The Ins and Outs of an Interactive Project

An interactive project has a lot of ins and outs. There are multiple phases and lots of people involved. If it’s the first time you’re involved, it can be frustrating trying to remember everything and understanding who the go-to people are. If you have had lots of involvement in interactive projects, the following road map might still be helpful to you in that it lists the phases and typical roles in an interactive project.

Phases of an Interactive Project

Phase 1: Research

Have an idea/be commissioned to begin a subject
finding funding
Definition of the problem to be addressed
Definition of the project contract
Definition of the project management – Project Management is defined as all the leadership tasks that are going to need to be addressed, decision making: organization, techniques and mediums.
Educating the project team
Defining the target group
information and material collection
research for target groups and there general methods of interaction
responsibilities on: patron and project leader

Phase 2: Planning

Establishment of goals/context analyzing and resource planning
team establishment and partnerships
time planning
media planning
development of the concept
development of the material
responsibilities on: project team (project leader, programmers/tech people, specialists)

Phase 3: Conceptualization/Design/Production – Programming

Normative decisions (eg Theories)
Strategic decisions
Operative decisions (media and concrete design measures
design decisions (Look and Feel)
Global Navigation (ie content of the project)
home page info, actions to take, examples
Corporate Identity
Press
Media
CMS, URL Name, Host, Server, Meta, SEO

Phase 4: Piloting/Quality Management (testing)

piloting (evaluation) – Performance stats
actual usage (implementation/corrections)

Phase 5: Translation of project results

realization of entire concepts = project end
interactive aspect finished

Phase 6: Evaluation/Quality Control

Were the project goals reached?
Evaluate what worked/didn’t work.
Listen to everyone’s opinions on the outcomes.

During the project phase, employees, foundations and leadership levels should be informed, motivated and inspired. The integration of extremely good communication and information politics should be a daily task. The following rolls are the bare minimum for an interactive project, but we all know that there are a lot of tasks involved that are not listed.

Rolls – Individual Tasks and Skills

the “Client” (personnel development, project leader)

Tasks:

creates contracts for conception and development of the project
establishes the goals of the project
prepares the resources (people and techniques)

Skills

strategic competency
direction and decisions in financial, personnel and contextual questions

Designer (designing content and prep for IT)

Tasks:

designing information and materials for target groups
web design
summarizing the content for a variety of usages (press, web, funders, etc)
supporting the technical translation

Skills:

aesthetically gifted
up to date with new media and what is currently possible
technical skills (knows when to use which application and for what purpose)
serves as liaison between the client and the IT team

IT specialists

Tasks

development of virtual environments
creates toolkits for non technical staff/client
supports the translation of the project (proposals, implementation, testing, going live)
maintenance of the project (hardware, installation routines, updates)