Project Management: CD-ROM for a Major UK Children’s Publisher – 3000 words basic essay

Project Management Plan

 

Agency: Super New Media Ltd

 

Client: Global Kids Ltd

 

The Production of an educational CD-ROM for a major UK children’s publisher.

 

The first thing I did was source a free copy of OpenProj from PROJITY (2008) a company that creates free open source software. This would allow me to setup an actual project using the software and to produce the required tracking Gantt Chart as required. I started by brainstorming the whole project as if I was involved in the planning and I also took the Project Managers role and started creating all the associated tasks, resources and started to breakdown each activity. It took me a couple of attempts to assign all the resources and get used to the software design. I eventually managed to map out the entire six months and then simulate the project using the software. I printed out the tracking Gantt sheet as required…(See Appendix 1)

 

My PMP (Project Management Plan) was essentially started prior to the planning meeting scheduled for the 1st May 2008. This is because in most PMP’s the Project Manager has to work out the deliverables, and resources needed prior to creating the PMP. WIKIPEDIA (2008)

 

 

The Project management triangle

WIKIPEDIA (2008)

 

The pre-requisites of a comprehensive and robust PMP are as follows: Scope Management; Schedule Management; Financial Management; Quality Management; Resource Management, Communications management, Project Change Management; Risk Management and Procurement Management. WIKIPEDIA (2008) Other aspects such as cost and time are applied to the equation to produce the project management triangle as above, given that all the pre-requisites in place the objective is to deliver the project on time and to budget using these methodologies, this ensures that the project sticks to the deadline and also stays to the allocated budget from the stakeholders e.g.: The clients who have a vested interest in the design company sticking to their quotes. These methodologies also allow quality assurance to be built into the process with quality management being introduced.

 

Each task is called a deliverable and a time constraint is allocated to each deliverable or task. This is called the Work Breakdown Structure or WBS. WIKIPEDIA (2008)

I allocated seven deliverables in my new media PMP and they are:

 

  • 1. Planning
  • 2. Video production
  • 3. Scriptwriting
  • 4. Audio production
  • 5. Translation services
  • 6. CD rom production
  • 7. Testing

 

Each deliverable had to have a team assigned to it and I had to allocate this. In the Planning stage I allocated 1 week to plan the production with all the relevant professionals meeting for the duration of one week. These included:

 

  • Project Manager
  • Video Producer
  • Test Manager
  • Music Producer
  • Script Writer
  • Finish Manager
  • Content expert 1
  • Content expert 2
  • Interactive designer

 

These meetings would include brainstorming sessions. I discovered a conversation between designers scoping a website production and this was the conclusion.

 

M — I think that now we can plant the seed […] a lot of questions were asked that lead to larger issues that should be addressed in future phases of this site. The paradigm of getting the information up front may not be the person user paradigm. We need to subvert the dominant interface. We need to wage usability. They brought in The Wolf to hose down the car. But that’s not what we see as the problem; what we’re doing is limited — it’s a micro-macro issue. Orarion (2008)

 

It seems that the language of designers would have to be understood by all concerned in the planning process and that initial meetings would lead to further teams being assigned to each task and planning individually with some kind of whole group meeting to consolidate the results and further issues. However the PM has to really have scoped a lot of the aspects in his PMP so that all concerned can view this document, it could be that from meetings and further discussions it could be refined up to ‘D-Day’ and the production start in my case one week later.

 

In my plan and after the initial planning stage for all concerned to familiarise themselves with the plan. I commenced the production of the cd rom with the scriptwriting, the script writer would work alongside one of the content experts to decide what narrative should be made, I assume from this script that the audio production would commence once this aspect was finished. I presumed that the PM would along with the client provide enough information and pedagogy for the scriptwriter to work with and that the content expert would be needed for three days only. I think that this would then allow the scriptwriter to make any changes and re-write the script were necessary. The audio production would commence on the 2nd of June as there might be other music to produce such as sound effects and other diegetic music as well as possible music theme tunes. Filmsound.org, (2008) I assigned the PM and the QM (Quality manager) to this job as they would need to work out the copyright issues such as IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) associated with any music usage. If commercial music is used then it has to be ‘cleared’ via the record companies and music publisher’s agencies such as PPL (Phonographic Performance Ltd) or in the USA the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). PPL (2000), RIAA (2008). It would be the PM’s job and the QM’s to ensure that the music was not infringing anybodies rights and that it could be used in the CD-Rom. According to PPL if the music was produced by the music producer employed by the company then the copyright is owned by the music producer and he would just have to give his permission. However if the music producer was a freelancer and usually they are on these kind of projects then the music producer owns the rights so the PM would have to get him to assign his music to the Cd-Rom and possibly would have to negotiate a fee for the usage. PPL (2000), UK Intellectual Property Office, (2006). The quality control would be left to the QM and he would have to ensure that the music was right for the particular parts and that the quality was good enough for the production. Once the diegetic and non-diegetic music had been created a lot of the production would be in-regards to the audio narrative needed to accompany the pedagogy and learning assets, especially for the future games if they are interactive and ask the children to click or answer questions in a particular way. I also am presuming that at the planning meetings these aspects had been discussed between the interactive design who would make the games and the music producers.

 

When the all the audio production had been completed and signed off by the PM and QM, I would start the translation of all the assets produced by the music producer. I managed to find a company to translate the audio assets and I have allocated one month for their services to complete. Linguistic Systems Inc, (1999). In hindsight as a PM writing the PM plan I would have included this company in the planning meetings as they work wit the client to ascertain what market your are working in and have some ideas to help you in your field. I started the translation production of all the audio assets as well as the text assets on the first of August and I gave them one month to complete their service. I allocated the PM and the QM to this aspect of the project to ensure that the company delivered on time and that the quality was adequate for all the assets when translated.

 

On the first September I started the video producer going and more or less allowed him to have some autonomy on the production of any assets as I believe they would be minimal given that the main assets are text and audio based with interactive games included. I would predict that it could be something simple like a live introduction or some scene that would be played to music.  Think the PM could very easily monitor this aspect. I started the cd-rom production on the first of September and the Interactive designed would start to put together all the assets from the translators and music and video producers using Director. Macromedia, (2008) The PM, QM would be involved and it would be at this stage that I would introduce the content experts to work full time with the ID on the pedagogy and interaction process for the children to make. I also presume that aspects such as learning objectives and curriculum would be advised upon by the experts and that would aid and help the interaction. I would also think that during this critical stage their would be some testing with the particular children’s year group in an education setting to determine if the interaction designed worked. Interactive design is to do with the behavior of people associated with products that people can interact with. Interactive design covers most aspects of complicated software driven devices such as found on mobile phones, web pages and other electronic devices. Interactive designers have to undertake a great deal of user based research in the process of creating their work and in games and educational work it is imperative that the user testing is carried out on the year group it is designed and aimed at. The two main factors that Interactive designer s uses are the usability of the device interface and its affective influence on the user. Interface metaphors can be used I presume to denote activity such as if it is a numeric game the sound feedback would maybe go higher if the higher number was chosen or else lower if a lower number was chosen and so on an so forth. A critical body of work attributed to Interactive design is Donald Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things. The user interaction is called Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and this is all to do with how a user walks through the interface using their cognitive abilities and how they react to the dimensional changes laid out in interface and its associated dimensions. WIKIPEDIA (2008) The critical interactions associated with Interactive Design are:

  • (Form goal) determine the function
  • (Form intention) tell what actions are possible
  • (Specify action) deduce actions necessary
  • (Execute action) perform the action
  • (Perceive state) tell what state the system is in
  • (Interpret state) determine meaning of state
  • (Evaluate outcome) tell if goal has been achieved

Norman, D (1988)

New design has to be at some point influenced or guided by psychology in every aspect of design and development to fit people’s needs. A design team it seems needs a plethora of people involved not just from a design stand point but also engineers and psychologists in-order to design products for the workplace. To be successful the products need the input of psychologist and other professionals to ensure that there is a real application and usability in the product. (Buijs 2000: 76) Research in a design team is and can be completely at odds with the psychologist’s viewpoint when it comes to designing products for the workplace and people to interact with. The designers and researchers can sometimes create a dialectic that completely opposes the rationale of the design brief and research mainly it seems due to the psychologist seeing and looking for different dynamics amongst people. (Buijs 2000: 78) Psychologists actually work with the design team on many different levels, not just in-regards to usability in the design process but also in-regards to the management of the process.

 

Studies of design team leaders have discovered that the element of ‘playing’ is used extensively in the management of design teams and this was discovered to be a very important part of motivating the design teams. (Buijs 2000: 78). Hohn, H. (1999). It seems that the insights into certain processes are gained by introducing psychologists to design teams and that they greatly improve NPD (New Product Development) in a way that is beneficial to not only the psychology profession but also for the design companies and their clients e.g.: Corporates and Multi National companies. (Buijs 2000:79) Without the introduction of a psychologist into the design team then it would lead to certain mistakes being made or else the product being unsuitable for end users. In some respects it seems that the very presence and professional skills of the psychologists are an essential part of the mix and without them products would not have any functionality and ultimately would not be taken up by the end user e.g.: the customers. It was further discovered by design companies being introspected by psychologists that design managers need to be some kind of controlled schizophrenics and that this is a new kind of leadership skill that is needed in the design industry. The factors seem to be that four aspects of control and management are needed at any given time and that these four aspects are working together in the design process at any given time are key to success. These aspects are the content, innovation of a new product to market, the group dynamics and team motivation and the third envisaging the creative process and last but not least is leadership. Buijs, Jan. (2007)

It is not ‘form follows function’; it is more like the form of the product allows the user to behave in a particular way. The form actually constructs the meaning and there are many solutions. The initial form goal is, ‘what is it for’? The form intention is, ‘what part to move’? ‘Which part to hold’? And the specific action relates to, ‘how will it move’? ‘How to use it’? Other psychological factors in HCI and especially related to website interaction is how intuitive is the interaction, thus reducing mental processing. Above all further to the psychological interaction with the design, user feedback is paramount in-regards to the visibility, the sounds provided, and also tactile sensation. The feedback can be subtle and involve all these aspects in differing respects. Feedback can be overt such as ‘power on lights’ to click of keyboards’ etc..It seems that if the HCI is not intuitive and labels and instructions are used then this is itself an admission of failure on the designer’s part. Norman, (1990)

I believe the content experts on this project would be a psychologist introduced to the design team and an educationalist to ensure that the designer followed the educational curriculum and guidelines needed. It could also be required that the educational cd-rom had to be mapped to certain criteria needed by the teachers working with this particular area and that it would ensure that the resource had some educational merit and output when purchased. A psychologists input to a design team is paramount in the present day for the adoption of HCI and other processes to actually work in the real world and the workplace. Whereas in the past with cogs, levers and wheels as design constraints the users interaction was more predictive. With the advent of electronic engineering and HCI designers are less likely to know and predict how a user will interactive with a product in the workplace. It is the advent of psychologist’s assessment procedures that allow the designers to predict the cognitive processes that occur when a user interacts with HCI or else any other electronic device in the workplace. Given that these experts worked with all concerned the end result of the project or this deliverable would have been a success and signed off by the QM and PM. After this critical stage the product could be user tested by the Test Manager and I assigned again an expert to this aspect due to the nature of the product. I would like to think that the psychologist would have been the expert involved in this stage to further ascertain the interaction and results of the test in accordance with the products specifications. I have included a graphic from Donald Norman’s concept ‘Seven stages of action’. WIKIPEDIA (2008)

The Seven Stages of Action

  • Forming the goal
  • Forming the intention
  • Specifying an action
  • Executing the action
  • Perceiving the state of the world
  • Interpreting the state of the world
  • Evaluating the outcome

WIKIPEDIA (2008)

 

 

In the user testing stage the Test Manager and the Content Expert would be supported by the ID in that if any repairs or changed needed to be made then the ID would be at hand to do this. This was something I didn’t calculate into the original PMP and in hindsight I should have include the ID in this stage as well.

The goals of Usability testing are as follows:

  • Efficiency — How long does it take people to complete basic tasks? (For example, find something to buy, create a new account, and order the item.)
  • Accuracy — How many mistakes did people make? (And were they fatal or recoverable with the right information?)
  • Recall — How much does the person remember afterwards or after periods of non-use?
  • Emotional response — How does the person feel about the tasks completed? Is the person confident, stressed? Would the user recommend this system to a friend?

WIKIPEDIA (2008)

When the testing is setup the Test Manager has to create a scenario that is the same as when the child is using the cd-rom in school or at home doing his or her homework. It would be setup to test children in this way and a list of tasks would be given to the children and they would be observed, the Content Expert and the Test Manager would take notes etc..The primary objective is to see how the children work with the product in a real life situation. There is a usability test called ‘Think aloud protocol’ and I believe this would be used to test this product. The think aloud method involves users talking through their experience of the interface or product they are testing. This allows the observers to experience what it must be like for the user to sit in front of the product for the first time. It is also common practice to tape or record the sessions so that further evaluation of the interaction can be made. WIKIPEDIA (2008) If the subjects chosen can perform the tasks, games and walkthrough the cd-rom product impeded then it is a resounding success and the product can be rolled out and also displayed and presented to the client.

To surmise according to the deliverables specified.

An interactive cd-rom in English has been created utilising content supplied by Global Kids Ltd. 2D illustrations have been provided by SNM and included in the project. Textual content was provided by GK as well as photographic images from their archives. Voice over’s and narrative was produced by SNM and the pedagogy was influenced by GK’s content experts. Translations have been made of the English version of the narrative into French and Spanish by SNM. Interactive games have been produced by SNM to be included in the cd-rom along with some supporting video to introduce some aspects of the cd-rom. The product was user tested by SNM on children at Key stage 1 & 2 in local primary schools and the results presented in a report to the client. The product will be presented to the client further to being signed off.

 

 

References.

 

APM, (2008) Association of Project Managers, http://www.apm.org.uk/ Date accessed 07.05.09

 

Buijs, Jan. 2000. Design Research in the Netherlands, Department of Product Innovation & Management Sub-Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering Delft University of Technology http://www.designresearch.nl/PDF/DRN2000_Buijs.pdf Date accessed 10/05/08. p76,78,79.

Buijs, Jan. 2007. Innovation Leaders Should be Controlled Schizophrenics
Creativity and Innovation Management

Filmsound.org, (2008) http://filmsound.org/terminology/diegetic.htm                     Date accessed 08.05.09

 

Hohn, H. (1999). Playing, Leadership and Team Development in Innovative Teams, PhD thesis, Delft University of Technology.

 

Linguistic Systems Inc, (1999) http://www.linguist.com/multimedia.htm Date accessed 08.05.09

 

Macromedia, (2008) Adobe Director 11,  http://www.adobe.com/products/director/ Date accessed 08.05.09

 

Norman, D (1988) The Psychology of Everyday Things, Basic Books.

 

Norman, D (1990) Why interfaces don’t Work, in Laurel B (1990) ed, The Art of Human Computer Interface Design, Addition Wesley.

 

Norman, D (2008) Seven Stages of Action, WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_stages_of_action Date accessed 10.05.09

 

Phonographic Performance Ltd. (2000) http://www.ppluk.com/ Date accessed 08.05.09

PROJITY (OpenProj 2008) http://openproj.org/ Date accessed 07.05.09

 

Robinson, S. (1998) Orarian, http://www.orarian.com/brainstorm.html  Date accessed 08.05.09

 

Recording Industry Association of America, (2008) http://www.riaa.com/ Date accessed 08.05.09

 

UK Intellectual Property Office, (2006) http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/c-claim/c-benefit.htm Date accessed 08.05.09

 

WIKIPEDIA (2008) Project Management

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management#The_traditional_triple_constraints Date accessed 07.05.09

 

WIKIPEDIA (2008) Interaction Design

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design#4._Prototyping_and_usability_testing

Date accessed 10.05.09

 

WIKIPEDIA (2008) Seven Stages of Action

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_stages_of_action

Date accessed 10.05.09

 

WIKIPEDIA (2008) Usability Testing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

Date accessed 10.05.09

 

WIKIPEDIA (2008) Think aloud protocol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_aloud_protocol

Date accessed 10.05.09

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 1

Gantt Tracking Sheet – CD Rom Production – SuperNewMedia Ltd