defines visualization as “the ability to anticipate a finished image before making the exposure.”5 In other words, a good photographer can compose an image in her head before framing it in the viewfinder and releasing the shutter. Under normal circumstances, she doesn’t need to spend hours of preproduction time making sketches or thumbnails of shots that will be taken tomorrow or next month. However, when producing something more complex, such as a film, website, or user interface, it is beneficial to refine and expand a concept on paper before proceeding to the production phase of the project.
Figure 3.6
Ideas drive the creative process and are the product of human brainstorming and interaction.
Since ideas are hatched in the mind, they must be put into a transferable form before they can be communicated to others. Before a motion picture goes into production, a screenplay has to be written describing every scene and location in detail. Characters are invented and developed out of the mind of a screenwriter or author—given names, biographical backgrounds, and demographic and psycho-graphic profiles. Dialog is crafted and refined. Parentheticals are inserted as notes to the director about body language, attitude, and other forms of unspoken action. A good screenplay can take years to fully develop into a viable commercial product that a movie studio will pay to option and eventually produce.
Previsualization (or previs) is a term that has been used for years to describe the act of putting a story idea or concept into a written or illustrated form that can be shared with others. For linear story narratives, three devices are often employed for previsualization: treatment, storyboard, and script.
Treatment
A treatment is a short narrative description of a project. It provides the reader with a concisely written summary about a concept or story idea. A treatment should include sufficient details to address the basic who, what, when, where, and why types of questions. As appropriate, it should also include information such as the project title, purpose, goals, audience, and genre. Treatments are often used for pitching narrative film and video projects. A treatment is similar in purpose to an executive summary or résumé. It is a short-form device used to cast a vision or sell an idea. The length of a treatment depends on the type of project being proposed. A treatment for a feature-length screenplay for a motion picture film might be four to five pages long, while one for a news story or television commercial could be done in half a page or less. Treatments can be used for describing any type of multimedia project, including web pages and interface components.
Storyboard
A storyboard combines words and pictures together to communicate an idea (see Figure 3.7). It is an organized panel of images and text used for previsualizing a linear or nonlinear sequence of actions or steps. In the 1930s, Walt Disney popularized the storyboard format to assist artists in the production of animated films. Today, storyboards are used routinely in multimedia production from planning short-form motion picture projects such as television commercials and “webisodes” to interactive narratives used in web and interface design.
Resembling pages from a comic book, a storyboard is made up of a series of boxlike frames depicting the visual portion of a story. Written copy is placed adjacent to each frame (usually below it) to describe its contents. The text can be purely descriptive or include spoken voiceover copy or dialog. Before computers, storyboards were drawn by hand. Today, they can be generated any number of ways using sophisticated previsualization software, page layout and design programs, or online tools. In fact, a storyboard template is probably available for your favorite word-processing program.
Script
A script is a written narrative framework for organizing the visual and audio portions of a multimedia presentation. Scripts are most often used for time-based media projects and increasingly for interactive narratives.
Figure 3.7
This storyboard was created to help visualize scenes from the screenplay Cupcake, written by Paul Castro. Filmmakers and advertising agencies will often hire a storyboard artist to illustrate a script prior to shooting a film or television commercial.
Source: Courtesy of Paul Castro.
AV Script Format The two-column AV format is ideal for the producers of radio and television commercials, music videos, promotional videos, education and training programs, documentaries, interactive narratives, and more (see Figure 3.8). It is one of the most common and versatile script formats used in commercial production today. This format features a divided page with two vertical columns. The column on the left takes up about one-third of the width of the page and includes information about the video portion of the program. The wider column on the right is used for audio information such as music cues, voiceover copy, or actor dialog. The AV script format is used in both single-camera and multi-camera production settings.
Figure 3.8
This two-column AV style script was used in the production of an educational video program.
Figure 3.9
The script shown in Figure 3.8 was transformed into this single-column format. Which script format you use will vary depending on the client or organization you work for or the type of program or genre being developed.
Screenplay Format The screenplay is the Hollywood studio format used in the production of motion picture films and prescripted television comedy and drama programs (see Figure 3.10). This format features a single-column layout where each page translates to roughly one-minute of on-screen action. Full-length screenplays are usually 90 to 120 pages long. This is a highly prescriptive format that must be followed precisely at the risk of being rejected on technical grounds. A common practice is to use professional scriptwriting software such as Celtx, Final Draft, or Movie Magic Screenwriter, or an online service to ensure the formatting of the script conforms to acceptable industry standards.
Production
Production is the acquisition phase of a project when all the physical media is shot or recorded either on location or in a studio (see Figure 3.11). Whereas the
Figure 3.10
This is a sample page from the screenplay August Rush. The screenplay format is an industry-standard scripting convention—used widely throughout the motion picture and television industries.
Source: Courtesy of Paul Castro.
Figure 3.11
Production is the acquisition or design phase of a project where the individual pieces of a multimedia project are acquired or produced.
producer(s) and creative team (writers, designers, etc.) are most actively involved during the preproduction process, it is the director who takes the lead during production. While on smaller projects the roles of producer and director are sometimes carried out by the same person, in a large-scale project they are distinctly separate roles. The larger the project, the more people you must have to get the job done and the more specialized their assigned duties will be. Here are just of few of the titles and positions you might see on a medium- to large-scale video or film production.
- ■ Director: The director is in charge of all the creative aspects of a production and often has the final word on matters relating to things like actor performances, shot composition, lighting, set design, blocking, and choreography. Ultimately, the director works under the oversight of a producer, but in cases where there is a high level of mutual trust and respect, the director should be able to perform his or her work without too much interference from above. A director relies on the crew and talent to execute his or her vision for the story. He or she must be an effective communicator who is capable of casting a vision for his or her interpretation of the script. In a narrative film, he or she directs and coaches the actors to solicit a desired performance and works with editors overseeing all aspects of postproduction. On major motion picture projects, a director will employ first and second assistant directors (ADs) to handle specific duties such as day-to-day scheduling or management of personnel.
- ■ Director of photography (DP): The DP is the cinematographer in charge of the camera and lighting crews. Specifically, it’s the DP’s job to ensure that the composition and lighting for each shot conforms to the director’s vision and to make sure that there is continuity in the visual aesthetics (color, lighting, and framing) from shot to shot. The chain of command flows from the director to the DP and then from the DP to the individual members of the camera and lighting crews.
- ■ Camera operator: The camera operator runs the camera under the direction of the director of photography, or the director in the case of a smaller production. The camera operator is responsible for framing each shot, controlling camera settings, and recording each shot or scene.
- ■ Focus puller: Sometimes called the first assistant camera, the focus puller is responsible for setting focus and for keeping a shot in focus during moving shots. A device called a follow focus is a special device that attaches to the lens of a camera to allow the focus puller to control focus without interfering with the camera operator’s primary task of keeping the shot in frame.
- ■ Production sound mixer or sound recordist: As the name implies, this person is responsible for recording all sound performed on location or in a recording studio. As the department head for sound recording, this person hires his or her own crew (boom operators, etc.). They also determine the choice and location of microphones and the recording techniques employed during production.
- ■ Gaffer or lighting director (LD): The gaffer is the chief electrician on a set and the one ultimately responsible for executing the lighting for each scene. The gaffer may or may not also serve as the person responsible for creating the lighting design for a production.
- ■ Grip: In the United States a grip assists in the mechanical rigging of structural supports for lighting, setting up and moving production equipment such as cameras and light fixtures, and making adjustments as required during production.
- ■ Script supervisor: Also known as the continuity person, the script supervisor keeps track of each shot, taking copious notes, and paying close attention so that the visual elements and details on the set (actor location and posture, hand movements and facial expressions, clothing, hair, props, etc.) remain consistent from shot to shot when shooting a scene from multiple angles with a single camera.
- ■ Production coordinator/manager: This person performs a variety of administration duties—everything from hiring crew, booking accommodations, ordering food, reserving equipment, and managing production budgets and schedules.
- ■ Production assistant (PA): A production assistant performs routine tasks as required, runs errands, and carries out specific duties as assigned by a supervising crew member. One PA may be assigned to help with lighting while another one is assigned to assist the script supervisor.
In a film or video project, the production phase includes all the activities required for the planning, setup, and acquisition of video and sound assets, whether in the studio or on location, from the first shot to the last. When cameras begin to roll and the director hollers “ACTION!” you know production is in full swing. The production phase includes the creation of any multimedia media asset, including graphics, photographs, audio, video, or animations that will be incorporated into the final program during postproduction.
Intellectual Property
While production often focuses on the creation of original content by the designers and producers of a work, it can also include the legal acquisition of media resources owned by others. Intellectual property is a term used to describe many types of created works that are protected by copyright, trademark, or patent law. Just because an image or piece of music can be easily downloaded from the Internet doesn’t mean you can legally use it in your own work. Whether you intend to materially profit from the use or not, or whether the work is intended for commercial or noncommercial use, doesn’t always matter. Copyright law is complicated, and without the expert advice of a lawyer who specializes in such matters, it is often difficult to know for sure what permissible uses the law will, or will not, allow. When in doubt, it is always better to err on the side of caution. The good news is that there are many avenues available to the multimedia professional for acquiring photographs, music, sound effects, clipart, stock video, film footage, animations, and more from companies specializing in the sale of royalty-free or licensed content. While the Web abounds with content providers of all sorts, expect to pay a high price for premium assets and resources.
It is also easy to find sites publicizing content that is free or in the public domain. While some of these sites offer legitimate ways for securing legal rights to use another person’s intellectual property, you need to be careful and discerning. Be sure to read the fine print. For example, a media resource may be allowed for publication on the Internet but not in a program aired on television or in a derivative work for sale, such as a DVD. As with anything, you need to choose your sources carefully and dig deep to discover all the facts. In a court of law, you’re usually no less culpable because you didn’t know any better or because you were mistakenly led to believe it was okay to use content downloaded from an Internet site or scanned from a book. For this reason, it is best to rely on companies with an established reputation, who own the rights to the material you want to use, and who have the legal authority to grant permissions for its use.
Postproduction
So you’ve been out on location, or in a design suite, recording studio, or sound stage, and all of the raw footage and material you need for your project has been acquired or gathered. Now is the time for putting it all together. Postproduction is the assembly phase of a project (see Figure 3.12). In traditional time-based work-flows, postproduction is spent almost entirely on video and audio editing and mixing. However, this stage also includes the creation of titles, motion graphics, video effects, and so on. A rough cut is the first complete edited version of a program or a revision that occurs somewhere in between the first cut and the final cut. Depending on a project’s complexity, length, and the demands of the producers, a project can go through several stages of editing before final approval is granted and the picture is locked. After this, it moves forward for any finishing and polishing work that may be required prior to duplication or distribution (audio sweetening, color correction, mastering, etc.). Chapter 14 will cover postproduction in more detail.
Figure 3.12
Postproduction brings together the individual components of a multimedia project into a unified finished product. The postproduction workflows you adopt will vary depending on the project; for example, whether you are editing a film, building a content management system, or constructing an online photo gallery.
User-Centered Design
A user-focused approach, called user-centered design (UCD), is the product of human-computer interaction and those who study the processes and dynamics of computer-mediated communication. One of the main goals of multimedia design is to make user interaction as easy as possible so users can accomplish activities and tasks in the most efficient and natural way possible.
UCD is more of a philosophy and a mind-set of developing interfaces than a step-by-step process. It is about creating a product or interface that meets the needs of real users rather than satisfying designers’ whims. It does not require users to adapt to the new interface. Instead, it supports users by applying their existing behaviors and ways of thinking to the interface so they will have an intuitive and natural interaction experience.
In 2008, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) introduced a standard that would eventually become widely adopted as the core framework for user-centered design. The full name of the standard is ISO 9241-210 – Ergonomics of human-system interaction: Human-centred design for interactive systems. The standard is based on six fundamental principles of human-centered design:6
- 1. The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks, and environments.
This principle reminds us to consider three important facets of the user experience. 1) First, who is the user? What can we discern about them—how are they wired or how do they think? What are their likes and dislikes? Consider demographic and psychographic identifiers. For example, we might expect a productivity app designed for a college student to look and feel different than one created for a business executive. 2) Second, what tasks will they perform? Are there multiple tasks to consider? If so, which ones are primary and which ones are secondary? 3) Third, what are the environmental contexts of use? What is the user’s primary platform (laptop, tablet, Web, mobile, etc.)? What’s more highly valued, office productivity or mobile productivity? Is the program or interface for personal use or business use? Is the intended use driven by a need/desire for entertainment, information, or utilitarian purpose?
Demographics
Figure 3.13
Demographic variables such as age, gender, and ethnicity are used to describe the shared traits of a user group or target audience. Once this information is known, producers can use it to shape the message to fit the intended audience. For example, one would expect the content and design of a fitness website targeting 25- to 34-year-old business executives to look decidedly different from one intended for teenage girls in high school.
- 2. Users are involved throughout design and development.
With the Three Ps, audience research is often conducted on the front end of a project (preproduction). Rarely is it conducted extensively on the back end during postproduction, unless a studio or network is involved and can provide the resources. And even more rarely is the audience considered extensively during production. With UCD, the user is actively consulted at all points in the process and at every conceivable level.
- 3. The design is driven and refined by user-centered evaluation.
Usability is a measure of people’s experience with a user interface. Usability testing refers to the systematic methods of evaluating and refining an interface or product to ensure it meets industry standards for usability. See chapter 6 for a more detailed look at both of these concepts and practices.
- 4. The process is iterative.
The best design is rarely achieved on a first attempt, but rather, will evolve over time as the designers and developers work their way through various trial versions of a mockup or prototype. Each version may go through multiple rounds of usability testing—ideally on a random cohort of real users. The data and feedback will be analyzed and integrated into subsequent versions of the prototype and then tested again on real users. Usability testing continues until it is clear that users are satisfied with the design and that further testing is no longer needed.
- 5. The design addresses the whole user experience.
This principle addresses the need to consider the entire gamut of cognitive, emotional, and perceptual variables that contribute holistically to the user experience. It might make sense to limit usability testing to only the practical and functional aspects of a website or interface—but how users think, feel, and react is also important.
- 6. The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives.
This principle speaks to the importance of putting together a skilled team, where there is sufficient breadth of expertise to get the job done. At the very least you need to have personnel with design experience and programmers who possess the technical skills to translate a design into a functional prototype. For larger projects, you may also need content specialists, writers, photographers, video producers, instructional designers, usability testing experts, and so on.
Whereas the Three Ps model is largely a top-down process that’s driven chiefly by the impulses of the producer and content stakeholders; a human-centered and user-focused approach places the user at the center and considers their needs, actions, and input at every step—from conceptualization to final deployment.
Putting Principles into Practice
How designers put the six principles of human-centered design into practice varies. The User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) promotes a methodology that divides the UCD process into four phases: 1) analysis, 2) design, 3) implementation, and 4) deployment.7
Phase One—Analysis
The analysis phase often begins with a kickoff meeting between two groups: 1) the client team, made up of representatives of a company or department funding or requesting the project, and 2) the project team, made up of representatives of a company or department responsible for designing and producing the finished multimedia product. No matter how the teams are constituted, each group should have a designated leader. For example, a company’s marketing or communications director might be assigned to head up the client team. Other members of the client team may include the department head, senior representatives of the unit or division requesting the project, and a few designated content experts with a practical working knowledge of the subject matter and an understanding of the specific problem or goals driving the project. The project team also needs a leader, sometimes called the project director, to oversee the design and production process and to serve as the primary liaison to the client team. The composition of the team attending the kickoff meeting depends on the type of project and the requirements but typically will include key creative members such as writers, creative director/art director, and visual designers (graphic/Web). The project director will often lead the kickoff meeting, facilitating the discussion, posing questions and discussion prompts, and keeping the session focused and on track. The primary purpose of the kickoff meeting is to ask lots and lots of questions. The project team will use the information gathered at this meeting to form a baseline assessment of client and user needs and to develop strategies and approaches for an initial concept or solution.
Needs Assessment, Fact Gathering, and Research
Let’s assume from the outset that the producer knows very little about the client, its corporate mission, and its needs. Believe it or not, this is a common starting point. The members of the design team must have information, and lots of it, before they can fully assess the client’s needs and begin offering solutions. The client is a great source of institutional knowledge and content expertise. During the kickoff meeting, the project director will often take the lead by asking lots of questions and taking copious notes. Some typical questions to explore at this point include:
- ■ What is the mission and purpose of the organization and/or department funding the project?
- ■ Who are you trying to reach, and why?
- ■ What is the primary purpose of the project? To educate? To train? Persuade? Inform? Something else?
- ■ Will the project be for internal use by a specific department or set of employees (such as members of a regional sales force or assembly-line workers), or will it be for external constituents such as board members, stockholders, vendors, suppliers, or customers?
- ■ How will the project be deployed?
- ■ What’s the project deadline?
- ■ Do you have a specific idea or concept in mind?
- ■ Have budget parameters been set for the project? If so, what are they?
Questions will become more specific as discussions ensue and the project moves forward. The initial client meeting will rarely lead to a concrete idea or conceptual road map. Its purpose is purely informational, to gather the facts and to give the design team enough information to begin working on an idea, theme, or concept for the project.
Identify Target Users
One of the goals of project analysis is to identify the target user group. If your client asks you to create a recycling website, first ask whom they intend the site to serve. Will the site target people looking for a place to drop off their used appliances? Or will it be aimed at local manufacturers trying to understand recycling laws as they apply to small businesses? Or maybe it will be aimed at grade school teachers. Many interfaces, whether websites or other multimedia projects, will have two types of users: a target group (the audience you intend to reach) and ancillary users (those who will use the interface for other reasons). Your first concern is the target group. This is the group of users your client most wants to reach. If the site is designed to reach teachers, they are your primary target group. If your client also wants to have information for local residents and businesses, these are your secondary target group. Focus on designing for your primary users, but keep the site usable for secondary groups too.
Specify Project Requirements
Specifying requirements helps establish the scope of your project, or the range of content, pages, or screens. Seek to identify business needs and requirements, existing problems, and potential users. You should also develop functional solutions and decide what to include in the project and what to leave out. Incorporate a process known as benchmarking. Look at similar projects to see what they contain and how they are organized. Do you want similar types of screens? Different screens? Figure out the number and types of screens (or web pages) you need. Give each a temporary name, then sort them into logical groups and headings based on content.
Conduct Research and Assimilate Data
During the analysis phase, the creative team will often conduct field research by interviewing content experts and end users and observing them in their natural environments and contexts. Data may also be obtained through focus groups, interviews, or surveys. As data accumulates, researchers can use what they discover to create a user profile and task analysis. A user profile is a written narrative—a mock hypothetical persona or archetype of the typical user or target group member. It is a fictional account that attempts to capture and characterize the essence of a real user. The purpose of a user profile is to help a designer “know” and understand the target user by becoming familiar with their personality, habits, preferences, and so forth. A task analysis attempts to identify and document the steps a user performs to complete a specific task or set of actions.
Next, conduct research to define your target users by demographic characteristics and/or their technology skills. You will explore when, where, and how target users will use the interface. You’ll also learn about their previous experience with similar interfaces. The client is the best resource for this information; however, don’t assume the client will tell you all you need to know about the users. The client may have a clear vision of what the site should include but may have missed some obvious—or not so obvious—user concerns. Your job is to ask the right questions.
- ■ Who are the users? Start with this, the most obvious question. How old are they? How much do they rely on this technology, or a computer in general? What do they use the technology for? Are they part of a particular organization? And so on. If you’re designing a site for people in their 50s, tiny fonts are a bad idea.
- ■ What tasks will they try to accomplish? What might they use this system or site for?
- ■ What are the most important of these tasks?
- ■ What conventions are my users used to? Look at other interfaces to develop your design criteria (benchmarking). What do similar interfaces look like? Does this one need to tie into a theme from a parent corporation? Don’t copy another organization’s interface or site, but look for patterns.
- ■ What do they like about similar interfaces? What works on those interfaces in terms of navigation, color, organization, and so on?
- ■ What do they find frustrating about similar interfaces?
- ■ What type of equipment and connections do my users have? If you’re building a website or application, what types of computers and software do they have? What size monitors and resolutions do they use? What types of handheld devices will they use? How fast are their Internet connections? If you’re designing a phone app, plan for a small interface. If you’re designing a website that will be used by children in school or people who work on laptops, plan to design for a larger screen.
- ■ What colors and images do they prefer?
If you can meet with a few people who will use your interface, do it. The more the better! If you can’t, try to find people who are similar to real users. If that still doesn’t work, do your best to think like a real user. The more you know about the user—their natural proclivities, workflows, and so on—the better you will be able to tailor a solution that, in the end, will satisfy their needs and leave the client singing your praises.
Great Ideas
Think Outside the Box
Figure 3.14
“Think outside the box” is a popular expression used by creative people to stir the imagination to consider ideas beyond that which are obvious, familiar, or conventional. Our personal likes and dislikes, predispositions, experiences, established work and design preferences, unconscious habits and workflows, and so on can keep us from solving a problem or developing an idea in a truly innovative way. Thinking outside the box requires venturing beyond the routine pathways of our mind that we are naturally inclined to follow.
Phase Two—Design
The design phase begins with brainstorming and exercises that will help the design team develop ideas for the basic concept, structure, and content for the system or multimedia experience. An idea is sort of like a snowball accelerating down an alpine slope. It takes a while to get it started, but once it begins to roll on its own, it rapidly builds up mass and momentum. In the early stages of ideation and concept development, lots of ideas will be put on the table and subsequently thrown out for this reason or that. It’s a good practice to write all of them down, even the ones you don’t particularly like or those you think are the most absurd. Brainstorming is a process, and if at all possible, don’t leave any stone unturned.
Card Sorting
Figure 3.15
Students in the M.A. program in interactive media at Elon University use card sorting to help organize the content and menu structure for a new restaurant website.
Card sorting is a simple low-tech exercise often employed by designers to help them understand how users think information should be organized, categorized, or arranged within a site or application (see Figure 3.15). This technique is rooted in taxonomy, a field of study that deals with the nature and practice of scientific classification. Card sorting begins by identifying the features you want to see included as a part of a design’s information architecture and then writing them down on individual three-by-five index cards or slips of paper. For example, if you are designing a website, create a card for every topical heading, subheading, or feature you plan to build into your site. Next, ask actual users to sort the cards into stacks according to how they think the information should be classified. There are many different ways to perform card sorting, but for best results, you should perform it repeatedly with a wide range of users.
Wireframe
Figure 3.16
A graphic designer created this wireframe for previsualizing the structural layout of a new web page and its contents. The drawing was created with a computer software program called Balsamiq, a visual mockup tool used by professional web designers.
Source: Courtesy of North Star Marketing and the Burlington/Alamance County NC Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Once you’ve divided the content into sections, you need to choose how much space to devote to various components, for instance, how many items to include in a horizontal menu. Designers will often create a wireframe at this stage for this purpose. A wireframe is a visual representation of the layout or skeletal structure of a page (see Figure 3.16). You can create a wireframe on the computer or using pencil and paper. With a computer, you could use a drag-and-drop tool such as Mockflow or MockingBird to quickly mock up a wireframe for a simple interface or website. A designer will often use a wireframe to experiment and pitch various ideas for the placement of content and interface components that address the client’s needs and goals. The number of menu items will affect the size, and therefore, the look of your buttons or bar. Next, figure out what components you are going to include on a given part of the interface. Consult with the client to see what they want on it. List the various options they have. If you don’t, you’ll find that they will often add components after you’ve worked hard on a design that doesn’t have space for extra items. Put these items in a wireframe, a line drawing showing the main components (main navigation, logo, footer, etc.), and get their feedback.
A first-generation wireframe is often very simple and crude. In the early stages of a project, the designer will often produce multiple wireframes for the client to evaluate and choose from. Sometimes there’s a clear winner, and sometimes the client doesn’t like any of them, forcing the team back to the drawing board for a second try. Another possibility is that the client might like a design element in one wireframe and ask to have it incorporated with features in another. Wireframes are a great tool for honing in on the aesthetic tastes and sensibilities of the client and users without exhausting a lot of time and money on the front end of a new project. Remember to keep users at the center of the design process by showing them every visual concept and soliciting their reactions and input before revising or soliciting the client’s approval.
Mockup
Once a wireframe has been approved, designers will often create a more refined visual rendering known as a mockup (see Figure 3.17). A mockup is a detailed actual-size version of the page, usually created by a graphic designer with a program like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. A mockup can include either actual copy and artwork or temporary content such as image placeholders and dummy text. It is generally far less time-consuming to create an illustration of an interface or web page than an actual working version. Then, when you find major mistakes, you haven’t wasted a lot of valuable time. More importantly, you won’t be so committed to the design (because of all of your hard work) that you refuse to make necessary changes. The mockup is a more detailed and realistic version of a page than a wireframe. A mockup can also illustrate the color scheme and style elements of a page.
Create three or more mockups for your client to evaluate, and let them choose an initial design. Then, have a few users look at your mockup. You can either get general feedback on the design, or you can test a paper prototype, conducting a mini version of the testing you’ll do later on a working prototype. You don’t need more than a few mocked-up pages or screens to test, and a prototype test can save you lots of work later. After all, it would be disappointing to go through the hard work of creating pop-up menus only to learn that your users don’t like them. As with wireframes, mockups should be revised and tested repeatedly with real users. Once you’re satisfied with the results, you can advance to building a high-fidelity working prototype.
Figure 3.17
Once approved by the client, the rough wireframe sketch shown in Figure 3.16 was transformed into this detailed and colorful mockup using Adobe Photoshop. The nonsensical Latin text (commonly known as filler or dummy text) was used as a temporary placeholder to help the client and design team more fully envision what the page will look like in its final form.
Source: Courtesy of North Star Marketing and the Burlington/Alamance County NC Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Figure 3.18
For this project, the design team created wireframes and mockups (or prototypes) for every page on the website. Such careful planning on the front end of a project helps ensure that time and money will not be wasted when the project moves into production.
Source: Courtesy of North Star Marketing and the Burlington/Alamance County NC Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Figure 3.19
The final homepage as viewed on an Apple iPad Air.
Source: http://www.visitalamance.com.
Prototype
Wireframes and mockups are great for experimenting with the visual look and layout of a page or screen; however, they won’t help much when it comes to testing the usability of a fully functioning site or interface. At some point before production begins, you need to verify that a design is functional and will work as intended. Otherwise, a great deal of time and money may be put into creating something that is technically flawed or doomed from the start. For this you need a prototype.
Figure 3.20
The design process for a responsive website for Tomkat Charitable Trust began with rough sketches (top left) that went through several iterations of revision and refinement. Wireframes were then developed followed by a series of low-resolution paper prototypes. Once the final prototype (top right) was approved, work began on building the actual site (bottom).
Source: Courtesy of Bradley Mu, content strategist and UX designer.
A prototype is a paper or working model of the project designed for simulation and testing (see Figure 3.20). As the name suggests, a paper prototype is a low-fidelity version built on paper or cards and can be constructed using simple sketches or drawings. If time and money allow, the quality of a paper prototype can be refined using computer-generated artwork. Unfortunately, some functions, like scrolling or dropdown menus, are difficult to mimic in a paper prototype, creating limits on how much “real-life” testing can be done with a paper model. To overcome such limits, professional designers will often use a prototyping software application like Adobe Muse. With an application like this, a designer can build a website prototype that more fully simulates a multimedia experience for the end user. A prototype is like the blueprint of a house. Once approved, the web development team and programmers can begin the more time-intensive and costly step of actual construction.
Phase Three—Implementation
The space I have allocated to discussing the first two phases of the UCD process—analysis and design—far exceeds the brief mention I am about to make of phases three and four—implementation and deployment. This is no accident. Analysis and design are the most time-consuming, yet most potentially worthwhile, parts of the UCD process. If you do your job well, testing, retesting, and constantly assessing and evaluating your project before it goes into final production, you will save yourself a lot of time, money, and potential consternation. Together, analysis and design are akin to the preproduction phase in the Three Ps model while implementation and deployment relate more to the activities of production and postproduction.
Implementation is the process of turning the approved final version of a working prototype or mockup into a fully functional website, app, or interface. Whereas the design phase led to the creation of a model for the purpose of testing and refining a concept, implementation involves building a working product or system that is ready to be tested on a server, computer, or mobile device. Once a prototype has been implemented, guess what? Yes, it’s time to run it though a final round of testing and evaluation to make sure everything functions correctly. This is an important step because, up to this point, users have only been able to interact in simulation. Now they get to touch and use the real thing. Ongoing rounds of usability testing with a trial group of users and the subsequent improvements that are made at this stage are critical before advancing to deployment. This step allows you to uncover potential problems or bugs and fix them before deploying the product to a wider population. Releasing your work prematurely without adequate testing is not recommended and could result in a costly setback for you and your client.
Phase Four—Deployment
The fourth and final phase of the user-centered design process is deployment and involves publishing or distributing your content or software to end users. The UCD process never really ends, though, as the method calls for continuous monitoring, testing, evaluation, and revision.
Chapter Summary
The preproduction process for a multimedia project includes all the activities leading up to the client’s approval of the concept and initial design. Whether you’re producing a video, website, or content management system, this process will likely begin with an in-depth conversation between you and the client and all the key stakeholders in the project. Since creativity is largely a subjective process, a multimedia message can be designed an infinite number of ways and still be successful. Don’t waste your time trying to nail down what you think is the only right way to go. Instead, spend your time wisely, listening and asking lots of questions. The best ideas often emerge from a process that is thorough, thoughtful, inclusive, and collaborative. Remember to always keep audience and user preferences and needs in mind throughout the entire design and production process.
Notes
1 Mumford, Michael D. (2003). Where have we been, where are we going? Taking stock in creativity research. Creativity Research Journal 15(2 & 3), 107–120.
2 Social Categories Theory. (2014). Oxford Reference online. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com
3 Zig Ziglar, motivational speaker and author (1926–2012).
4 Garrett, J. J. (2011). The elements of user experience: User-centered design for the Web and beyond (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
5 Adams, A. (1995). The camera. Boston: Bulfinch Press.
6 International Organization for Standardization. (2014). Ergonomics of human-system interaction—Part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems. Retrieved from https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:9241:-210:ed-1:v1:en
7 User Experience Professionals Association. (2014). About UX. Retrieved from https://uxpa.org/resources/about-ux