The decide and design stages of preparing a Multimedia Project!

 

Multimedia products are those resources that are composed of different formats, such as audio, text, video, images, or animation. These are intended to bring information to the student, that is, the viewer of the content.

• DECIDE is the first phase of the DDD-E process, and it involves a significant amount of planning and organization. Planning includes setting instructional goals, deciding on a project, developing prerequisite skills, and assessing computer availability and other necessary resources.

There are multiple stages to creating multimedia projects, but the DECIDE phase is the most

critical to their success. The stages that follow depend on the planning, organization, and research activities conducted in the DECIDE phase; each stage depends on its predecessor. The time needed to complete each stage will depend on the size and complexity of the project, as well as the level and number of students in each group. Well-managed classrooms and organized projects will add to the success of students’ multimedia endeavors and learning.

Deciding the project's goals  -In this phase we decide which goals we are going to achieve in the end, for us as teachers and for our students to convey through the process.

Planning and organizing-in this phase we plan our work in the form which will be presented and the organization of the content 

Identifying the target audience-This is the key moment where we decide upon our audience because based on this choice we decide on all other features,(template, colors, level of difficulty, games, etc)every detail is related to the audience.

Conducting research- Collecting data, and information regarding our topic lesson and the audience too. To get inspired and new ideas we look up different resources and materials.

Choosing a concept-we should choose a good concept that goes smoothly through our audience and it combines perfectly the topic lesson, eg-(on Halloween day, we decided to bring pumpkins, and candles in order to fulfill the concept of this holiday )

Designing stages

 The DESIGN phase is crucial to developing a multimedia project. The content outline,
flowchart, planning sheets, and storyboards serve as the blueprints for the program and help to ensure
that the project’s goals will be met. In the DESIGN phase, we participate in organizing information for optimal presentation; determining the most appropriate sequence; and outlining the details of the text, graphics, audio, video, and interactivity.

Storyboarding-in this step we list our materials in the form they are going to be animated, presented, and the order of activities.

Visual design-the visual part is my favorite part because I love choosing the perfect layout, and color combination. I am obsessed with templates. (Fun fact: whenever I am doing a multimedia project it takes me 2 hours or more to pick the template and then go with other steps.)

Content creation-choose the proper template and study each detail of that template if there is a small icon not related to the topic we should omit it. Picking the right images, and videos always relates to the topic lesson, or it will lose the principal intention of the lesson.

Technical problems-We should rehearse our materials before presenting them because at home everything might be perfect but technical problems might appear in class so we should take care of each detail regarding the technology tools that we are going to use. 

Documentation-We should keep notes for every decision or change we have made to our multimedia project so we could present it in the desired form. Also, we use this stage to have it as a reminder of any activity we might forget at the moment.

In conclusion, decide and design stages are both evolving and engaging through the process ,but in order to  have a successful multimedia project we must follow these stages precisely and in a coherent form.

Chapter 3