A Light at the End of the Tunnel

I can actually see the end of this very long phase of development. I've learned that development can be a roller coaster ride. Sometimes things go smoothly and it's exciting to see it coming together. Sometimes things drag on forever or have to be redone. It's been both exciting and frustrating.

During development, I have created five patient education modules. Please take a look at them. There are still a few tweaks to be done, but the end is in sight.

My biggest improvement since my last report is the addition of audio. Audio was an adventure in and of itself. Two issues made audio difficult. First, my site supervisor is about 200 miles away for me, so getting together to do the recordings was not easy to schedule. Second, my site supervisor uses a Mac and I use a PC, so we had to find a middle ground. It was easy to pass audio back and forth using the iPhone, but the file type made it difficult to edit. So we resolved the issue by introducing Dr. Jenkins to Camtasia. He was able to use it to record the audio and send the file to me in as a Camtasia recording file (.camrec). He did record it as one long recording, but I was able to use Camtasia to break it up and save the pieces as .mp3 files.

After on some research on adding audio to Flash, I decided to use action script to call the audio files. This would keep the .swf files from being too large since the audio is not actually in them. From there, the big task was matching the audio to the animation. I haven't found one best method that works but I have counted off a whole bunch of "Mississippi's" and learned how to multiply by 12 (frames per second) up pretty high.

This has indeed be a learning process. My skills in Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and CSS are all improving and increasing. Additionally, I have new found respect for the ADDIE model. I also have an appreciation for the skills of others on a project like this. I've personally experienced how important it is that the content expert and the designer are on the same page before design starts. I also found that an explanation of the ADDIE process and why it works is a necessity for those who are not familiar with it. I have new found respect for those who are skilled in designing graphics. This process could have been easier for me if I had access to someone to assist me in this area. Nevertheless, it is a growing process and I am proud of the work I've done. The modules seem incredibly short for the work that went into them, but they are effective. I'm glad to report that my site supervisor has been pleased with the project. He was so impressed that he asked me if he could share my work with the Chief Medical Officer at the hospital. Of course I said yes, but I haven't heard back on that yet.

My next step is to finish tweaking the modules. I got a list of edits from my supervisor today. Should be implementing before the end of the week . . .