User Documentation in Multimedia
In Project 2, you learned about new communication technologies and their impact and potential uses in technical writing and the workplace. You also worked hard to make sure that your writing was balanced and thorough, without over-stressing a sales pitch or argument, which is the nature of a (good) white paper. For many of you, the courses you have taken at Purdue have prepared you for a general career in business or technology. Out in the workplace, you may have to learn new technologies and methods--like new communication technologies or products that help the company communicate with clients somehow. For example, you might be hired by the automotive industry in Detroit or a major winery in California. It is once you get into your careers that you will learn the particulars of the products and services the companies you work for provide. Given the position of a technical writer, it is also likely that you would be responsible for instructing others on how to use these products or methods.
Similarly, marketing firms create advertising campaigns and various marketing materials for a wide variety of business types and organizations. They must first study the product or services and understand the target audience for those products and services in order
to create marketing strategies and documents.
In all professional settings, there are many opportunities for teaching peers about new products, changes, systems, workflows, and so on. On the creative side, people often have to pitch their ideas to a superior, in what is often a high-stakes situation. You will often need the input of others when composing this kind of content, as you will in this project.
In this project, you will work in teams to build on your white paper projects to create a viewable presentation on the topic, created in an application like PowerPoint (MS Office), Keynote (Mac), or Impress (OpenOffice) or as a Flash video, interactive website, or voice over screenshot film like the one viewed in class. Other types of media will be considered and must receive instructor permission. Each group will present a tutorial on some aspect of these very similar communication technologies. The calendar provides a variety of resources and examples to help you complete the project. Your specific topic should be the best of the applications that you researched in your white paper project. Each group will be responsible for choosing the one that is best suited to the task at hand. Rely on your research in making this decision, but don't forget to take into account your own instincts about the product. In other words, your primary research on ease of use and effectiveness should be considered here.
Audience
The target audience for this project is fellow technical writers as well as groups of people within an organization (business, nonprofit, or other professional group) that is looking for new ways to improve or enhance communication technologies.
Evaluation
The final presentation will be evaluated for its rhetorical effectiveness as a whole for the target audience, the quality of design, and the accuracy and currency of the information presented. Since design is a factor in grading, you should develop your own design instead of merely plugging content into a pre-existing template. However, you might want to study various presentation formats or templates to generate ideas for building your own version. In addition, you will be evaluated for how well you satisfy the user's needs.
Project Goals
This project emphasizes several important goals that all professional writers should bear in mind and that are consistent with those of the Professional Writing Program at Purdue.
Writing in Context
- Analyze the invention, manufacture, and distribution of
technologies in context and use writing to communicate these attributes
in a variety of media and genres. - Write for specialized audiences to foster technical understanding.
Writing Process
Develop and understand various strategies for planning, researching, drafting, revising, and editing documents that respond effectively and ethically to professional situations and audiences.
Collaboration
Apply strategies for working successfully within writing teams, including
- defining and articulating specific talents and expertise
- responding to the needs and interests of internal and external stakeholders
- managing short- and long-term projects
Research
Understand and use the research methods and strategies necessary to the production of professional documents, including
- assessments of multiple forms of media and technologies
- the evaluation of tools (such as software) to determine applicability and effectiveness
Technology
Develop strategies for using and adapting various communication technologies to manage projects and produce informative and usable professional documents.
Document Design
Produce documents appropriate for particular rhetorical contexts by
- learning the generic conventions of your chosen mode of presentation.
- interpreting and arguing with visual information
Deliverables
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Project Proposal
During the first stage of the project, each group will create a mock questionnaire for a hypothetical client. You may want to find someone outside your group to answer these questions. Then, based on the questionnaire, each group will prepare a 1,000 word (approx) proposal discussing the strategies necessary for targeting the audience for the presentation, issues of production, and elements of design. The project proposal must be completed and submitted to the course website as a story before beginning the second stage of the project. Your white papers will guide you in developing your proposal and the remaining deliverables. (10%)
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Planning Documents
Because creating multimedia presentations can often require a significant amount of work related to the presentation technology alone, there are several ways to draft documents prior to beginning the multimedia document itself. (5%)
- Project Outline.
- Storyboards.
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Presentation Documents
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Usability Documents and Testing:
Your usability protocol is due on Wednesday, December 2 and you will test your presentation for usability at that time. Results of your test should be posted to the website by Friday, December 4 (5%)
- Short multimedia presentation for Web delivery.
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Project Logs
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Peer Collaboration Evaluation
- Project Proposal: 10%
- Planning Documents: 5%
- Project Outline: 5%
- Storyboards: 15%
- Presentation Documents: 5%
- Usability Test: 5%
- Final Draft of Multimedia Documentation: 55%
This will serve as your basic presentation structure. You should list all the points that you need to cover and any pertinent details. (5%)
This will serve as a draft or your multimedia presentation. More information on storyboarding will be included on the course calendar and in Five Steps to Storyboarding. Storyboards are due Monday, November 16 (15%)
During the second stage of the project, each group will create multiple drafts of a multimedia presentation. The presentation produced for this assignment should stand-alone. The draft will be submitted in both Adobe PDF and the original document format by Monday, November 23. (PowerPoint and other presentations like it can be printed to PDF format like any other document.) (5%)
Use PowerPoint, Keynote, Captivate, Connect, or other multimedia software to create short movie or presentation that would stand-in as viewable documentation. Adobe Captivate is available in Purdue labs. You also have access (from anywhere) to Adobe Connect, which is useful for capturing screen movements as a Flash movie. That is, someone should be able to view it without needing to witness a presenter walking the audience through presentation slides. The individual preliminary drafts are due on Monday, November 23 The initial group rough draft (where you've collected each team members contributions and put them into one document) is due on Monday, December 7. Additional drafts are encouraged.
Your multimedia presentation is due on Wednesday, December 16 (55%)
Each group will conduct further research on the white paper topic. Doing so will require reviewing your project logs and group postings describing the original production of the white paper.
As with Project 2, each group member is responsible for keeping a weekly project log. Ongoing.
As with Project 2, each group member is responsible for completing a peer collaboration evaluation at the end of the project. Each group's members should complete and submit the form to the instructor. This form is private and should only be viewed by the student and instructor. Send your evaluation as an email attachment titled using the following convention yourlastname-userdoc-peereval-groupname.doc Please title your email "Engl421 user documentation peer eval for group name".
Grading
Your individual grade for this project will be based the work produced by your team and the quality of your contribution to the project, as determined by your project evaluation forms and project logs. Project 3 is worth 25% of your overall course grade.
Rubric
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