Digital Authoring Concepts: Multimedia Design

Who is it for, and what do they want to do

Most people starting a digital product ask how to make it look good, and which impressive things the software can be made to do. Neither question is what this unit is about. A digital product is not judged on how it looks. It is judged on whether the person it was made for can do what they came to do. Every decision in it answers to that: the colours, the layout, the wording, how you move between screens, how big an image is. That gives you one question to carry into every design choice you make and every one you are asked to justify: who is it for, what do they want to do, and does this decision help them do it? Notice what this rules out. "It looks nice" is not a justification and never earns anything. "The audience will be reading this on a phone, on a bus, one-handed, so the text is large and the menu is one tap" is a justification. That gap is the difference between describing a product and designing one. Programming and the project process are the other parts of this course.

Five words used precisely

The first two are the pair everything else hangs on, and they are routinely used as though they meant the same thing.

Two that are actually justified

Five design decisions written up by a student. Tap the TWO that are justified by the audience and the purpose rather than by preference.

• I used blue because it is my favourite colour and it looks professional
• I used large text because the audience is older adults who may be reading without their glasses
• I used an unusual handwriting font because it stands out
• I put the booking button on every screen because that is the one thing most visitors come to do
• I added an animation on the front page because the software can do it

The photograph that will not load

A student puts the sharpest, largest version of a photograph onto the front screen of a product that will mostly be used on phones over mobile data. Why is this a poor authoring decision?

• Because it will be slow to load in the situation the audience is actually in, and detail nobody can see on a small screen has been paid for in waiting time
• Because high-quality images always look worse on small screens
• Because a photograph is a dull choice for a front screen
• It is not a poor decision, since better quality is always preferable

Looking good, and working well

These overlap and they are not the same, and only one of them can be assessed. When they conflict, the right column wins every time.

Five audiences, five different consequences

How a design decision gets made

A student is designing a digital product properly rather than starting with the software. Put the stages in order.

• Write down what the product is for, in one sentence
• Describe who will use it, on what device, and in what situation
• List the two or three things they most need to be able to do
• Decide how the content is organised, so those things are quickest to reach
• Choose the assets that suit that structure and those conditions
• Give it to somebody from that audience and watch them try the tasks

What a strong justification looks like

Three habits separate a design write-up at the top of the range from one that describes what was made. Start every justification with somebody else. The audience, the purpose, or the situation, and then the decision that follows from it. A sentence that begins with what you chose and never mentions who it is for has not justified anything. Test by watching, not by asking. Handing the product to somebody and watching where they hesitate produces evidence. Asking whether they like it produces politeness, and politeness cannot be written up as a finding. ⭐ And design the accessibility in rather than adding it on. Enough contrast to read, text alternatives for images, captions for anything spoken, and never using colour alone to carry meaning. These cost nothing when they are part of the first design and are expensive to retrofit afterwards. A candidate who treats them as a paragraph at the end has misunderstood what they are for, and it shows.

Which kind of asset

For each job, decide what kind of asset suits it best. This is about choosing for a purpose, not about how the files work inside. Three lives.

The signs in the hospital corridor

Somebody is asked to redesign the signs in a hospital. They produce a set that is genuinely beautiful: a thin elegant typeface, soft grey on white, and the words set small so there is plenty of space around them. Everybody in the meeting admires them. Then they go up, and nobody can read them. The people following those signs are frightened, in a hurry, sometimes in pain, often without their glasses, sometimes pushing somebody in a chair and looking up from below. Thin grey type at a distance, glanced at while walking, is close to invisible. Nothing about the signs was badly made. The craft was excellent. What was missing was any thought about the state the reader would be in at the moment they needed to read it, and that was never going to show up in a meeting where everybody was sitting down and calm. ⭐ The version that worked was, by the standards of that meeting, uglier. Big, black, blunt, high contrast, and one instruction per sign. It is also the version that got people to the right ward.

What turns a description into a design

A student has written up their product by describing each screen and what is on it. Select every addition that would genuinely turn it into a design justification.

• Naming who each decision was made for, and in what situation they will be using it
• Saying what the alternative was and why it was rejected
• Reporting what happened when somebody from the audience actually tried it
• Describing each screen in more detail
• Listing the software features used to build it

Finish the design sentences

What a product exists to do is its _____, and without one stated there is nothing to evaluate it against. Who will use it, on what device and in what situation, is its _____, which is not the same as whoever asked for it. Every image, sound or clip placed into it is an _____, and each one is chosen against the conditions it will be seen in rather than for being the highest quality available. The part a person actually reads and touches is the user _____. Designing so that people can use it whatever they can see, hear or reach is _____, and it belongs in the first design rather than in a paragraph at the end. And the strongest evidence in any write-up comes from _____ somebody from the audience trying to do the task, rather than from asking them whether they liked it.

Build the justification

A student is justifying a design decision for a product aimed at people booking a community minibus. Assemble the sentence that would earn most.

One product, four decisions

A student is designing an information product for a community centre. Each stage sets out where they are and hands you the decision.

• They open the software first and start arranging a front screen they like the look of. Decide what should have happened first.
• The centre is used mostly by people over seventy, many on older phones. The student has designed pale grey text on white with a thin modern typeface. Decide.
• They have a short video with someone explaining the timetable. Decide what else it needs.
• Testing time. They have half an hour and one volunteer from the centre. Decide how to use it.

Justify a design

Imagine designing a digital product that helps people find out when a local service is open. Explain the design decisions you would make and why.

• State the purpose in one sentence, and describe the audience including their device and situation
• Name the two things they most need to be able to do
• Give TWO design decisions and justify each one from the audience rather than from taste
• Explain one asset choice, and why the highest-quality option might be the wrong one
• Name one accessibility decision and say who it reaches that the design would otherwise miss
• Finish by explaining how you would test it, and why watching beats asking