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PROJECT TEAM GUIDE
Defining the Project
why define it?
Once your Studio 1151 team has been assembled and you have a general idea of what your project will be, it's time to answer some basic questions that will lay the groundwork for the actual design and production of your Studio product. Although the following steps may seem like a lot of work, they can probably be completed in a few team meetings. Don't be tempted to skip them, because each step is vital to the final success of your project!
what is the purpose?
The first step is to develop a clear understanding of what you want people to gain from using the web site your team will create. As you work on your project, the test for every design decision should be "Does this feature fulfill the ultimate purpose of our project?"
A purpose statement affects the design process by explaining what you want your web site to do, rather than describing the site itself. For example, the statement "to create an interactive guide to understanding an automobile" is not a clear purpose statement. A better one would would be "to increase people's knowledge of how their automobile works" or "to teach people how to perform basic maintenance on their automobile". Keep a record of the purpose statement for your portfolio.
A good starting point for this step is to do some research to find other sites that may covers the same topic or find ones that present information in a way that you think is valuable. Below are some resources to help you get started.
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DEFINING THE PURPOSE
RESEARCHING THE PURPOSE
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what is the scope?
The next step is to do some forecasting about the "extent" of your project. Try answering questions like "How much content will it cover? How long will it take? How many people and what resources will it require?" You have may the greatest idea in the world, but if it is too complex to be completed within your timeline, or you do not have access to required development tools, you need to either reconsider your approach, select another topic, or scale back the concept.
Even if you are making wild ballpark guesses, start documenting them and return to them later and modify the estimates as your project advances. At the end of your project, looking back at your original estimates will help your team gauge future projects even more accurately. If you were wildly off base from the beginning, that is okay!
who is your audience?
Although you can't predict precisely who will use your web site, you can target a general audience and design your product to work under a range of possible conditions that the target audience might experience. Decide early if it is for the widest range of possible users (e.g. must work with older computers/web browsers via a slow modem) or perhaps a more narrow audience (only viewed by students over a fast internal network or home users with cable modems). Also ask yourself if it will limit audience members who might be blind, colorblind, unable to keyboard, etc.
The best way to find out what kind of product your intended audience might want or use is to ask them! Audience research may seem like a lot of work, but even a small project will benefit from taking the time to find out what people want and need before development begins. It can be as simple as spending an evening on the phone or writing email and asking a few friends what they might look for in a web site like yours, what they think is important, if they've used a similar site, and if they would use the product you have in mind if it were available to them.
what are the objectives?
After you've identified the main purpose, scope, and audience for your Studio web project, you need to decide just what skills you want users to gain from using the final product. These skills will be translated into the instructional objectives for your product, and will drive future design decisions. The evolution of your Studio project should flow directly from the instructional objectives developed in this step.
Good instructional objectives describe exactly what you want the person that visits to be able to do, not what they will know or how they will feel about the instruction. Good objectives are written in complete sentences that use action verbs to describe an observable activity or performance. The performance described in your objectives should be measurable by observation or testing. For example, "know how to maintain an automobile" is not a good objective. "The user will apply the six steps to check the oil in their own automobile" is a good objective.
what are your strategies?
Once you've clearly identified what the users of your product will learn to do, you should begin to think about how to present information in order to effectively achieve those objectives. Because your web site will be developed on a computer, your users will be able to "interact" with the words, numbers, and pictures in your program, allowing you to use multiple strategies to support the learning environment. The important thing is to make sure the strategies you choose truly enhance learning, as opposed to simply providing entertainment.
There are numerous instructional strategies to choose from. Tutorials and drills simply present information and then ask the user to practice using what they just learned. Games actively engage the user in the learning exercise in a fun way. Simulations provide a way to present information in an environment similar to the real thing. Practice and testing allow users to apply what they've learned. Problem solving and demonstrations are also instructional strategies. You can use multiple strategies in your project.
You should also consider the potential "structure" of the information in your web site. Will it be linear (like a slide show)? Can the user navigate it in any order?
how will you measure success?
What criteria you will use to determine whether or not your web site project is successful? Setting agreed upon benchmarks for success will insure that everyone on the team has a similar vision of what spells success for this project. You should also provide a way to identify problems early on so they can be addressed before the project gets too far off track.
One way to determine success is to build in points of feedback whereby the users of the web site can tell you what they think about it. You should also plan to have a group of people test a working prototype of your product before it is rolled out for general use.
what could go wrong?
This is the time to talk about things that could happen to get in the way of success, and to decide together how to avoid them. A good way to approach this is to conduct a brainstorming session to generate a list of potential problems and a corresponding list of possible solutions. Spend a lot of time saying "what if?" For example, one potential problem could be that you learn that creating a 3D computer model of an automobile engine is beyond your resources. As a solution, you may consider using a series of photographs of an actual engine.
what/who do you need?
Early in the planning process your team should begin listing the hardware/software resources your team will need to create the web site. Even if you are unsure, at least start making some best estimates, and keep returning to update and modify the projected resource needs.
For example, if your design calls for a video clip of properly replacing a car battery, you not only need to consider recording the video sequence, but also digitizing it to a format you can use on the computer, editing the clip, and optimizing it in a format that will work on a web site. You know that you then will need special computer hardware and software for this process and may need the assistance of someone well-versed in delivering video from a web server.
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