Top 5 Tips on Ensuring your Digital project is Loved by Your Audience
by Tim Furby, from 01zero-one's Interactive Media Production course taking place on Tue 20th-Wed 21st October.
"1. Beware of stakeholder soup! Like trying to design one car that works for everybody - sports coupe or people carrier - websites that try to do everything don't deliver. Not only does too much time and money get poorly applied during the build phase, often starving some valuable aspects of the production, if it does finally go live your audience will probably be confused by the offer.
Be honest about your ambition. Once your creative director and team have come up with some great ideas and you've added a few more because everybody else insists they have something to include, you can end up with a list of 'things you can do' (so-called functionality) that can be far too ambitious."
"2. How MoSCoW saved the project! MoSCoW helps you to focus all your ideas into a simple list of ranked importance: Must have, Should have, Could have, Would like to have. Be honest, try and get your "Must have" ideas down to a couple of things you really want to build. Most great ideas are very simple, so why shouldn't the website you are building be the same?"
"3. Get your users to go to MoSCoW for you. That's right, write down in plain English on some cards a brief description of your ideas and let them decide. You might be surprised that the 'uploader tool that allows your audience to add photos and text to your compelling interactive narrative drama' is deemed to be less important than that simple photo caption competition!"
"4. Build quickly, test often and repeat. Or, 'Iterative prototyping and integrating user feedback'. A mixture of project management methodologies (yawn...) can save you time/money and deliver a better service. Agile is a way of working with developers where they will quickly build you a simple prototype of a part of your website. You can then test it with your users, maybe virtually, get them to comment and feed back into the next iteration. Keep it weekly or fortnightly and you can build quickly knowing that your users have added their input. Developers love it because it gives them timely feedback and it works for production managers because you know what's going on."
"5. Ignore all of the above and get playful. Sometimes the great idea, that really simple concept is staring you in the face but all you can see is production timelines, audience feedback sessions, creative tensions and technical constraints. Often project teams ask me: how can we test ideas with users who judge them from what they currently experience online? How does this allow us to innovate?"
"Well, book a facilitator (I can be contacted through 01zero-one, for instance!) to organise an ideas day with a range of designers, developers and potential users. Somewhere away from the office, especially your nice creative spaces! Get out there, go somewhere new, book a day at 01zero-one, for example. For the first part of the day talk about anything except interactive media. Don't feel under pressure to come up with great ideas. Talk about your lives, things you love, things that frustrate you, anything. Then slowly introduce some creative tools and processes and see what happens. It may take you in a completely different direction. Do this early enough and you then have plenty of time to start some effective production planning, but that's for another newsletter!"
Interactive Media for Production Staff course is being held on Tue 20th-Wed 21st October, Companies £295, http://01zero-one.co.uk/multiplatform_new.htm. The course looks at how to produce interactive media for the web, mobile, games and broadcast; understand digital media terminology; and work with digital tools and agencies.
About 01zero-one: 01zero-one runs media events, training courses and workshops for professionals in film, television and new media. 01zero-one is a part of Westminster Kingsway College, originally conceived of as a separate brand to engage the creative media industries. 01zero-one is part of the Ravensbourne Skillset Media Academy.
About Tim Furby Tim is a digital media professional with 10 years experience of developing and implementing large digital production strategies for BBC and other agencies. This includes line management, end to end production of interactive content, functionality and user experience for some of the most highly valued and widely used BBC online services.
Contact details: 01zero-one, Hopkins Street, London, W1F 0HS
Telephone 020 7025 1985 , Email info@01zero-one.co.uk, www.01zero-one.co.uk |
