week 8 -sarah,daniel,samuel

In order to create a multimedia project, the developer needs to follow a series of steps from the Idea Analysis till the Delivery stage. This is to ensure that the project or material results in good quality due to careful planning and taking strategic measures throughout the process.

Idea Analysis is the first step to developing any multimedia project. This is where you write your idea down on paper, and decide on the purpose and message of your project. You will need to and weigh the cost and measures it will take in order to make your idea a success. There must be a balance between purpose and feasibility which can be done by increasing or decreasing multimedia elements depending on what is relevant to the project at hand.

You will need to think about the content materials and hardware that is needed and how you may obtain them if you don’t already have them. Research is needed to check if your idea is original or if it has already been used in the multimedia market. How big your project is will determine the amount of space you will need in order to store your raw material and later on the finished product. Necessary time and money are also important factors to consider before continuing your project.

Pre-development stage is where you take your details to the next step. Define your project goals specifically and each skill needed to make it attainable. Then a content outline needs to be sketched or written out. This provides a guideline for you to follow as you develop your project further in case you forget any important ideas, or it could help inspire new ones along the way. A strategic positioning and marketing plan is needed in order to place your multimedia project in the correct target market. Create your prototype on paper so that a visible outline or illustration of your project is available for viewing when dealing with sales and marketing people.

Prototype development makes itself as the next stage for creating the concept of the project. For starters, creating screen mock-ups just to get the rough idea of the overview of how your project is going to look like. Similarly to creating a skeleton of a website, designing the content map will guide users in navigating themselves through the multimedia project and interacting with the option tools available. When designing human interface, consider making a layout that is not cluttered and user friendly. When developing the content messages of your project, ensure that you text is grammatically correct, straightforward and easy to understand. Finally test the prototype that you have done in order to troubleshoot. This trial and error process is necessary at every stage at save you the trouble of correcting error in the long run.

Alpha development is the stage where you draw out your storyboard and flowcharts in detail. Include the finalized story scripts as well. Graphic art should be chosen to suit the idea and concept of the project. It plays an important part in giving the overall feel of the project to appeal to your target market. Including sound and video in your project will enhance usability and optimize the options for interaction. For example, if it’s an educational multimedia project, a video tutorial would explain your content better than just an audio player and will be more interesting than text because it allows demonstrations. In the process of putting all these elements together, you might face minor technical problems. Solve all technical problems and test prototype once again before moving to the next stage.

Beta development is one step before the final delivery stage. Your project is sent out to a limited list of users who will test your program or project in case you might have missed out any details. Your project should be usable on the proposed delivery platform. In testing the program, respond to bug reports from the computer. Analyze the scripting code error and fix it. You should also prepare a user document to make your program user-friendly. This can be in a hardcopy format of a program manual, or a softcopy document made available in the file. Design the packaging for your project according to what is suitable. Create a range of varied gold candidates of your project so that one may be chosen as the gold master copy. Once that is done, inform PR personnel so a press release may be written to launch your new program or project.

Delivery is the final stage where you prepare technical support for your project in case of any malfunctions. Install a sales team to support your launch and make replicates of your gold master copy. Hold launch seminars to further promote the newly launched program. Finally, arrange to ship your products to various companies who have requested it.