Multimedia Environment

Definition

A multimedia environment is any development environment that is primarily used by the user experience (UX) team to create visual design and other multimedia files for the user interface of one or more applications.

Objectives

The typical objectives of the multimedia environment are to provide the necessary infrastructure to enable the user experience team to:

• Create and document user interface architectures, designs, prototypes, and implementations.
• Create, digitize, and optimize the size of browser-interoperable files for:
  • Graphic images (e.g., pictures, logos)
  • Graphic typogrophies (e.g., tag lines, brand and site specific fonts)
  • Animations
  • Sound clips
  • Video clips

Benefits

The typical benefits of the multimedia environment include:

• An integrated multimedia environment improves developer efficiency.
• A complete multimedia environment enables the construction of a more effective user interface.

Contents

The typical contents of the multimedia environment are:

• Hardware Components:
  • Developer workstations (typically powerful Macintoshes) with:
    • Large, high resolution, color monitors
    • Audio/video card
    • High resolution color scanners
    • Sound recording and digitizing hardware
    • Digital, high resolution color cameras
    • Digital, video equipment
    • High resolution, color printers
  • Configuration management server (for storing files under configuration control)
  • Local area network with network connection devices (e.g., firewall, router)
• Software Components:
  • Word processing program (e.g., MS Word)
  • Website design software (for drawing sitemaps)
  • Graphics software packages such as:
    • Photoshop for image editing
    • QuarkXPress for webpage layout
    • Adobe Illustrator for typography
    • Macromedia Director
  • Screen capture software
  • MIME type translation software (e.g., from Postscript and bitmaps to GIF and JPEG files)
  • HTML validators
  • Hyperlink checkers
  • Image mapping software
  • Java, Shockwave, QuickTime
  • Popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape)
  • Wireless emulators

Stakeholders

The typical stakeholders of the multimedia environment are:

• Producers:
  • Environments Team
  • User Experience Team
• Evaluator:
  • Environments Inspection Team
• Approvers:
  • Technical Leader
  • Project Manager
  • Customer Representative
• Maintainer:
  • Environments Team
• Users:
  • User Experience Team, which uses the multimedia environment to create user interface files, screens, and webpages.

Phases

• Business Strategy: Not applicable
• Business Optimization: Not applicable
• Initiation: Completed
• Construction: Maintained
• Delivery: Maintained
• Usage: Maintained
• Retirement: Archived

Preconditions

The multimedia environment can typically be created if the following preconditions hold:

• The initiation phase has started.
• The environments team is staffed.
• The user experience team is staffed.
• The multimedia environment section of the project environments description document exists.

Inputs

The typical inputs to the multimedia environment include:

• Work Products:
  • Project Environments Description Document
• Stakeholders:
  • User Experience Team, which uses the multimedia environment to develop and maintain the user interfaces of the application.
  • Process Team, which must ensure that the multimedia environment supports the user experience related parts of the project process.

Guidelines

• Base the multimedia environment software on a standard software toolkit.
• The multimedia environment must have access to and be accessible to the reuse, engineering, integration, test, and staging environments.

Conventions

The multimedia environment is typically constrained by the following conventions:

• Multimedia Environment Inspection Checklist

Examples

• Not applicable.