Date: April 8, 2000
Author: Ronald Wolak

Subject: Reply to Chaelynne Wolak's Discussion Topic #2

Reply to Chaelynne Wolak's Discussion Topic #2

As Chaelynne pointed out, the article by Bailey discussed the challenges of creating an interactive sketching tool for multimedia designers (Bailey, 1999, October). Bailey's conclusion was that a design language that used gestures and textual annotations would be natural for designers and thus more acceptable and easier to learn. Tools discussed in the paper included SILK, Anecdote, and MediaDesc.

One solution to the problem of providing a storyboarding tool that is as easy to use as a pencil and paper would be to include it as an integral part of the multimedia authoring software. Multimedia authors have already invested considerable time learning applications such as Flash 4, Director 8, and Authorware and a familiar user interface would be beneficial.

In addition, unless the use of the storyboard simplifies the total design process, authors are likely to continue to use pencil and paper. A storyboarding module that simplified and added to the rest of the design process would be received favorably.

Reference

Bailey, B. (1999, October). Interactive sketching of multimedia storyboards. Proceedings of the conference (part 2) on ACM multimedia '99, ACM, Orlando, Florida, pp. 205-206.