BUSS 213
Multimedia in Organisations
Lecture 2
Applications and Infrastructure;
Development and Operation
Clarke, R. J (2001) L213-02:
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Notices (1)
General
 Make sure you have a copy of the BUSS213 Subject
Outline and Please check the class role on the
Departmental Notice Board or on my door for your
allocated tutorial slot
 BUSS213 is supported by a website, where you can
find out the latest Notices and get Lecture Notes,
Tutorial Sheets, Assignments etc
www.uow.edu.au\~rclarke\buss213\buss2131.htm
 this week tutorial sheet is available on this site for
use in the laboratory (open up WORD or simply print
it out)
 your first assignment will be available from this site
at about 3:30pm today!
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Notices (2)
Tutorial Allocation …
 most of you are now enrolled in a tutorial, your
tutorial allocation is posted on the department
notice board on the second floor of Building 40
 Students allocated to Tutorials 1 to 3 inclusive (i)
nominated for that group and had reasons for being their
or nominated that group and did not have a reason but
were lucky enough not to be selected for Tutorial 4.
 Students allocated to Tutorial 4: (i) elected to go to that
tutorial, or (ii) enrolled in the subject but did not turn up
to the first weeks lecture and indicate their preference,
or (iii) a random selection of students who indicated a
preference to other tutorial but gave no reason for being
allocated to that group
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Notices (3)
… Tutorial Allocation
 some of you do not yet have a tutorial- if you
do not then please see me in the break so
that you can be temporarily assigned a space
(have your student card ready)
 there is no guarantee that we can
accommodate you in a tutorial- as you are
aware this class has double the number of
students
 you might want a different tutorial to the one
that you in, however due to large numbers of
students we cannot consider movements
between tutorials at this time
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Agenda (1)
 in this lecture we want to identify the
organisational implications of this type of
media- we therefore consider the following
topics:
 What are considered organisationally relevant
multimedia applications? (at least in this subject)
 What organisational infrastructure is required for
various kinds of multimedia?
 How do we approach multimedia development?
 What operational contexts are required for
multimedia to be used
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Agenda (2)
 the easiest of these questions is:
 What are considered organisationally relevant
multimedia applications?
however the answer is still complex!
 the rest of these questions are touched on briefly. Some
questions are discussed in more detail in other
lectures:
 What organisational infrastructure is required for
various kinds of multimedia? (Lecture 11)
 How do we approach multimedia development?
(Lecture 12)
 What operational contexts are required for multimedia
to be used (Lecture 10)
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Applications
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Multimedia Applications (1)
 Vaughan (1998) suggests four areas where multimedia
can be found:
 Business
 Public Places
 Schools
 Home
 we consider only the first two of these only in this
subject and exclude institutional uses of multimedia
like education, and we will also exclude the so-called
home market which is often motivated by educational
imperatives
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Multimedia Applications (2)
 Multimedia Portfolios (for corporate partners)
 Workplace Descriptions
 Architectural Planning
 Multimedia Systems Analysis and Design
 Work Evaluations
 Quality Reviews, Quality Circles
 Internal Skills Training and Upgrade
 Organisational Promotion (extranets, internets)
 Knowledge Provision (intranets)
 Information Gathering (Video conferencing)
 can you suggest others?
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Development
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Development
 for non trivial projects, it is likely:
 that not all of the skills will be available in the
client organisation to create and develop each
type of media and to integrate them together
 also likely that the tools will not be available
within the client organisation either
 an example from our (Dr. Clarke and
Schafe experience) in developing an
educational title for BHP is a sobering
reminder- we will run through some of the
issues that effected…
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Development
Team Skills
 Multimedia Team
(Vaughan 1998)
 Project manager
 Multimedia designer
(Computer Graphics Artist,
Graphic Designer)
 Interface designer
 Writers
 Video Specialist (Video editing
on Media 100 NLE)
 Audio Specialist
 Multimedia Programmer
 Web Site Producer (optionalfor advertising the product or
building a hybrid title)
 and others…
 Virtual Reality production
 Stills Photography
 Audio Processing (Audio-Pro
Tools)
 Systems Integration
 Educational Consultants
 Scanners
 Field Assistants (indexing media,
field notes)
 Production Supervisors, Accountants,
Administrators
 Client Team
 Site Managers
 Site Trainers
 Technical Advisors
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Development
May need to hire requisite Skill Set…
 Need aerial shots of a factory site? You’ll need a helicopter!
 Need helicopter shots? You’ll need a ‘Continental Mount’!
 Need to see what’s going in a dark environment without the
use of additional lights? You may need analogue – yes that’s
right – broadcast quality cameras!
 Need wide views of action sequences in the workplace?
Need wide angle video lens!
 Need to move the camera from one position to another
smoothly? You’ll need a dolly!
 Need narration? You’ll need to find a voice actor, then you’ll
need to make sure you are aware of the appropriate Union
Award that covers them and get them to sign the release
form- Use an appropriate Solicitor!
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Development
…May need to hire requisite Skill Set
 Need to move the camera around over longer distances (>3
metres) than are available with a dolly? You’ll need a ‘Steadicam’
unit!
 Need a Steadicam unit? You’ll need a specially trained operator
to use it!
 Want to save money on broadcast quality video by using cheaper
analogue and digital video? You’ll need a video specialist trained
in the use of Media Cleaner… etc
 Want to make sure the product doesn’t date? You’ll need a hybrid
development that uses the web for updates and the CD-ROM for
other media!
 Want to get the software to do this for you? You’ll have to write it
yourself or hire programmers to do it!
 Want to use existing material? You’ll need to locate the material,
you’ll then need to get a copyright author in order to obtain the
right to use permission to use it!
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Development
Design Trajectories…
 You may want to develop a multimedia title but
you might end up doing a research project
 several examples from the BHP project followwe wanted to:
 compress large texts into a small screen ‘real
estate’- involved developing in Director the
equivalent of what is called the ‘Origami Editor’
 to make best use of the editor the texts had to be
designed into ‘chunks’- in order to do this sensibly
linguistic theory needed to be found, tested, written
into procedures and applied to each text
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Extended Text Control
Collapse/Expand Sections (2): Text Tabs
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Extended Text Control
Collapse/Expand Sections (4): Hyperlinks
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Development
…Design Trajectories…
 we then wanted to support hyperlinks in the textmuch of the editor had to be redesigned and coded
(development was not commutative- development
sequence was not reversable)
 bi-directional links between media- click inside an
image and a tab containing relevant information is
highlighted, click on the tab and the appropriate
image regions is highlighted
 the number of possible events generated in this
project meant that a special event manager had to be
written to improve the performance of the system
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Development
…Design Trajectories
 to show unfamiliar sequences of action from
multiple points of view a new interface widget
(control) needed to be developed (designed
and programmed that could be used of this
purpose)
 to modularise the content a set of templates
needed to be developed- they needed to be
designed to work together
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Development
New Widget: Digital Video Template




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Development
User Friendly Access (Navigator)
 used to select major
options and sub-options
within a site. It consists of
three components:
 stage (options annulus)
where coloured options are
available for selection but
unvisited, while gray options
are either system related or
have been recently visited.
 a centre stage upon which a
human figure called an actor
stands
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Development
Design Trajectories & Dev. Approach…
 in order to develop effective
organisational multimedia you need to be
able to involve the users
 this can improve:
 the development of the system
 its usability and comprehensibility
 promotes ownershop by the participants in the
project
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Development
Suggested by Users: Safety Gear Button
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Development
…Design Trajectories & Dev. Approach
 … the point is that design especially multimedia
design has a ‘trajectory’… when you start
changing how one part of an multimedia title
works at a fundamental level, other aspects will
likely need to be changed… often these changes
are not reversable you need to start again…
 this has an effect on how development occurs
this is why many multimedia developers should
use what is called evolutionary prototyping or
incremental development (see Lecture 12 also
BUSS316 which describes different approaches
to development including systems development
prototyping)
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Development
Preferred Development Approach
 many multimedia developers still persist in
thinking that multimedia titles can be completely
pre-planned (so-called pre-specified) the way you
have been taught classical systems analysis,
design, and programming
 in my experience this does not work for
multimedia projects
 you do not know in advance the exact specifications of
the multimedia system before you have undertaken the
project
 design issues and considerations emerge as the project
develops
 therefore it requires very strong project
management- not less
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Development
Modularise development using Prototypes
 modularise the development situation into
distinct subsystems each of which becomes a
prototype- in effect its own system
development project
 clearly specify the interfaces between each of
these prototypes, then use the system scope
provided by the prototypes to determine the
collection or development media
 eg/: the next two slides show the three BHP
project prototypes and some actual planning
data with respect to developing virtual reality
media
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Relevant Sites and Scope
Supply Process/ Material Flow/
Repairable Stock Item
S2: Warehouse
S1: Slab Caster
S1.1 Slab
Caster Office
S2.1 Stock*Man
System Room S2.2 Warehouse
Control Room
Supply Process/
Info Processing Flows
S3: Computer
Centre
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Possible/Required QTVRs
Site
Type
Site
Name
No. Develop.
Nodes Priority
System Sites
S3
S2.1
Computer Centre
32/2
Stock*Man System Room 2
1
2
Warehouse Control Room 4
Slab Caster Office (SAP) 8\2
3
4
Repairable Stock Item
5
Work Sites
S2.2
S1.1
Plot Device
-
1
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Development
(Some Steps Not a Methodology)
Developing initial ideas
Developing detailed design
Generating media elements
Designing or redesigning workflow
Integrating, testing, maintaining
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Development
Difficulties
 the most appropriate model for hypersystems
development- still up for debate!
 Production models often follow conventional
media
 Often the technical aspects of programming
are tacked onto these media workflows
 Computer people and media people often
don’t understand each other
 Designers are fuzzy and illogical,
 programmers are propeller heads
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Development
Uses of Storyboarding
 Vocabulary between these two groups is
completely different- Technical versus
creative divide!
 Part of it is embedded in the media (linear
media for video; non-linear media for computer
programmer)
 Media people are oriented to completing the
product, software people are oriented around
versions
 Often the best way of orienting the two
groups is by storyboarding (Pelle Ehe
Design of Work Artifacts)
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Operation
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Operation
Contribution of Industry Trends- Hardware
 necessarily how we use multimedia in
workplaces is changing very rapidly
 it is being fueled by industry trends which
include:
 changes to the PC itself: ubiquity of CD-ROMS and
the ready availability of DVDs in new machines)- in
1991 we were talking about the advent of
multimedia PCs (MPCs) this debate is now
irrelevant
 increased capacity with respect to primary storage
(fixed hard disks) and secondary storage (ready
availability of ZIP drives for example)
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Operation
Contribution of Industry Trends- Software
 it use to be the case approximately 10 years
ago, that if you wanted a multimedia title on a
PC you had to build the C libraries to enable
parts of the system to work
 Luther, A. C. (1991) Digital Video in the PC
Environment McGraw Hill
 Johnson, N. (1987) Advanced Graphics in C
Programming Techniques McGraw Hill
 now whether you love them or hate them
there are tools around that don’t require this
kind of ‘rocket science’ and are relatively easy
to learn
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Operation
Contribution of Industry Trends- Software
 the tools are getting easier to use- for
example the forthcoming Media Plant
system being developed in the School of
Education, UOW (to be released next year)
was used to develop educational titles which
have become award winners
 for example, one title called Stage Struck enables
high school students to create there own play
populated with digital actors, dialogue etc.
 it is such an amasing title it one a BAFTA (British
Academy Awards), and in the world Multimedia
Awards beat Microsoft Encarta!
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Operation
Updates
 Do you update content? How do you
update content? How do you know when
to update content?
 these questions are being solved through
the use of hybrid delivery approaches
 lots of video- place it on a DVD- make sure the
title is internet aware- write the system so that
it checks a live site that has a list of the latest
text and image media to download- arrange for
the downloads (to hard disk) to occur in order
to replace outdated material- the knows to read
material from the users hard disk rather static
media
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Operation
Communicative Hypersystems
 Allow the hypersystems to be
communicative ie/ add email capabilities to
an operational website so that users can
contact domain specialists
 Allow users to talk to each other and learn
more about the multimedia title and the
application domain it has been built to
support- build communities
 Allow users to actually alter the contents of
the material or to add new content- a large
range of interactive options are possible
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