1. Multimedia Software Engineering An Introduction

2. Mutimedia
"multi" is from the Latin word multus which means "numerous“ and "media" is the plural of the Latin word medium which means "center“
Physics: A substance through which something is transmitted (e.g., sound is transmitted through the air)
Biology: The substance in which an organism lives (e.g., agar in a Petri dish)
Chemistry: A filtering substance (e.g., filter paper)

5. The Conventional Approach

6. What is Multimedia Software Engineering?

7. Not Of Interest: Detailed Design for Individual Media

8. Not Of Interest: Detailed Design for Individual Media

9. MULTIMEDIA SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE
Multimedia software development is similar to any other kind of software development
Is complex
Involves a large number of people
Takes a long time to develop
Has deadlines to meet
Has budget limitations
Has user requirements *

10. MULTIMEDIA SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE
Multimedia software have a life cycle
Media production
Involves producing graphics, audio, and video material
Has a media production timeline
Software production
Involves putting various components and media together
Has a development timeline *

11. MULTIMEDIA SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE*

12. Design Brainstorming Storyboarding Flowchart design Paper design
Prototyping
User testing *

13. Development
Media production
Programming
Debugging
Final debugging *

14. Multimedia software life cycle
Why apply software engineering principles and practice to multimedia application?
Think about your estimates per e-learning unit or chapter…
Many real world projects have cost overruns
Many projects fail altogether
Software engineering seeks to find ways to build systems that are on time and within budget *

15. Software engineering defined
Software engineering is “multi-person construction of multi-version software”
What is the relationship between the size of a program & the time it takes to develop it?
Real world software projects involve teams of developers
What’s the relationship between program size and the number of people involved?
Is it linear (N developers == N time speedup)?
Or is it exponential (N developers = NN speedup)?
How does multimedia affect the life cycle? *

16. Classic waterfall life cycle
Cascades from one stage to the next only after previous stage is complete
Gravity only allows the waterfall to go down; it’s very hard to swim upstream
Why would corporate manager types like this development model?
Is something like this more realistic? *

17. Rapid prototyping model
A prototype is a partially developed product that enables customers and developers to examine some aspect of a proposed system and decide if it is suitable for a finished product.
For a project, we developed a prototype user interface
Potential users and domain experts reviewed the prototype
Review panel summarized findings and made recommendations
We then developed an alpha version of the interface
Allow time for prototypes and improved versions
Multimedia authoring tools facilitate prototyping *

18. Multimedia and the life cycle
Lisa Lopuck’s timeline: What’s different?
Why brainstorming instead of analysis?
Why build in prototyping & user testing?
What’s different during development?
How might e-learning further change the life cycle? (See Driscoll’s ADDIE model.)
Another Another view of e-learning milestones *

19. Analysis (needs/requirements)
Lopuck calls this stage “brainstorming”: who, what, why, where, when & how?
Audience analysis: Who is it for?
Needs analysis: Why develop it?
Content analysis: What will it cover?
Resource analysis: How and how much?
Estimate: When will it get done?
Where: platform, marketing and distribution?
Use cases can help understand requirements *

20. Brainstorming Involves A group of 3 to 7 people Presenting all ideas
Design, programming, marketing
Presenting all ideas
Good or bad
No criticism or judgment
Free flow of ideas *

21. Example use case(from Fowler and Scott, UML Distilled)
Use Case: Buy a Product (A behavior that accomplishes a user goal)
Actors: Customer, System
Customer browsers through catalog and selects items to buy
Customer goes to check out
Customer fills in shipping information (address; next-day or 3-day)
System presents full pricing information, including shipping
Customer fills in credit card information
System authorizes purchase
System confirms sale immediately
System sends confirming to customer
Alternative: Authorization Failure (At what step might this happen?)
6a. At step 6, system fails to authorize credit purchase
Allow customer to re-enter credit card information and re-try
Alternative: Regular customer (At what step might this happen?)
3a. System displays current shipping information, pricing information,
and last four digits of credit card information
3b. Customer may accept or override these defaults
Return to primary scenario at step 6
Each user function (button or menu choice) can be modeled by a use case *

22. Design What’s the difference between analysis and design?
Storyboards: design content as sequence of scenes or screens
Scripts: design content in textual form
Flowcharts: show navigational structure
Why design in detail before programming?
User interface—why a paper prototype? *

23. Storyboarding Serves the purpose of illustrating a concept
Inspires people to think about possibilities
Doesn’t need to be fancy or accurate
Should show all the key screens or places
Places are a series of environments
Places are not static like single frame screen shots
Each key screen should have a brief description of
The scene
User interactions
Dynamics, such as sound *

24. Storyboards *

25. Storyboard Description
Template |
Multimedia Storyboard project: date: screen: ___ of ___ links from screens: links to screens: screen description: functionality/interactivity:
background: color schemes: text attributes: audio: video: stills: *

26. Flowchart
Flowcharts are used to design the structure and user interactions
Storyboard shows the initial picture
Flowchart links all the places
Organisation
Navigation
Flowchart complements storyboards *

27. *

28. Paper design Paper design is the blue print for a multimeida title
Paper design covers
Structural design
Software strategy
Media production requirements
User interface design *

29. Paper design Paper design consists of the following documents
Storyboards
Flowcharts
Indicating the architectural structure
General navigation through the title
Functional specification *

30. Functional specification
It is a walk through each scenario of the title
Frame by frame
Details the action on the screen
Illustrates how the user interacts with it
Describes the buttons
Names various media
Sound, video, animation, graphics
Describes the graphics in abstract terms
Concentrates on functionality *

31. Implementation
How is multimedia development different from systems programming?
Why is prototyping a good idea?
Programming uses authoring tools
Media development involves special tools for graphics, sound, video, etc.
User testing, user observations and focus groups *

32. Prototyping
Prototype allows seeing all the design ideas and solutions in action
do the storyboards and flowchart work
separates good and bad ideas
Gives real-world feedback
Allows making changes before development starts
There are different kinds of prototypes
Mock-ups
Partially developed *

33. Mock-up prototype Are developed using a friendly authoring tool
E.g. Macromedia Director
Not necessarily the one used for final development
Different tools perform differently
To show
User interaction
Graphic style
Are developed quickly
May eventually be thrown away *

34. Partially developed prototype
Small cross section of the title developed fully
Are developed using the intended authoring tool
The one used for final development
Allows checking if the authoring tool is suitable
Different tools perform differently
Some are better at handling animation
Some are better at database funtions
Can be used as part of the final product *

35. User testing It is an important part of design and development
Should happen throughout the lifecycle
Is particularly important for checking the prototype
Should involve a focus group
Group randomly selected ordinary users
Not the programmers themselves
Should be videotaped/recorded
Users’ interactions and reactions
May be intimidating for some users *

36. Development Development begins with media production
Production of sound, video, animation, graphics
Must happen to some extent before programming
Stand-in media may be used
Not the final media but something suitable
Takes time to create
Not used in the final title
Production of all the media has to be coordinated
Media production timeline needed *

37. Development Programming begins when there is enough media
Usually an authoring tool is used
Involves assembling all the media into a structure
As described in the paper design
A title is feature complete when all the places and actions are functioning
Followed by alpha, beta, and the golden master *

38. Development When a title is feature complete, it is considered I alpha
It is testing time
All the major features should be available
Quality assurance testers find all the bugs
Media production and programming continues
All the crashing bugs are fixed
Bugs that freeze up or crash the system *

39. Relative costs to fix errors: What can you infer from this graph?
Design
Testing
Maintenance
Requirements
Implementation
Cost to fix an error increases as it is found later and later in the software lifecycle *

40. Development
When there are no more crashing bugs the title enters the beta stage
Testing continues
There should only be minor bugs left to fix
Bugs are identified
Priorities
Fixed and fine-tuned
Final media production and programming is done *

41. Development
When there are only a few minute bugs left in the title golden master is cut
Master CD/DVD is created
CDs/DVDs are produced, packaged and distributed
Minute bugs are fixed for the next release *

42. Delivery and maintenance
CD-ROM/DVD/memory stick versus
Web delivery?
Corrective: fixing errors after delivery
Adaptive: new environments
Perfective: improving behavior or performance
Preventive: improving maintainability *

43. What is your ultimate goal?
Why should you plan for maintenance?
Would you like to see your project used?
How do you plan and develop for maintenance?
Do the analysis and design right
85% of the cost of real world bugs occur during analysis/design
Document as you go (not after-the-fact)
Use cases, scripts, well-commented code, delivery manual (with use cases as a starting point) *