Multimedia advice

When it comes to multimedia, design is everything

I have noticed lately that when I click on multimedia projects, if the design isn’t appealing, I almost always click away. The content within these projects is probably amazing, but it’s the first impression that is so critical to keeping a person on your site, which is determined strictly from the design of the package. Let’s analyze the design of some recent multimedia packages from the St. Petersburg Times to discuss the importance of visuals.

St. Petersburg Times is pretty well known for their multimedia work. Doubt: Who Killed Michelle was recently awarded an “Award of Excellence” from SNDies. “The girl in the window” touched people around the world, and was featured on Poynter Online. This week, they are unfolding their recent multimedia presentation, “The Surrogate.” I have personally been a fan of almost all of their multimedia projects. The stories are compelling, the content is well-produced, and they use multiple types of media to tell the story … all great attributes of multimedia presentations. Going forward, one thing they can improve on is the design of the packages.

Don’t get me wrong, the design of their previous projects is fine. But, they could be better. Most feel a little too “safe” … keeping with similar navigation elements, opening pages, and previous/continue buttons at the top. Take “The surrogate” and “The girl in the window” for example. Open both of them in different tabs and go back and forth to look at the design. They both have opening screens with the title and intro text with a picture. It immediately feels a little too much like print for me. The colors, type and pictures are nice, but nothing is grabbing met yet. Now, click start/continue in both projects. You see a navigational list on the left with thumbnails, and a video immediately starts. Are these thumbnails effective? They are almost too small to show detail, which is a shame because pictures can be so compelling. Should the user be forced to watch a video when they enter? Especially since both opening videos are quite long, although they are good quality, it might not be best to force that at the user.

Small details are also important when it comes to design. I know it’s a hassle to build a customized video player, but the Flash player is really sterile, and only allows for few customization options. There are many other players out there that might help with the design to get away from the clunky Flash player. Both timelines are done with a Flash scroll bar component and text. It might have been more visually appealing to try a more interactive and customized approach for these sections.

For future packages, I would like to see a little more creativity and customization in St. Pete’s packages. Instead of opening screens with one photo and intro text, think of something that will grab the viewer and make them want to spend time with your content. Grab their attention through great visuals, large eye-catching photos and emotional audio. Go beyond the basic navigation tools on the left to maybe having a collapsing menu bar, a non-linear menu, or something more interactive that takes up less room. Look at FWA and Adobe’s Site of the Day for innovative designs and interactive possibilities. The great thing about multimedia and design is that there are no set of rules or guidelines as to what works — the limit is your imagination so let it run wild!

Topic for discussion:
One thing I’m still not sold on is the importance to put “Video”, “Story” etc in the navigation. What is more important – telling the user the type of media that they will get, or what they will learn? What do you think?

Other posts that might interest you:

• How to recreate past events with multimedia
• Tampa Bay Mug Shots utilizes Django for innovative database
• Sydney Morning Herald showcases top-notch multimedia

© 23 October 2008 Innovative Interactivity (II).