Designing Interactive Projects


Computers in Communication
Boston University College of Communication
Copyright © 1996 by Professor Jim Lengel

Here are some ideas for using Persuasion to develop interactive works that communicate ideas through a variety of media.

1. Sketch out the project, screen-by-screen.
Clearly describe the purpose of your project, and its audience: what ideas are you trying to get across? To whom? Then decide how you will use the computer to communicate those ideas: will it be a kiosk, a slide show, an information browser, a dramatic story?
Now lay out the slides you will use, one by one. Make a diagram that shows what's on each slide (including sounds and video), and how the user navigates from slide to slide. Use arrows to show the direction of movement and the choices available to the user. Decide which slides will share common backgrounds and master features. Finally, make a list of all of the pictures, sounds, and videos you will need for this project.

2. Prepare the elements of the project.
Use PhotoShop, SoundEdit, Premiere, MoviePlayer, and other programs to prepare the elements of your project. If you want to use a picture as a background, use PhotoShop to change its image size to 640 x 480 pixels. Use PhotoShop also to darken or lighten a picture so that it makes a better background. Make sure all pictures are saved in PICT format. Use SoundEdit to make sure your sounds fade in and out. Make sure all sounds are saved as QuickTime movies. Use Premiere or MoviePlayer to get your videos to look exactly as you want them, with smooth beginnings and ends.
Get all the pieces ready, in the form you want them, before building the Persuasion slide show. Put all the elements into a folder on the hard drive on your computer.

3. Assemble the screens.
Use Persuasion to build the background first, the items that will appear on every slide. Include forward and back arrows here, if that is part of your design. Then, using the diagram as a guide, build the screens one by one. Import backdrop pictures first, then smaller pictures, then type any text, then import sounds and movies. Assemble all your screens before building any links and jumps. Give each slide a title; if you don't want the title to show, just drag it off the screen.

4. Build links and interactivity.
Again following your diagram, build jumps between slides. Use text elements or pictures as "buttons" to jump to another slide. Make sure you provide a path for the user to follow once the jump has been made.

5. Add transitions.
Apply any necessary visual or musical transitions.

6. Save your work.
You need to save the slide show, the movies, and the sounds in the same folder. Save them into the folder on your desktop for now; at the end of class, save the entire folder to your SyQuest cartridge or to the File Server.