Message Design and Content Creation

8 January 2008

Kathy E. Gill

Agenda

Introductions Syllabus, assignment review The Design Challenge WWW History/Culture Wordpress (blog setup)

Syllabus review

Syllabus Review Questions

Thinking about this course …

Please complete the following sentence: “In my opinion, message design means …”

You have one minute to “think and write”

Course Introduction (1/2)

Message design is the art of creating verbal and visual messages Both the words and how the words are

presented and perceived (connotation) affect the message

See The Elements of Text and Message Design and Their Impact on Message Legibility: A Literature Review

Course Introduction (2/2)

Premises:Our medium is “digital”Content creation rests on sound designSound design rests on planning and

articulated assumptions

Design

The use of higher thought and systematic process to achieve objectives

Seeks a balance between science and art, clarity and expression, truth and beauty, aesthetics and function, emotion and rationality …

Quote: designer

A designer is a visually literate person, just as an editor is expected by training and inclination to be versed in language and literature, but to call the former an artist by occupation is as absurd as to refer to the latter as a poet.

Douglas Martin, Book Design,

quoted in Designing Visual Interfaces (8)

The Challenge

Only 28 percent of IT projects are delivered on schedule and within budget

http://www.ciscoworldmagazine.com/opinionw/2001/08/23_itprojects.shtml

Only one-sixth software projects completed on time and within budget

http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/1998/jul/causes.asp

The Challenge, cont’d

One-third of complex software projects fail, costing U.S. companies $81 billion

Cost overruns add another $59 billion Of the challenged or cancelled projects, the

average was 189%over budget, 222% behind schedule and contained only 61% of the originally specified features

http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/1998/jul/causes.asp

Answering the Challenge

Projects fail because “the system did not meet user needs”

Enter: User-Centered DesignCentral tenet: who is the audience?Not a “step” but a “process”

Value for Investment

$1 invested in usable software = $10-100 in benefits

80% of maintenance costs are due to unforeseen user requirements; only 20% due to failures

Relevance and Impact

Productivity - People and SystemsCall-centers, e-commerce web sites

User PerceptionTivo v Replay, VCR Plus

Training CostLarge component of new implementation

Cost of ErrorsMedical errors, airplane crashes

An Engineering Approach (1/3)

ConceptDetermine objectives – clearly identify

audience(s) Basic Design

Functional specification (hardware, software, human); requirements; task analysis

An Engineering Approach (2/3)

Interface DesignApply empirical data, mathematical functions,

experience, principles, population measures, and design standards

Production Integrate production requirements, test, and

update

An Engineering Approach (3/3)

Deployment Investigate use, modify, evaluate

Follow upProcedures, product evolution

Now a Standard: ISO 13407

A clear understanding of the ‘context of use’: users, tasks and environment

Iteration of design solutions using prototypes

Active involvement of real users Multi-disciplinary design

Then Why Is It So Hard?

No accepted/agreed-upon structure for web/digital media design teams

No industry-wide standard for web project management

Cross-functional teams have disparate working/communicating styles

Summary

Good interface design enables increase in productivity, reduction in errors, and better user experience

The key to good design is customer-focus …. So, who is our customer?

WWW history and culture

Hypertext Platform, software independent Increasingly “social” (web 2.0)

Watch YouTube clips

Quote: cultural ethic

“Anyone who slaps a ‘This page is best viewed with browser X’ label on a web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.”

Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996

Implications for design

No control!BrowserPlatformOutput device

Necessitates cross-functional teams

Who Are We?

Pair up “Interview” each other

Something you’re interested in learning this quarter A skill/area you have that you’re willing to try as a “stretch” to

help your team this quarter A skill/area you have that you feel is a strength (less of a

stretch) Introduce the other person

We are a group. Hopefully, at the end of the quarter, we will be a team!

Team-building

Definition Characteristics Skills Resources

Definition

A group of people working together to achieve a common purpose that cannot be achieved as effectively by individuals working alone

Characteristics (1/3)

How does a “group” become a “team”? IOW, what are the characteristics of an effective team?Small groups : characterize an ideal team

member

Characteristics (2/3)

Focus on developing and accomplishing common goals and purposes

Expect and exact participation of all: consciously inclusive

Focus on impact of behavior rather than intent

Allow and expect members to discuss differences that impede full participation

Characteristics (3/3)

Do not shoot messengers Establish agreed-upon boundaries Recognize that conflict which has been

suppressed, concealed, or avoided is likely to be destructive

Your Team Building Skills

Personal team player style:Collaborator, Communicator, Contributor,

Challenger Assessment tool:

http://www.onlinewbc.gov/docs/manage/team.html

See also http://www.mgmt.utoronto.ca/~baum/mgt2005/valuable.html

Resources

Seven keys to building great workteams, http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_7keys_zoglio.htm

Planning a project, http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~gerard/Management/art8.html

Groups that work, http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~gerard/Management/art0.html

Teams as Networks:Using Network Analysis forTeam Development, http://www.humax.net/teams.html

Next Week:

Digital Design Team MembersRoles

User-Centered Design Our group project (don’t panic!)