Content, Interface and Usability of Program

Question :  Discuss the relationship between a program’s content, its interface, and its usability. What is the best way to make the content accessible to users without unnecessary complexity? Where are modal interfaces useful? What are their drawbacks? Where are navigation or sites maps useful? How might you use “themes” to identify different areas if a program or different approaches to the content’s structure?

Answer:

Discuss the relationship between a program’s content, its interface, and its usability.

A program's content, interface and usability are interrelated with each other. For program's content, the best thing is to make the content stay simple. The content must be easy to understand and navigate. The text and font size of the content must be big enough and contrast with the background because some of the users may have eyes sight problem. Also make sure that the program loading time is reasonable, every link/button is consistent and can link to each other and avoid ads pop out.

For the interface, the design must match with the content and the company logo and theme. It is advisable to keep the interface simple and user-friendly, in other way, not too busy and messy. The icon and button used must be fully accepted by everyone, meaning that the icon must contain only 1 meaning to avoid misunderstand by the users. The location of the icon must big and clear enough and place in a appropriate location because some of the users may have difficulties in seeing and hearing. 

Designer can also use hyperlinks to connect a user to another part of the same document/different document and another website for more information; image maps which are larger images that are sectioned into hot areas with associated links are called image maps.

For the usability, the program must:

1. Present the information to the user in a clear and concise way.
2. Give the correct choices to the users in an obvious way.
3. Remove any ambiguity regarding the consequences of an action (e.g. clicking on delete/remove/purchase).
4. Place important items in an appropriate area on a web page or a web application.

Even though a program may have a good interface design, but the content must be also useful and usable in order to attract more user.

 What is the best way to make the content accessible to users without unnecessary complexity? 

The best way to make the content accessible are:
- make it simple and clean
- user-friendly
- easy to understand
- avoid too much information
- major heading are clear and descriptive
- critical content is above the fold
- styles and colors are consistent
- emphasis (bold etc) is used sparingly
- avoid ads pop out
- urls are meaningful and user-friendly

Where are modal interfaces useful? What are their drawbacks? 

Modal interfaces are useful in all other way except multimedia.

The usefulness of modal interfaces is increased usability: the drawbacks of modal interfaces are offset by the strengths of another. For example, on a mobile device with a small visual interface and keypad, a word may be quite difficult to type but very easy to say (e.g. Poughkeepsie). Consider how you would access and search through digital media catalogs from these same devices or set top boxes. And in one real-world example, patient information in an operating room environment is accessed verbally by members of the surgical team to maintain an antiseptic environment, and presented in near real time aurally and visually to maximize comprehension.

In addition, modal interfaces input user interfaces have implications for accessibility. A well-designed modal interfaces application can be used by people with a wide variety of impairments. Visually impaired users rely on the voice modality with some keypad input. Hearing-impaired users rely on the visual modality with some speech input. Other users will be "situationally impaired" (e.g. wearing gloves in a very noisy environment, driving, or needing to enter a credit card number in a public place) and will simply use the appropriate modal interfaces as desired. On the other hand, a modal interfaces application that requires users to be able to operate all modal interfaces is very poorly designed.

Where are navigation or sites maps useful?

Navigation is useful in the website where people can enter a site through any other page, not just the homepage. Using other pages as entry points is achieved through search engines, links from other web sites or bookmarks. Users must easily find their way around a web site from every and any page. They should be able to reach the homepage from any page within the web site. Reaching all major site sections can only help them see more of the provided information.


For the sites maps, it is useful especially the search engine where the sitemap will let the Google robot see how pages, such as those in the fourth and fifth level, fit into your site. If you link to your sitemap page from your homepage, all of the pages listed in your sitemap will be no farther from your home page than the third level. This will encourage Google to index your entire site.

How might you use “themes” to identify different areas if a program or different approaches to the content’s structure?

For example, if we doing a clothing website, for the female clothing section, we can use female related theme and color such as clothes, earring, rose or other accessories to identify the female areas whereas for the male  clothing section, we can use the theme with tie, clothes and watch to identify that is the areas for male. 

Team Member of Project

Question : Based on the project specified in 9.1; create a team of at least three people for the project. Specify their titles, internal and external rates, and abilities. Write a one-paragraph bio explaining each team member’s relevant experience and capabilities.

Answer :

Project Manager

- Has overall responsibility for the successful initiation, planning, design, execution, monitoring, controlling and closure of a project.

- Combination of skills include the ability to ask penetrating questions, detect unstated assumptions and resolve conflicts.

- Responsibility to identify, monitor, and respond to the risk and make sure the project is delivered in budget, on schedule and within the scope.

- Communication skills must strong in order to convey the message or information between the team and clients.


Multimedia Designer

- Professional people who responsible in creating a high quality and performance of websites, products, special effects in video games and corporate logos. 

- Required to has a high level of creativity and practical knowledge.

- This team consists of graphic designers, illustrators, animations, and image processing specialists who deal with visuals, thereby making the project appealing and aesthetic.

Interface Designer

- Combine an intuition understanding of what users need with practical experience of what does and does not, work in other products with an informed sense of what looks and feels right. 

- Apply formal and predictive models of user behavior to the design process and evaluating their effectiveness through experiments.

- Responsible for creating a software device that organizes content, allows users to access or modify content, and presents that content on the screen. 

- Build up a user-friendly interface

Video Specialist

- Understand the delivery of video files on CD, DVD, or the Web. 

- Needs to know how to shoot quality video, the way to transfer video footage to computer. and how to edit the footage down to a final product using digital non-linear editing system (NLE)

Shooting and Editing Video for Multimedia

Question : Discuss several considerations in shooting and editing video for multimedia. What techniques would you use to produce the best possible video, at a reasonable cost? Which of these techniques apply to all video, and which apply specifically to multimedia?

Answer : 

Before begin to shoot and edit video for multimedia, the first thing you need is to come out with a storyboard and a good quality of camera to shoot a video with a technically capable video editor. Therefore, you need a computer with fast processor and lots of RAM as when you editing video, the software will consume lot of RAM and with fast processor, your computer will not hang during the editing progress. 

In addition, the lighting that available or required for shooting is needed in order to provide the best output of the video. Additional lighting should be added if it is needed. Besides that, color issues as well as camera angles also play an important character in shooting and editing video. Lastly, check the background noise such as traffic jam before start to shoot video. If could not avoid, turn the speakers loudly and to make it clear. 

In addition, I would recommend using a digital camera instead of DSLR video camcorder. With good techniques on recording a video and editing software, even though a digital camera also able to produce a good video clip. Thus, try to use our environment as the natural lighting system instead of renting expensive lighting system from the studio. 

Design and Produce Audio Portions of Multimedia Project

Question : You have been assigned to design and produce the audio portions of a multimedia project. The program will be delivered on CD-ROM, and video clips will take up most of the CD. You have only 50MB of storage space to store 20 minute clips of speech, 10 songs averaging three minutes long and a background sound loop. What sampling rate and depth should you use for the speech, for the music, and for the background sound? Why? Roughly calculate the file size totals for these specifications, and be sure that you end up with less than the 50MB of storage space allotted. Discuss your reasoning.

Answer : 

MP3 format would be the choice for my entire audio file in video clip. This is because it has  compressed without affecting the quality of sounds.

Speech - 96kbps bit rate for music, 128kbps bit rate for the sound quality as the soung quality is near to the CD quality, 128kbps bit rate for background sound loop.

Speech
60seconds * 96kbps = 5760 kb of data
5760/8 = 720kb (0.772mb)
0.72 *20 = 14.4mb

Music
180seconds *128kbps = 23040 kb of data
23040/8 = 2880kb (2.88mb)
2.88 * 10 = 28.8mb

Background song
300seconds * 128kbps = 38400 kb of data
38400/8 = 4800kb (4.8mb)

Total
14.4 + 28.8 + 4.8 = 48mb

Multimedia, Interactive Multimedia, Hypertext and Hypermedia

Question 4 : Discuss the differences among multimedia, interactive multimedia hypertext and hypermedia.

Answer :

Multimedia is the combination of text, sound, animation, video that delivered to people by computer or others electronic or digitally manipulated means. Therefore, when we put together the sensual element of multimedia  that are pictures and animation, engaging sounds, compelling video and some textual information, it can helps you to read the thought and mind of people. In addition, multimedia is easy to use and integrated and interactive but of course it is expensive and requires special hardware.

Interactive multimedia is related to the concepts interaction design, new media, interactivity, human computer interaction, cyber culture, and includes specific cases such as, for example, interactive television, interactive advertising, social media, virtual reality, and so on.

Hypertext is text which is not constrained to be linear and contains links to other text. Therefore, you can move from one subject to another even thought they might have different forms. For example, by clicking on the link in a hypertext document, a user can directly jump from a different content to another. Hypertext usually related to web pages.

Hypermedia is a term derived from hypertext, extends the notion of the hypertext link to include links among any set of multimedia objects such as sound, motion video and virtual reality. It also can connote a higher level of user interactivity than the interactivity already implicit in hypertext. Hypermedia simply combines hypertext and multimedia. However, hypermedia should not be confused with hyper graphics or super-writing which is not a related subject.


Question 5 : Your boss wants you to create a hypermedia system for Web visitors to find technical support information about your company. What are some of the implications in creating this system? Should you hand-build the links or use an automatic indexing system? Why?

Answer : 

Hypermedia is the use of text, data, graphics, audio and video as elements of an extended hypertext system in which all elements are linked, where the content is accessible via hyperlinks. This could help the user to understand more about the company because it allows to gather information in non-linear way which means that the users would have a choice as to what path the users want to takes in order to gather information.

With use of hypermedia, it restricts the slow speed and take times to load the site. For the question of should hand build the links or use an automatic indexing system, the answer is depends. However, I would like to recommend to use automatic indexing system because it able to enhance the usability of multimedia material after it is organized in a lesson structure. Moreover, it also allows the company to create different context-based presentations starting from the expected skills of target users. Besides that,  it also helps to create a through system without missing any procedures.

Poster Design

In the tutorial 3, I had learned about how to design a poster through the MS Word. The topic is design a poster to promote an OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.

Therefore, I come out with this simple designed poster and one slogan as lecturer requested.

REAL PLAYER

The open source software that I promoted is REAL PLAYER. As we know, REAL player is a well-known player to play the movie and song. Besides that, REAL player also can download, manage media, simple editing, share, record video and etc.

Moreover, I had created one slogan for REAL player, which is matched with the alphabet of "REAL". My slogan is Real player Emphasize Aspire Life. This simple and meaningful slogan are combination of each starting alphabet of words in the sentence. 

In the nutshell, the suggestion given by lecturer are: A good designed poster should be come out with a feeling of simple designed with straight forward message.

Image

Assume that you are a photo editor. Please edit the photo according to the request.

Photo 1 : Please help this man to eliminate the mole on his face.

              

Photo 2 : Lady is regarded to have a tattoo on his arm. Please help to solve the problem.

Photo 3 : This Holloman had forgotten to take up the sunglasses. Please help him to solve the problem.

Today what I had learned in my tutorial class is about Paint. Based on the Wikipedia, Paint is an image painting application and often referred to as Microsoft Paint which is a simple graphics painting software that included in Microsoft Windows. Paint opens and saves files as Windows bitmap (24-bit, 256 colour, 16 colour and monochrome, all with the .bmp extension), JPEG, GIF, PNG and TIFF. Due to its simplicity, Paint became one of the most used applications in the early versions of Windows and no denying that every computer or laptop provided Paint software.

During the whole lesson of editing tutorial, I learned about how to use Paint tools to edit the image.

First of all, I use the "Magnifier" tool to change the magnification for a part of the image. Next, use the "Color Picker" to pick the colour from the image and use the colour for drawing or make up by using "Brushes". By follow this steps repeatly, we manage to make the image looks better and nice because we can add or remove some features into the image.