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by William Robert Stanek
Blockbusters are not written; they are produced. Look at today's hit movies and TV shows. Behind the big scenes, you will find a producer and often a collaborative team. Electronic media are no exception. Behind the big titles, you will find a team-producers, editors, writers, programmers, musicians, and artists. All these people help to organize ideas into a finely polished work. They do this by collaborating-organizing their ideas into a common structure through planning, revision, polishing, and evaluation.
Even when creative works are the result of a single person's efforts, the finished product is still a result of planning, revision, polishing, and fretting over the organization of the work. This is true even for creative people who claim never to use outlines. The simple fact is, finely polished works do not spring to the writer's pen, the painter's canvas, or the musician's note sheets. The best works are the result of effective strategies for thinking, planning, and composing. Helping you manage the development of large-scale projects through effective strategies for thinking, planning, and composing is precisely what this chapter is all about.
In this chapter, you will learn the following:
Web publishing is a new medium for your creativity. Spending a few hours thinking about something that you may spend years, or certainly months, working on makes sense. Getting organized is extremely important, more so when you are working in a new medium. Not only will it save you time, it will help you create a better project. This is true regardless of whether you plan to adapt existing projects or create entirely new projects for your Web-publishing ventures.
Too often, the tendency in Web publishing is to produce an electronic version of the paper-based product. The result is a publication that does not work well and does not appeal to Web users. This is a major problem in Web publishing today. The Web is the ultimate form for Web publications. It is an open-ended multimedia system that will let you seamlessly integrate sound, video, pictures, and text. Most of the publications on the Web are organized like a book-complete with an index. The index is often the starting point for readers of the publication. Yet an electronic extension of a traditional book is not what consumers want.
On the Web, you have only a few minutes to convince readers to stay. If you do not, they are going to go somewhere else for their information as quickly and effortlessly as you can remotely change the channel on your television. Yet, the key to success in Web publishing is not to attract one-time visitors, but to attract repeat visitors to the publication. Publishers on the Web are discovering this the hard way.
The current trend in design on the Web is to create Web publications primarily for repeat visitors while providing a means for the first-time visitor to learn about the publication. Publishers who have adapted this strategy have seen dramatic results, and all because a few innovative thinkers took the time to organize their thoughts before they created publications in the traditional manner.
These innovative thinkers applied some of the processes you will learn in this chapter and came up with better ways to present information. You can apply these processes to any type of Web-publishing project. Creating Web publications can be either a continuous struggle or a logically flowing process. Take the time to organize your thoughts. Not only will the payoff be a better product, it will also mean time and resource savings.
Think of the creative process as a building process. Try to build the roof of the house before you lay the foundation and you are going to have serious problems. Pour the concrete for the foundation of the house before you put in the necessary plumbing for water and sewer access and you are going to spend more money than you bargained for.
You build a house one step at a time. You ensure the house has a strong foundation. Buildings with strong foundations tend to weather the seasons and time. When you are almost done with the frame of the house, you build a roof. Although the roof of the house is the top of the structure, you do not stop there. It takes more than a covered frame to make a house. You hire an electrician to do the wiring and bring back the plumber to finish the plumbing. Afterward, you hang plasterboard, add insulation, finish the exterior, add fixtures, and before you know it, you have a house that you can call home.
You build Web publications in the same way-one step at a time, following the activities covered in the previous section. Your start on the project is about as glamorous as the water and sewer pipes waiting for the foundation to be poured around them; just when you are ready to roll back your sleeves and dive into the project with both feet, you may discover you need to conduct research and planning or consider the requirements of the project.
When you finally flesh out the foundation of the project, you start to build the framework. The basic components of any Web publication are the pages that you link together. These pages help you create chapters, articles, and columns that can contain graphics, sound, and even full-motion video. Eventually, you finish composing the project but find you still have to develop its software aspects. Even when you have completed the composing and developing processes, the project still is not finished. You check the structure of the work for flaws. You make sure you have used the right mechanics and format. You examine the fixtures. After all this is done, you finally have a project worthy of publishing.
Try to build the house all at once and you will be overwhelmed. The same is true for any creative process. The way you organize your thoughts can make the difference between a successful project and a failed project. When you are building your Web publication, you need to manage many things-on both a level of general organization and a more specific level of Web-publishing aspects:
If you mismanage expectations, your project may not turn out as you planned. Your expectations and the expectations of your superiors may be totally different. Before you begin any project, make sure your expectations and the expectations of your supervisors mesh. A good way to do this is to ensure that the communications channels are open and used.
To ensure your project is a smashing success, you should discuss expectations from the beginning of the project. If you develop a rapid prototype of the project, your superiors should be the ones to verify that it meets their expectations. If the prototype does not meet their expectations, maybe the prototype was an example of what not to do for this project, or maybe the expectations were unrealistic. If your prototype meets or exceeds the expectations of your superiors, you have a green light and your project is well on its way to a successful implementation.
You should also manage your personal expectations for the project. Your expectations play a major role in the success of the project. The following is a list of do's and don'ts to help you manage expectations:
Realistic expectations ensure the success of your project. If you perceive the project as an impossibly large undertaking, you may cripple yourself mentally. If you perceive the project as a trivial undertaking, you will not produce your best work.
It is best to find a balance in your perceptions about the project. If you are working on an extremely large project, work on the project in manageable pieces. Do not try to combine the composition and development processes. Take them one at a time. Develop the textual part of the project a chapter, page, or word at a time-whatever it takes to pull you through the project.
As you begin to organize your project, keep in mind that Web publishing is very often a team effort. Few Web publishers will be able to handle all aspects of the publishing process on their own. For this reason, you should have an accurate perception of your abilities and know when it is in the best interest of the project to delegate tasks. For example, if the project requires extensive Java programming and you are not a Java programmer, you will want to consider adding a programmer to the team. Not only will delegating tasks to other team members help ensure the success of the project, it will also take responsibilities off your shoulders and help you avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Can you imagine writing 200,000 words and developing hundreds of examples to fill more than 600 pages in a little over three months? The thought of having to do this would overwhelm the best of writers. Yet this is exactly what I had to do to complete my share of the first edition of Web Publishing Unleashed. I managed the project by thinking of the work in terms that motivated me. It was not 199,000 words I had to write, it was 1,000 words completed. It was not 550 pages to go, it was 50 pages down. It was not 16 chapters left to write, it was one chapter completed.
Creating a new project is exciting and challenging. You'll be breaking new ground, trying new things, and experimenting with new material. How you think about the project will materially affect the outcome. Manage the project in whatever way will motivate you. If one way of thinking about the project is not motivating you, change tactics. Break up difficult sections of the project. Tackle them one piece at a time. Rotate from section to section, working on each piece a little at a time. Whatever it takes to get the job done.
As a Web publisher, you will often wear many hats. You may have the roles of the writer, graphic designer, composer, editor, and publisher. You may want to develop a strategy with these roles in mind. For example, if you are in the role of the writer and have been staring at a blank page for hours, you may want to change roles for a time. Why not create the preliminary artwork for a particular area of the publication? This will give you a chance to work on another area of the project, and you can return to writing at a later time with a fresh perspective.
Similarly, if you are working on a mundane but necessary part of the project (such as proofreading), think of a way to make the work more interesting or challenging. Bet yourself that you can proof portions of the project in a certain amount of time. And when you succeed, allow yourself a few moments of quiet celebration before you attack the project again.
Do not limit yourself to a few strategies or stick with one strategy when it is obviously not working. Make a list of strategies. If one strategy is not working, switch to a new one. If you do not have a new one, create a new one.
When you start working on a project, one of the first things you should do is develop goals. Goals are usually developed in the requirements phase. Your goals should take into consideration the complexities and nuances of the project. Goals should be clear and relevant to the problem at hand. You should set major goals relevant to the purpose, scope, and audience of the project. You should also set minor goals or milestones for the stages of the project.
Goals and milestones help you define the project as a series of steps, processes, or achievements. One major goal could be to complete the planning phase of the project. Another major goal could be to complete the design of the project. The series of steps or processes necessary to complete the major goals are the minor goals or milestones. Your first milestone will be to start work on the project. Another milestone may be to select and purchase an authoring tool, such as Microsoft FrontPage.
As publisher and project manager, you will probably create or be provided rules that pertain specifically to the project-all programming aspects of the project will be written in the C++ programming language, for example, or the Web publication will be written entirely in HTML 2.0. As you start the project, these rules may seem perfectly acceptable. However, as you conduct planning for the project, you may find that C++ isn't the best choice or that HTML 2.0 is too restrictive for your needs. If these early rules cannot be modified to fit the project, you will have problems. You may encounter delays due to loss of efficiency, or the final product may not be what was expected.
No rule should ever be considered absolute. Even the best of rules should be interpreted as guidelines that can vary depending on the situation. Rules for a project should be flexible and make sense. A rule that conflicts with something you are trying to do in the project should be reexamined. The rule may be inappropriate for the situation you are trying to apply it to.
A project will never get finished if you avoid working on it. Putting off work until something is due is a poor practice. Quitting when things do not go your way or when you seem to have a block is another poor practice. Even if you thrive on deadlines, plan to work on a project regularly-every day if necessary and possible. You should also plan to work on the project during those times when your thoughts are not flowing. Everyone has bad days and good days. Some days you take more breaks. Some days you work straight through the day and into the night.
You may tend toward other destructive behavior besides avoiding or putting off work. Sometimes publishers go to the opposite extreme. They tear things apart impulsively before letting the work cool off so they can look at it objectively. Never edit, revise, or proof material immediately after it is drafted or put in near-final form.
For example, you have just completed the implementation phase of the project. You have been working on the project 16 hours a day for three weeks. You tell yourself if you do some minor tweaking now the project will be finished. You start correcting minor problems and before you know it, you are changing the master storyboard because things do not seem to fit right, or you are cutting Chapter 18. At this point, an alarm should go off in your mind. Take a break for a day or two before going back to the project. You will be thankful you did.
| Note |
When working on a project, you should back it up regularly. I keep a master copy and at least one backup copy of all projects on floppy disk and on my hard drive. I also have my word processor set to make automatic saves of my work every five minutes. You will be thankful for backups if you delete material in the heat of the moment and later regret it. Disk space is cheap compared to your time and ideas. |
To improve your ideas, you must think in new ways. You must examine the ordinary through different eyes. You must look at the mundane in a new light. You must examine your ideas in fresh ways.
Tapping into your creativity is not a simple process. People have been trying to figure out how to tap into creativity throughout history. One of the great thinkers on the subject of creativity was Abraham Maslow, who discussed creativity in terms of primary and secondary creativity. Secondary creativity is a restrictive creativity-the creativity of adults that is based on the creativity of others. Primary creativity is an innocent or original creativity-the creativity of children, which is blocked off by most adults and a part of our subconscious thoughts. Maslow further said that creativity is not necessarily the trait of those who are geniuses or talented, meaning that the fact that someone is a genius or has certain talents does not mean he is also creative.
Maslow's theories on creativity are very important to help people improve ideas. They suggest that you probably could tap into your creative processes by reaching into your subconscious mind. They suggest you should try to think freely without the inhibitions placed upon you by society or age. They suggest you should look at your ideas through innocent or unjudging eyes. Many modern techniques for aiding the creative process come out of this school of thinking, such as the following:
| Note |
Although techniques to improve ideas are most often used at the beginning of projects, they can and should be used any time you want to try to improve your ideas. You may find these techniques especially useful at key stages in project development. For example, if you are considering which type of graphics or sound to include in the project, why not try brainstorming, freethinking, or storyboarding as a way of ensuring you make the best choices? |
One of the most used techniques for boosting creativity is brainstorming. Brainstorming was originally developed as a group problem-solving technique and is designed so that everyone in the group becomes involved in the problem-solving process. Participation, a necessary ingredient for problem-solving, is the key to the success of brainstorming.
To promote the creative process, members of a brainstorming group are given a strict set of rules governing their behavior. These rules are designed to break down the barriers to communication and ensure that all ideas-no matter how far-fetched-are examined. The rules also protect the egos of the group members and promote the need to be a productive member of the group.
The basic rules of brainstorming include the following:
One way to get a group brainstorming session going is to start with one person and work around the table or room to the other members. Each person should provide at least one answer or idea to the problem posed. Additionally, someone within the group should be recording the ideas. This allows you to build on ideas in the later stages of the brainstorming session. Following this technique, everyone in the group becomes involved in the problem-solving process.
Similar concepts can be applied to single-person efforts. Brainstorming can boost your creativity tremendously. If you brainstorm, you will tend to be less critical of your work. Eventually, you also will tend to naturally think of more than one approach to solving a problem.
For one-person brainstorming efforts, the following are good techniques to follow:
Freethinking is another effective technique to boost your creativity. When you freethink, you begin by telling yourself, "I will think something!" You think about a topic for a set period, recording your thoughts. Another term for freethinking is freewriting. The latter term tends to be more restrictive than necessary, because the form of your freethinking efforts does not have to be written.
When you freethink, you should record your thoughts in the way that makes you most comfortable-on paper, a tape recorder, or a computer. You should also select a period for freethinking you are comfortable with. Ten minutes may be right for some people. Others may prefer longer or shorter periods. After a freethinking session, you review what you recorded and note the ideas you liked.
Often, several freethinking sessions are necessary to get the best ideas. For most people, two or three successive freethinking sessions may be enough to help generate their best material. Others may wish to try a series of freethinking sessions over a period of several days. The key is to find the freethinking method that works best for you and use it.
Storyboards are a high-power approach to creative thinking. They are particularly useful for Web publications because of the way they help you structure ideas visually. When you storyboard, you represent each page of the presentation in miniature form on a planning sheet and create a mockup of the project.
The storyboard serves not only as an outline for the presentation, it also lets you visualize the project in a way you otherwise would not be able to. At a glance, you can see the publication from start to finish. This is extremely important in the way you conceptualize the project. The project is no longer a mysterious tangle of documents you have to string together. It has a logical order from beginning to end. Often, being able to see to the end of a complex project is 75 percent of the battle. Techniques used in storyboarding will be discussed in depth in later sections of this chapter.
Creating large Web publications or entire Web sites is ideally a team effort, with each member of the team working in an area of the publication in which they specialize. In the real world, things do not always turn out ideally. Very often, Web publishers must wear many hats. They must be the writer, artist, musician, graphic designer, programmer, editor, and publisher.
The tasks involved in each of these roles can be broken down into three broad categories:
The processes involved in creating original material can be broadly defined as composition processes. In the role of the writer, artist, or musician, the Web publisher creates new material or adapts existing material. This role for the publisher can be limited or extensive, depending on the needs of the publication. The publisher will generally create new material only as necessary. Even if the publisher works directly with writers, artists, or musicians or purchases existing material, at some point the publisher should evaluate the work within the scope of the composition processes.
Contrary to popular opinion, the creative process is not some mythical beast that you must hunt down. You may discover many ways to compose a work and many ways to get to the final product. This is true no matter the form of the creation, but generally, composition processes include seven activities:
Before discussing these activities, let's dispel some myths about the creative process. Just because there are seven activities does not mean you have to perform them all. You will use more of these activities when you are working in new mediums. When you are writing about a new subject area, you will tend to use more of the activities than if you were writing about a subject with which you were very familiar. If you are writing for an audience for whom you have never written, you may want to follow the seven steps of the composing process carefully. The same holds true when you are creating a new type of work, such as switching from fiction to nonfiction titles.
You can perform the activities in any order you choose, and you do not have to finish one activity before you start another. Sometimes you create an outline for the work. Sometimes you create the work first, pause to think about the structure, and then plan how to make the work better. Sometimes you tackle the work a section at a time, planning in spurts. Sometimes you are so familiar with your subject or the medium you are working in that planning is a natural part of your thought process.
Although planning is an important stage of the creative process, it is not the most important stage. This is contrary to the traditional school of thought that stressed planning and specifically advised writers to create an outline for everything they wrote. Whether you create an outline or do not create an outline is not going to materially influence the quality of your work. Research into the creative process has shown that what matters most is how you organize your thoughts and the work.
When you plan, choose the way in which you are going to organize the work. You do this by drawing on experiences or thinking of new ways to create and organize material. Planning also means thinking about the strategies you are going to use to create the work. It involves analyzing the purpose, scope, and audience for the work.
The purpose of the work is the reason you are creating the work or adding to the publication. Are you adding artwork to accent or clarify the story line? Are you adding music to heighten the mood?
The scope of the work defines what the work encompasses or the extent of the work. Scope can sometimes be defined in terms of focus and size. Is the work broadly or narrowly focused? Is the work large or small?
The audience is who you want the work to reach. Is the publication for children or adults? Have you identified a target audience, such as males 16-24, or is the work designed for a general audience?
You have probably seen Broderbund's Living Books line on CD-ROM. Popular in this line are the wonderful books by Mercer Mayer such as Just Grandma and Me, Just Me and My Dad, and Just For You. Although children are the audience for the books, Broderbund did not forget that adults would be the ones purchasing the CD-ROMs. For this reason, the purpose of the books is to provide educational entertainment to children. Given this purpose, the CD-ROM editions of the print books are much larger in scope and were programmed with features to entertain and educate children. A key part of this was to allow children to either interact with the publication or simply let the story be read to them.
Broderbund did not forget the potential for an international audience. Most Living Books enable you to select a language for the book to be read in, such as English, Japanese, or Spanish. This gives the CD-ROMs international appeal and provides another educational outlet. Children in Japan could listen to the English version of the CD-ROM to help them learn English. Children in the U.S. could listen to the Spanish version to help them learn Spanish.
Researching involves gathering all the information you need to complete the work. This may mean gathering information about eighteenth-century Europe from as many sources as you can to ensure your work has elements authentic from the period. Or it may mean driving to the ocean to photograph or videotape the seagulls and the spray of the waves, so you can later capture the moment in your work.
Composing is the act of putting your thoughts into a more permanent form. This means putting work on paper or using computer equipment to put work into an appropriate electronic form. The Web publisher will most likely put words into a word processor, transcribe musical notes into a music program, and record brush strokes using a paint program.
The work, as first put down on paper or recorded on a computer, does not have to be the finished product. More than likely, it will simply be a start on a larger work. For the writer, a start on a project could be a few words, a list of thoughts, a paragraph, or pages of writing.
Evaluating involves looking at the work objectively to see if it meets your goals. Ask yourself if the work is right for the purpose and audience for which you are creating it. Often, the best way to be objective about a work you have created is to look at the work as if someone else had created it.
If you find that you cannot be objective about your own work or aren't as objective as you would like, perhaps you need to distance yourself from the work. Take a day off or put on one of your other hats and work on a different part of the project for a few days. This will help you return to the evaluation fresh and ready to think objectively.
When you revise, you change the structure of the work by adding, deleting, or rearranging. Often you will revise after you have evaluated the work. Revisions can be cosmetic changes involving only a few minor areas of the work, but more often than not revision means major reworking to keep the work focused on the purpose, scope, and audience for which it is intended.
Whereas revision looks at the structure of the work, editing looks at the style, mechanics, and format of the work. For writing, this means making sure you have used proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You would check word choice and format. Great tools to help you through editing are spelling and grammar checkers. These tools might catch 75 percent of your mistakes, but the other 25 percent you will have to catch through careful reading.
During the editing stage, don't forget the nonwritten aspects of your Web publication. You should also edit these aspects as necessary. Do the opening graphics match the tone and style of the graphics you selected in later sections of the publication? Do the sound clips have sections where nothing is audible for a few seconds? Is the video sequence for the home page too long?
When you proof something, you are checking the final copy to ensure it is error-free. In traditional publishing, proofing has been a critical area of the composing process. Typos are costly mistakes to correct when material has already gone to press. In Web publishing, this may or may not be the case. Electronic mediums tend to be more liquid than traditional mediums. You can make changes very easily to Web publications.
You may be saying to yourself, "Wait a minute, I have seen typos in publications before". Although most publications have typos, they tend to make you look dumb. For this reason, you will want to correct as many typos as you can, given the time constraints of the project.
The processes involved in developing the software aspects of the Web publication can be broadly defined as development processes. In the role of the graphic designer and programmer, the publisher designs and develops the computer-software aspects of the Web publication. As you will see from examples throughout this book, the Web publisher should never have to resort to actual programming. There are many wonderful tools to aid the process of creating the computer-software aspects of the Web publication. You learned about Web publishing tools in Part III, "Web Publishing Environments and Editors."
The programming role of the publisher is more closely related to that of a software developer. The publisher is responsible for the look and interworkings of the publication. The publisher is responsible for selecting the appropriate Web publishing software and tools for her level of expertise and a software process model under which the project will be developed. Fortunately for Web publishers, the software process model of choice will normally be a rapid-prototype model or a modified rapid-prototype model. This is because toolsets exist to aid in the rapid creation of advanced Web-publishing projects and because these tools are of sufficient quality to warrant their use. This section explains what these prototype models involve.
A major strength of the rapid-prototype model is that you can develop the project in linear fashion. You proceed from the working model to the finished product. You can test the prototype in real-world situations or under the scrutiny of the boss. In doing so, you can ensure that what you are creating is what is actually needed. Applying this model to Web publishing projects will also save you time.
This model also works well when you are familiar with traditional approaches to project development and are concerned about using new technologies, such as ActiveX. By developing a rapid prototype, you give yourself the chance to test the new technologies. Before making any further investments, you try out the tools to find out if they meet your needs. This will help you manage the risk of introducing a new technology, while enabling you to assess new techniques.
Although a true rapid-prototype model would include slightly different stages, a modified rapid-prototype model for Web publishing could include six stages:
As you read about each of these phases, it is important to remember that the duration of each phase should be relevant to the size and complexity of the publishing project. The initial project you create using this or any other model will require more time. For a small project or for subsequent projects, you probably could perform all the phases through the design phase in a single eight-hour day.
The implementation phase for electronic projects tends to be the longest phase. Learning about the Web publishing tools you have chosen will probably take up most of your time in your initial project, so the implementation phase may seem excessively long. It is important to remember that each subsequent time you use the tools should be easier than the last. The good news is that Web publishing tools tend to be very user-friendly.
The wonderful thing about Web publishing is that if you take the time to design a good product, you can reuse some of the same specifications and designs in subsequent projects. This will give your company's Web sites and publications a uniform look, and as an added bonus, the payoff in time savings will be substantial.
Finally, remember the rapid-prototype model as a linear part of your project's development life cycle. Unlike the composing processes, each phase of the development process should be conducted in order.
In the requirements phase, you try to figure out what your needs are. You do this by first examining the purpose, scope, and audience of the project. Afterward, you examine your reasonable expectations for the project. You translate these needs, goals, and purposes into requirements for the project. Whereas the section on techniques to finish the project provides a sample schedule that lists goals and milestones, the basic needs for any Web publication include the tools the publisher will need to complete the project:
You will want to think beyond your basic tool needs. You should also consider time, budget, and personnel constraints. If you have only 10 weeks to complete the project, you may need to hire additional team members to get the project finished on time. In this case, hiring a specific number of additional team members would be one of your requirements. If you have a $2,500 budget, you will have to scrutinize every aspect of the budget to keep costs down. In this case, you will probably be extremely selective about the tools you purchase. You will also hire outside help only as necessary. And if the budget constraints are so severe that they would materially affect the success of the project, you will want to ensure your superiors are aware of the situation and possibly make a case for getting a larger budget.
In the rapid-prototype stage, you roll back your sleeves and dive right into the project. Using the requirements for the project, you create a working model of the publication as quickly as possible. The prototype is far from a completed project. Its structure is rather skeletal, in that not all the pieces work together, but limited interaction with the model is possible. You use this model to figure out your real needs and to find out whether you have selected the right tools to carry you through to the completion of the job.
The traditional school of thought on the rapid-prototype model is that when you are done with this phase, you should discard the rapid prototype. If you do not discard the prototype, you may find yourself wasting time trying to continually build and fix the prototype. The purpose of creating the rapid prototype is to help you figure out real needs and save you time. Clinging to the prototype generally defeats the purpose of creating the prototype in the first place.
Your superiors must understand what this phase is all about. All too often, the prototype is mistaken for a start on the final product when, in fact, it is not. You should manage expectations by ensuring that your superiors understand this phase from day one and recommunicating information about the purpose of the prototype periodically throughout the project.
This said, in certain Web publishing cases you may want to keep parts of the prototype. You may want to reuse or refine for the finished product any creative work (such as graphic icons, art, or sounds) you developed for the rapid prototype. You also may want to keep portions of the interface you created with publishing tools.
After you develop and verify the prototype, you go on to specify the complete interworkings of the publication. You could do this in a traditional manner, through specification diagrams such as data flow diagrams, state transition diagrams, or petri nets. But these types of diagrams are not really necessary unless you are writing actual programming code for the project. A good way to show how your publication will be linked is by developing a storyboard that graphically shows what the pieces of the project are and how they are linked together. Storyboards are discussed in depth later in this chapter.
After you verify the specification documents, you should plan the project. Using all the materials you have developed so far for the project, you determine how long the project is going to take and the steps necessary to carry you through the project. For this reason, the planning phase can also be a reality check for project constraints or requirements.
Suppose that after you plan each step of the project you discover that it will take a minimum of six months to complete the project, yet the deadline for project completion given to you by management is three months away. Here, something would have to give, and you would have to work hard to manage perceptions and expectations concerning the project. You may have to renegotiate the deadline, hire additional team members, or eliminate certain time-intensive parts of the project.
The more complex the project, the more involved your planning will be. The plans for a small project could be very basic-a list of steps with deadlines for completion of each step written down on a single piece of paper. The plans for a large project could be rendered in detail on a project-management tool such as Microsoft Project.
Most projects have windows for project steps, such as eight days for planning or three weeks for preliminary design. There could be hundreds of project steps, with multiple steps being performed simultaneously, or a handful of steps, with each step being performed one after the other. Some steps would be dependent on other steps, meaning they could not be started until certain other aspects of the project were completed. Other steps would not be dependent on any other steps and could be performed at any time during the project's development.
After verifying your planning, you go on to the design phase. The design phase is one of the most critical phases of a Web publishing project. During this phase you take the specification documents to another level of detail. You develop the look of the project. You design the layout for the publication and individual pages. By developing a master storyboard for the component parts of the publication, you can make the design phase easier and less time-consuming.
The master storyboard concept is a highly effective way to design. Instead of creating hundreds of individual storyboards, you create templates for the major divisions of the publishing project. These templates form the basis for the individual storyboards. In this way, you have to make only minor adjustments to the individual storyboards and you get a uniform look throughout major sections of the publication.
After you verify the designs you have created for the publication, you go on to the implementation phase. This tends to be the longest phase in Web publishing projects, because you actually create the Web publication using the specification and designs you have created. You also integrate the creative materials from the composing processes in this stage.
The processes involved in producing the finished product can be broadly defined as publishing processes. In the role of the editor and publisher, the Web publisher fine-tunes the publication to give it mass appeal. The publisher must take a hard look at the project with the eyes of an editor, and then take the project through the final five activities:
These activities are similar to the associated activities performed in the composition process, the primary difference being the publisher's role. The publisher is no longer the creator of the work or a collaborator of the work. He or she should review the publishing project with as much objectivity as possible.
During the revision phase, the publisher is looking for major flaws in the project. The focus of revision is on structure. The publisher will reanalyze the individual parts of the project to ensure the work is focused and consistent throughout. To do this, the publisher might also have to reevaluate the purpose, scope, and audience for the project. Did the project turn out as intended? Is the project larger or more commercially viable than the original concept? Is the project still targeted toward the same audience?
When you revise the publication, you should scrutinize all its parts from start to finish. The soundness of a Web page's structure is extremely important. You should test all links in the storyboard structure to ensure they work as you expect them to.
The depth of the revision often depends on your familiarity with the subject and type of publication. If this is your first project or you are publishing a new type of document, you will want to use a very thorough revision process. A good technique to follow when doing a very thorough revision is the rule of three. Under the rule of three, you follow all aspects of the publication from start to finish three times. Each time you revise, you are looking for different structure problems.
The first time through the process, you check for clarity and content. Is everything in the publication clear and placed onscreen in a clear manner? Does the content of each individual part fit in with the publication as a whole? The first revision is the closest inspection of the publication during the revision process.
The second time, you look at the organization and layout of the publication. Is the publication organized in the best way possible? Is the layout of the document the best possible? Is there too much information? Does the screen look cluttered? Is the linking of the pages right? Are the navigation mechanisms easy to use?
The third time, you analyze the publication to see if the overall message meets the proposed purpose and audience. Look at the big picture and ask yourself if the publication is right for the purpose for which it is intended. Is the reading level and style of the publication appropriate for the audience for which it is intended?
Editing should logically follow revision. There is no point in looking for mechanics and format problems in parts of the publication that might not be in the revised publication. Keeping this rule in mind when you start the publishing process will ultimately save you time.
Back in the editing mode, the publisher looks at the mechanics and format of the work. This is the point when the publisher should refer to a style manual to ensure punctuation, capitalization, and compounding of words are correct. Other good tools for the publisher at this point include grammar reference aids, bad-speller dictionaries, and other types of dictionaries or reference materials to confirm facts.
In a publication such as a Web-published novel, the tendency is to look at chapter text and not the text of titles and headings. Look at all text, no matter where it appears in the publication. If graphics or video contains text, you should scrutinize this text as well. There should be smooth transitions between sections and topics. The capitalization in headings should be consistent throughout the publication.
For the textual portions of the publication, you should look at
At this stage, the publisher proofs the entire project, down to the most minor detail. The most common type of error you will be looking for is the typographical error. Typos may not be as costly in Web publishing, but they will cost you more time and money to fix after a project has been published.
The proofing stage differs from the revision stage and the editing stage in its scope. In revision, you are looking for major problems in structure. In editing, you are looking for problems in mechanics and format. In proofing, you are looking through a magnifying glass for minor problems. Although these three processes can be performed in any order, they work best when done in the preceding order. In this way, you are first looking at the big picture, then you gradually zoom in. Otherwise, you will spend too much time worrying needlessly about minor details before you look at the major problems.
When proofing, you are checking the final copy to ensure it is as error-free as possible. You should recognize that, given your time and budget constraints, you may have to compromise accuracy for timeliness. You should also recognize that there is a definite point of diminishing returns and finding 100 percent of the errors is costly and often not practical. For this reason, most publications contain typos and other types of minor errors. Therefore, the key to proofing is to reduce these errors and not to try to eliminate them.
When the project is in its final form, the publisher may want to publish the publication or site for users within the office to examine. Testing is not an absolute necessity. Whether you test the project will really depend on your publishing operation. If this is your first large-scale project, you may want to conduct extensive testing. You might also want to conduct extensive testing if you are publishing a new type of site, such as a VRML site that uses ActiveX and VRMLScript, for the first time.
Now that you have finally finished your showcase site or publication, you are ready to publish it on the company's intranet or on the World Wide Web. Move your pages, programs, sound, and video to the appropriate directories on the intranet or Web server. Congratulations!
Ideally, during the publication process you would follow the composing processes for the project first. When you finished, you would start the development phases. Finally, you would start the publishing processes. Although this is the ideal situation, life is never ideal. Often, you will want to combine elements from each of the three categories and work on them simultaneously. This is fine.
You can conduct the composition process while you are developing the software aspects of the publication. This will work especially well when you are adapting existing material. It will also work well when you, as the publisher, are collaborating with writers, musicians, or artists to create a project.
The publishing processes are more difficult to integrate into the ongoing creation and development of the project. However, you could create or develop pieces of the project, and then examine those pieces from the viewpoint of the objective publisher. Exercise caution when trying to perform all three processes at once. The tendency is to gloss over the actual publishing process and not scrutinize the project as closely or objectively as you otherwise would have.
Before you can organize a project, you must start it. Getting the project started is often the hardest thing to do. If you get the project started, the odds are you will probably finish it. The key to starting and finishing the project is to develop good habits for working on the project immediately. Creative people often find themselves at a loss for one of two reasons. They either prefer to avoid work until a deadline is hanging over their head, or they think of reasons why they cannot work.
Human tendency is to put off work until it absolutely has to be done or to think of excuses why the project cannot be started. Procrastination is a mindset that you can overcome through positive thinking and good habits. If you find that you work on the publishing project only when absolutely necessary to meet a deadline, or if you keep promising to start the project but do not, try the ideas in this section.
Give yourself a publishing schedule. The schedule should contain milestones, goals, and an allocation of time. Use the schedule as a flexible and realistic guideline to help you through to project completion. The purpose of the schedule is to help you start thinking about the project and to formalize the steps it will take you to complete the project. You should also use the schedule to help you set regular times to work on the project.
Milestones are generally smaller in scope than goals. A single week could contain many milestones:
Week 1
Week 2
Goals are larger in scope than milestones. Goals for a typical project could be to complete activities or phases in the composition, development, or publishing process. Goals are generally of long duration. You would probably only have one goal per week during the project, such as the following:
More realistically, the duration of milestones and goals will depend on the time you allocate to the project. The milestones and goals from the previous examples could be rewritten to include the time you dedicate to the project each week and the duration of a task. Although it would be ideal to be able to work full-time on a single project, even full-time publishers often don't have that luxury. Usually they are juggling several projects and can dedicate only a few hours a week to any specific project. If you are working part-time on the project, one of your first goals may be broken down as follows:
Goal: Preliminary work on project. Duration: 2 weeks.
Week 1: 10 hours
Week 2: 20 hours
There is no harm in building extra time into the schedule to ensure you meet goals. The preceding schedule contains one hour of slack time in the first week and two hours of slack time in the second week. By building slack time into the schedule, you help ensure the project can stay on track, even if there are unexpected delays. Experienced project managers try to build in slack time whenever possible and practical. When you meet a goal, why not celebrate? Take a few hours off, go see the movie you have been wanting to see.
The way in which you organize a publication depends largely on who will be using the publication. The success of your publication relies on determining the audience for the publication and adapting the message to the audience. You will certainly organize the publication one way for adults and a different way for children. However, the audience for your publication is usually not in such simple terms. The problem of determining the audience is further complicated because most publications have more than one audience. Nevertheless, correctly determining the target audience can have huge payoffs.
The target audience could be specific (for example, males 16-24) or general (young adults). More often, a publication will have primary audiences and secondary audiences. The primary audience is the group of people for whom the publication is created. The focus and thrust of the publication should be directed toward the primary audience.
The secondary audience is the group of people who will read the publication incidental to its purpose. The secondary audience could include reviewers (people whose job it is to review Web publications), consumer-interest groups (people whose job it is to promote the interests of consumers), or anyone else who might read the publication to determine its quality or to review its content. The secondary audience could also include parents if the publication is directed toward children. Parents may be the ones assessing the moral content of the Web publication before allowing their children to access it.
Often, the primary audience for a publication seems straightforward but is not. Comic books are a good example of this. The reading level of the average comic book is at a sixth-grade level. The look of comic books-with their graphically depicted pows, bangs, and booms-seems to be directed entirely toward children. You may be surprised to learn that, for many comic books, the largest percentage of readers is adults. Look at the price tag on comic books today and the phenomenal popularity of comic books with adult themes. What would have happened to comic books if the companies producing them had not realized that a large portion of their readers is adult?
You can figure out the audience for your publication by the following means:
One of the best tools to analyze the audience for a product is common sense. Realize that the audience probably will not have the same wants, needs, and desires as you. A Web publication may or may not have the same audience as its traditional print counterpart. Try to put yourself in the position of consumers who will view your publication or Web site. Use what you know about people and what you know about the subject of your publication to predict likely responses to questions such as the following:
Each of these questions should be answered with the publication's audience in mind. For example, the last question pertains to the complexity of the publication. Publications for adults tend to be more complex and serious. Publications for children tend to be less complex and include more entertainment features.
One of the best ways to determine your audience is to use statistics. Sometimes you can simply ask consumers which type of Web site stops them dead in their tracks. You could do this through a carefully designed survey. Other times, you might want to use existing statistics, such as demographic information, to determine the audience.
Surveys are often an inexpensive way to learn public opinion. Surveys could be provided with product samples passed out at the local shopping mall or given to your associates. Surveys are useful because they can be filled out by many people at the same time. A properly designed survey will be easy to answer and not time-consuming. This way, more people will fill it out.
Demographic information can also provide useful statistics. Demographic information includes age, sex, race, education level, income, and more. This data was probably gathered through surveys and made publicly available. Not all the demographic information available will be relevant to your needs, but some of the data will be extremely important. For instance, if the demographic information reveals that most of the consumers interested in your type of product are females age 40-45 or males over the age of 55, you would certainly adapt the message of your audience differently than if the information reveals the ages are 20-25 for females or 16-22 for males.
Evaluating trends could also help you determine an audience for your product. To do this, you will have to know something about the market for your product. You could begin by looking at similar products from other companies and asking yourself the following:
In a new marketplace, trends often shift as companies try to figure out the audience for their products. You may want to look at what other companies are doing when you begin work on the project and again during the project. This way you can judge if the trend is more stable than fluid or more fluid than stable.
Developing storyboards for your publication is a critical part of the design process. Storyboards help ensure that the publication is well-designed and that all the pieces of the project fit together. A storyboard can help you reduce complexity by structuring ideas in a less complicated manner.
When you storyboard, you represent each page of the presentation in miniature form on a planning sheet. This enables you to visualize the publication from start to finish. Being able to see the component parts of the entire project makes the project more manageable and less mysterious. You do not have to wonder what is beyond the next page because, when you use the storyboards, you will know what is beyond the next page.
You can represent a single project storyboard as a rectangle. The shape of an individual storyboard makes the storyboard look like little pieces of paper. The storyboard could represent a single page of the publication or a group of pages, like a chapter. Without information in the storyboards, the mockup of the project you create would have little meaning. Although later examples in this chapter will detail how you add information to storyboards, such as chapter headings or titles, the basic idea is to create a template or outline for pages or sections of the publication.
You can extend the idea of storyboards by using lines and arrows to show how the publication is linked. An arrow can show the flow of the publication from one page to the next. Arrows depict how the component parts of the publication link together. By examining the links, you can see the logical structure of the publication and the level of interaction readers will have with the publication. A sample storyboard is shown in Figure 42.1.
Figure 42.1 : Creating a storyboard.
After you have developed the storyboard for your publication, you can immediately find flaws in the design. Finding flaws early in the development of the project will save you time and resources. Having to rebuild the links on a complex project midway through the project could mean disaster. Often, you start a snowball effect. You change one link, and then discover you have to change an associated link. You change the associated link to make sure it leads to the correct page, and then find other links you have to change. Before you know it, you are reworking all the links in the project. At this point, the process may be so involved you will elect to start over rather than try to rework the links.
There are three phases in the storyboard-design process:
Each phase is progressively more detailed. When you are developing the structure of the project, you are looking at the project-overview level. While keeping in mind that a single storyboard could represent any number of similar pages, you identify the number of storyboards for the project and the logical flow between them. When you are developing the content, you look very closely at the individual parts of the project. You develop the outline for individual storyboards or storyboard templates. When you examine the logic of the project, you scrutinize every detail. You closely examine each storyboard and all links to ensure the project design and flow are correct.
Whether you perform each of the three phases will depend on the size and complexity of the project and your familiarity with the type of project you are publishing. However, each phase that you do perform should be performed in sequence. Even a small project of, say, five to ten storyboards can benefit from the structural development phase. This way, you can easily see
Although these phases should be performed in order, the important thing to remember is that the duration of each phase should be relevant to the size and complexity of the project. The initial project you create using this or any other model will require more time than subsequent projects. For a small project or for subsequent projects, you probably could create the entire storyboard process in two hours or less.
If you take the time to design a good storyboard, you may be able to reuse some of the same design concepts in subsequent projects. This way, your publications will have a uniform structure. An added bonus to using reliable design techniques is substantial time savings and a reduction in the amount of resources you will need to complete the project.
Developing the structure of the project is the first phase in storyboarding. You can organize storyboards in many ways. The structure that is best for your publication depends on the complexity of the project. As complexity increases, you manage it by adopting a more advanced structuring method. Specific design models include
For a small project or a project with limited complexity, a simple structure is often best. Simple structures include linear and linear with alternative paths. The simplest way to structure a publication is in a linear fashion. Using a pure linear structure, you can create a publication with a structure resembling a traditional print publication. Readers move forward and backward in sequence through the pages of the publication.
An alternative path structure gives readers more options or paths through the document. By providing alternative paths, you make the structure of the publication more flexible. Instead of being able to move only forward and backward through the publication, readers can follow a branch from the main path. In a linear structure, the branches will rejoin the main path at some point.
The hierarchical structure is the most logical structure for a project of moderate complexity. In this structure, you organize the publication into a directory tree. Readers can move from one level of the publication to the next, more detailed, level. They can also go up the tree from the detailed level to a higher level and possibly jump to the top level.
The directory tree closely resembles the way you store files on your hard drive, in a main directory with subdirectories leading to files. You could also think of the hierarchy as a representation of an actual tree. If you invert the tree, the trunk of the tree would be the top level of the publication. The trunk could be the overview of the publication. The large boughs leading from the trunk would be the next level of the document structure. The boughs could be the chapter-overview pages. Branches leading from the boughs would be the next level. They could be pages within chapters.
The combined linear and hierarchical structure is one of the most-used forms for Web publications. This is because it is an extremely flexible, but still highly structured, method. Readers can move forward and backward through individual pages. They can navigate through the various levels of the publication by moving up a level or descending to the next level. They can also follow parallel paths through the document.
The most complex structuring method is the integrated web. This method lets the reader follow multiple paths from many options. This is a good method to use when you want the reader to be able to browse or wander many times through the publication you have created. Each time through the publication, readers will probably discover something new.
| Tip |
Something you should keep in mind, no matter the organizational style of the publication, is to include a link to the home page of the publication. This feature is included in most Web publications because it provides a way for readers to get back to beginning at any time. Another key page to provide a link to is the table of contents page. |
| Tip |
Just as the storyboard method can help you visualize the project, it could also help the reader. For a very complex site, you may want to provide a graphical depiction of how the document is organized on a help page. This help page would be a site map that clarifies the layout and navigation mechanisms you have used for the site. |
Now that you have developed the structure of the storyboards, you will want to look closer at the individual parts of the project. Developing the content of the storyboards will help you do this. The depth of the content development really depends on the size and complexity of the project.
A traditional way to develop a small project is to develop all content aspects of the storyboard, from the placement of graphics and menu buttons to the placement of text. Similarly, the traditional development method for a large storyboard is to outline each individual storyboard and then progressively work toward more detail as necessary. A better method is to use storyboard templates or master storyboards whenever possible and develop individual storyboards only as necessary.
Master storyboards are a highly effective way to design. They make the design process considerably less complex and will save you countless hours of work. Instead of creating hundreds of individual storyboards, you create templates for the major divisions of the publishing project. These templates form the basis for the individual storyboards. In this way, you have to make only minor adjustments to the individual storyboards, and you ensure the look of the publication is consistent throughout.
The main idea behind master storyboards is that you identify repetitious or non-unique features of the publication and let a single master storyboard represent pages with similar features. You do this by looking at the publication in progressive levels of detail. Most publications will have the following:
Start by thinking about the publication as a whole. Are there component parts of the publication that will or should be uniform throughout? The answer is usually yes; the top of the page may contain a header, consistent throughout the publication, and the bottom of the page may contain a similarly consistent footer.
Next, examine the sections of the publication. Multiple sections of the publication will usually have common parts. In a Web-published novel, for example, all chapter pages will probably have the same menu options, such as
The last step is to examine individual sections of the publication for common material. Pages of an index will contain different features or organization from pages of a chapter, but all pages within a chapter or within an index should have similar elements.
After you have examined all aspects of the publication for common parts, you develop the master storyboards. You may have multiple levels of master storyboards, including the following:
You may have only one or many master storyboards. The number of master storyboards you have really depends on the size and complexity of your project.
In the design stage, you will rarely develop individual storyboards. This is especially true if you take the time to develop master storyboards. Whether you develop individual storyboards depends on the needs of the project. For a small project, you may want to develop all the storyboards, so you get a precise overview of the publication. For a large project, you may make only simple additions to the individual storyboards, such as adding the titles or headings for associated text.
Sometimes it is essential to develop the content for unique storyboards within the publication to see how they will fit in with the publication as a whole. You develop these storyboards because through them, you can get a better understanding of the publication. The following are examples of unique storyboards:
In the last phase of storyboarding, you evaluate the logic of the storyboard. This process is similar to the editing, revision, and proofing activities of the publishing process. You examine the links between storyboards. You ensure the publication has a logically flowing structure and that all storyboards are properly linked together. Then you examine the outlines the storyboards contain. Here, you are primarily making sure the key elements are placed on the storyboard in the most logical manner.
The storyboarding process is meant to save time, resources, and frustration. Do not spend too much time worrying needlessly about minor details. In this phase, look only for major problems in logic.
The best Web publications are the result of effective strategies for thinking, planning, and composing. Helping you create the best Web publications using effective strategies is what this chapter was all about. Those strategies include the following:
