Final Project

Flash Version
Html Verson
Storyboard
Flow Chart
Tutorial Source Code
Quiz Source Code

Learning Objectives:

1. Museum visitors will be able to identify the use of color in a sculpture.
2. Museum visitors will be able to identify the use of shape in a sculpture.
3. Museum visitors will be able to identify the use of texture in a sculpture.
4. Museum visitors will be able to use the "identify, associate, learn" mental model when looking at a sculpture.

Intended audience:

The intended audience for this program are the international body of tourists visiting the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. This program is primarily aimed at young adults (16 and older) and/or adults that have little to no background in looking at art critically. It is anticipated that the definitions of color, shape, and texture may be review but that the remainder of the program will be mostly new material for the audience.

As tourists, many visitors to the Louvre see looking at a famous work of art as simply a photo-taking opportunity, rather than as an educational experience. In other words, they have a very simplified understanding of objects that are actually very complex. Thus, they are in need of instruction that takes complex ideas and simplifies them to the point that they are understandable to the general public and yet are still educational.

The students of this program are also informal learners, as they are most likely visiting the museum as a leisure activity. Thus, they will require the ability to make choices throughout the program, and they will require a program that is interesting.

The intended audience is also people that are standing near at least one of the sculptures used in the program, as the program would take the form of 3 identical kiosks placed next to each of the highlighted sculptures. Finally, the intended audience is expected to have little time to dedicate to the program, as the Louvre is a large institution that most have limited opportunities to visit.

The latest version of my tutorial & quiz:

Flash version
Html version

I did add the pop-up windows for the color properties, because I came up with a simpler way to do it. I didn't add a pre-loader because I was concerned it would make linking my tutorial and quiz more complicated. I also changed a little of the wordings, just to give students the idea that a mental model is being taught, not the individual sculptures. I also deleted buttons that would allow students to skip the morphings, not only because it was easy to accidentally skip the morphing but also because that is the most important part of the tutorial, and I don't really want anyone skipping it.

Linked version of tutorial and quiz.

Having now worked out most of the kinks in my quiz (although I just remembered a typo I didn't work out yet..note to self...), I have posted the single file of the two. The quiz was fairly simple, although again I was irritated by the way changing the stage size affects the program. This time, I didn't have to resize quite to the same extent, as I realized I could at least just resize page by page rather than object by object.

I also reworked a couple of the original questions because I had someone test the quiz, and he thought it was a little too difficult and that I could find better images for a couple of the questions.

Linking the quiz to the tutorial, fortunately, was very simple and easy, which I enjoyed. The remaining things I am considering attempting are turning a couple of the definition pages in the tutorial into smaller, pop-up pages and adding a pre-loader. I think the pre-loader is more likely at this point, since adding the pop-up windows was too complicated for me the first time I tried it, but I decided I should try it once more. The preloader seems easy enough to add, though.

In terms of the instruction, I am debating about adding a more concrete outline of what the student is about to learn (the "tell them what they are about to learn" part). But it seems a little unnecessary, just because the program is so short and in such an informal setting. But I have not decided yet if this is something that would be nonetheless valuable to include.

Here is my quiz, in its most primitive form:
Flash
html

There are three questions on the mental model my program teaches, three questions on color (the most complicated artistic element), two questions on texture, and two questions on shape. I tried to keep it as short as possible while still making the information it gathers meaningful, as I don't really think people at the Louvre would want to spend a lot of time taking a quiz at a computer-- most people are there for the art experience. This is the same reason I scrapped my game (besides taking the tutorial over 15 minutes). I think people would possibly complete 1 of the three sections, and then maybe take the quiz. But I don't think many would do the tutorial, play a game, and take a quiz when there are thousands of art objects to be seen.

In terms of revisions to this draft, I am thinking of resizing it and sacrificing the jpeg quality, but I have not decided yet if this is something I want to do. Especially considering that I would rather improve my tutorial, but if it is incompatible because of the size change, I might have to change it.

project update

First Draft Problems

In regards to my project, I have been working on the larger problems for the past few days. The problems I had were the following:

1. Misaligned text
2. Text buttons where the actual text was not clickable
3. Resizing the screen

Problems 1 and 2 were simple to fix once I determined the problem was Flash's default setting for text was dynamic, while most of my text is static (including the button text). This seems counter-intuitive to me, since it seems like most text tends to be static anyway, but maybe that is just my non-computer-savvyness speaking up.

The problems having text being "dynamic" when I actually wanted it to be "static' involved being unable to properly bold/italicize/resize different words within the same text block and being unable to turn the physical text into a button. So, after going through and relabeling all of my text as static, my buttons function properly, and my text is no longer misaligned.

Another problem that resulted from my non-savvyness was I assumed, that like a Word document, I could "select all" just resize my entire Flash document after I was finished creating it. This is not true. As a consequence, I have spent most of Thanksgiving Break resizing all of my buttons, images, etc individually. It's been super fun.

Now that I have finished this, I am starting to work on improving my animations. My largest criticism of Flash Professional 8 Revealed is each chapter is almost always completely separate from all other chapters. In effect, I have had some difficulty understanding how the different lessons I have learned can work together to create a coherent tutorial/website. What I would have preferred is to have built upon each chapter/the work done in each lesson so that at the end of the book I would have had a complete tutorial rather than a bunch of individual lessons that are not always easy to relate and apply to one another. But again, this complaint may just result from my general lack of experience in creating websites.

Very rough versions of my tutorial:

flash/swf version

html version

http://students.washington.edu/langner/explore_sculpture.swf
http://students.washington.edu/langner/explore_sculpture.html

Story Board Assignment