10b & 8c
Final design concept evaluation
The product has a clear purpose and a wide audience. The design must bear these two key factors in mind. Therefore I will reiterate them both and indicate how they will be addressed.
Purpose
The church's main purpose and the website's main purpose are exactly the same. This is to share the good news of Jesus Christ with all. For the website to achieve this, audio, articles and details of upcoming events will all be integrated into the site. The front page will have the following invitation: “Come and worship Jesus Christ with us.”
Audience
It is likely that the website will be used mainly by church members as a resource. As well as church members, people from the local area are primary targets. The website must appeal to people of all nationalites. Therefore, I have purposefully chosen to capture images of members of the regular congregation whose roots come from Africa and Asia. I have also decided to have include a JavaScript which randomly selects verses from the Bible in different languages and then injects them into the front page.
How will the multimedia elements be integrated?
One of the key functional requirements contained within the specification was that the product must be “easy to use and accessible” as well as “engaging.” Usability and accessibility are controvertial topics on the web at the moment. Use of third-party add-ons such as Adobe Flash and similiar formats has its opponents and advocates. For example, there are those who abhor the use of Flash on the web. They claim it to be “superfluous” and “irritating.” I am of the opinion that they do have a point, but that their position is an overreaction.
If say, I created the entire multimedia product in Flash and I only used HTML to present it on the web, how could any search engine find any meaning within a HTML document that just contained a .swf file? Or, how could a visually impaired or blind user of the internet interact with the product if the screen reader they use cannot access the text found in the Flash file? The whole concept of the semantic web is thrown on the rubbish pile.
On the otherhand, if I just coded up text neatly, with clear meaning in other words: “semantically stunning” with a few images thrown in for good measure, the average user would almost certainly cry: “Boring!” How can we reconcile accessibility with exciting?
The best of both worlds...
To flash or not to flash; that is not the question. Notice the emphasis on NOT. I am of the persuasion that the appropriate use of Flash elements can be justified in the current context. However too much Flash would inhibit some of our most needy users. I have therefore decided to create a Flash slideshow containing the invitation: "Come and worship Jesus Christ with us".
I have already done some research into this and discovered that XML can be used very effectively. This use of animation will be very easy to adjust and update.
The image above shows me working Flash Professional 8. I believe I have made full and efficient use of the software by making a .swf which links two certain areas within it to two seperate XML files. One of the XML files looks something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<gallery>
<album title="splash" description="index" lgPath="../gallery/">
<img src="hwec.jpg" />
<img src="worship.jpg" />
<img src="christ.jpg" />
<img src="with-us.jpg" />
</album>
</gallery>
The swf then reads the files, finds the link to the each file and sticks them on a timeline.
This swf file will then be injected into the front page using JavaScript so to ensure that the entire website conforms to W3C recommendations - in other words, valid XHTML.
Audio? Yes please!
The website wouldn't truly be a “engaging multimedia experience” without having audio or video content. Sadly, at the moment, I do not have the facilities to create meaningful and relevant video content. However, sermon audio is available to us by the bucket load and getting this online is another important part of the proposal and the website specification.
So, I have chosen to use my Creative Labs X-Fi sound card and I/0 interface (shown right) to convert the weekly tape supply into MP3 format.
In the functional specification I did discuss supplying an alternative media format: Ogg Vorbis. This is completely open-source and available on all operating systems. However, MP3, although not open-source, is widely available on most operating systems so, together with the stakeholders, I decided just to supply MP3 versions of the software in the product.
Editing the sermon audio so to improve the quality and to remove background sound will be done using the software supplied with the card because it is of such high quality and makes full use of the sound card's processor. Evidence of this is also shown right.
Conclusion
Creating an attractive, accessible and engaging multimedia product is more challenging than I thought it would be. Integrating the sound, engaging animation and relevant content all together in the accessible way required by the functional specification has proven to be fairly complex.
There's definately more than meets the eye in multimedia software development.
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