Design Plan Tips
jtirrell — Thu, 08/21/2008 - 15:00
- Structure your design plan by laying out the goals of your multimedia text by discussing its audience, context, and purpose (statement of purpose). Then turn to how its choices of medium, arrangement, and strategies (production) accomplish the established goals. Then deal with the text's testing process (if possible—this is not always necessary). Look at pages 52-54 of Compose, Design, Advocate excerpt 2 for information and examples.
- Don't use "I" at all if possible. Don't talk about your process producing the text; talk about what the text does and how it works.
- Remember that your design plan should reflect how the text functions in its finished state. There should not be statements in your design plan about what the text will or might do. You should only talk about what it does and how it works.
- A design plan is a whole document, not a collection of parts. Our first drafts start as lists of parts (purpose, audience, context, etc.), but final drafts should be narratives. All the parts of the design plan must connect; they must communicate with each other and work together.
- Remember that the key to our projects is not making the most interesting thing you can think of; the key is identifying and solving a problem. It is the responsibility of the design plan to explicate how your work does this. If you can't articulate a clear situational need that your work addresses, then your work has no point.
- "To inform people about X" is a weak purpose. Ask yourself why. What's the reason for informing this audience?
- "People who are interested in X" is a weak audience. It doesn't give us anything productive to use when shaping our text. What traits about your target audience are relevant?
- You must connect production issues (strategies, medium, arrangement) with your statement of purpose (sense of purpose, audience, context). There's not much point in stating that your text uses a software package, or particular colors, or that it is arranged in a certain way unless you demonstrate how these features help the work accomplish its goals.