Designing the Structure

• The organization of materials for projects will have the same impact on the viewer as the content itself.


• A navigation map (site map) provides the designer with a table of contents as well as a chart of the logical flow of the interactive interface.


• Four fundamental of organizing structures used in multimedia projects:
  1. Linear: Users navigate sequentially, from one frame or bite of information to another.
  2. Hierarchical: Also called “linear with branching,” since users navigate freely through the content of the project, unbound by predetermined routes.
  3. Nonlinear: users navigate freely through the content of the project, unbound by predetermined routes.
  4. Composite: Users may navigate freely (nonlinearly), but are occasionally constrained to linear presentations of movies or critical information and/or to data that is most logically organized in hierarchy.


• Structural depth
  1. Depth Structure- represents the complete navigation map and describes all the links between all components of your projects.
  2. Surface structure- represents the structures actually realized by a user while navigating the depth structure.


• When designing a navigation map, think about surface structure- to view the product from a user’s perspectives.

Hotspot, Hyperlinks, and Buttons

• Hotspot is an area when the users click on the location, something happens, which make multimedia interactive and exciting.


• Hotspot connects the users to another part of the document or program or to a different program or website- the link is known as hyperlink.


• If the hotspot is a graphic image designed to look like a push button or toggle switch, it is called a button.


• There are three general categories of hot spots based on the form in which they appear: whether as text, graphic or icon.


• Larger images may be sectioned into hot areas with associated links; these are called image map.

Designing The User Interface

• The user interface of your multimedia product is blend of graphic elements and its navigation system.


• A multimedia projects usually need lots of navigational power, providing access to content and tasks for users at all levels.


• Graphics User interfaces (GUI) is successful partly because of their basic point-and-click style is simple, consistent, and quickly mastered.


• Avoid hidden commands and unusual keystroke/mouse click combination because users like to be in control.


• A multimedia graphic artist must always play the role of the end user during the design and rendering process, choosing colors that look good, specifying text fonts that “speak”, and designing buttons that are clearly marked for what they do.


• These are some graphical approach that could get good result.
  
  Things that works:
  1. Neatly executed contrast: big/small, heavy/light, bright/dark, thin/thick, cheap/dear.
  2. Simple and clean screens with lots of white space.
  3. Eye-grabbers such as Drop caps, or single brightly colored object alone on a gray scale screen.
  4. Shadows and drop shadows in various shades.
  5. Gradients
  6. Reserved graphics to emphasize important text or images.
  7. Shaded objects and text in 2-D and 3-D.
  
  
  Things to avoid:
  1. Clashes of colors
  2. Busy screens
  3. Using pictures with a lot of contrast in color or brightness as background
  4. Trite humor in oft-repeated animations
  5. Clanging bells or squeaks when a button is clicked
  6. Frilly pattern borders
  7. Cute one-liners from famous movies
  8. Required more that two button clicks to quit
  9. Too many numbers (limit to 25)
  10. Too many words (Split them into chunk)
  11. Too many substantive elements presented too quickly


• Sounds can be background music, special effects for button clicks, voice-overs, effects synced to animation, or they may be buried in the audio track of a video clip.


• Choose the music that fits the content and atmosphere you wish to create.

Producing

• Production is the phase when your multimedia project is actually rendered.


• Develop a file-naming convention specific to your project structure.