Purpose, Audience, Treatment, Specifications
Some of us like to jump right into Adobe Flash and start designing. This is where a lot of developers waste time and money. Have a plan.
The first thing to do is decide what you and your client are looking to accomplish, a purpose. This is a good way to keep anyone involved in the project on track.
Secondly, determine your audience. This is very important. If it is being designed for children, you may want to include animals with moving parts whenever the cursor is rolled over an animal. After all, you can't aim to hit a target if you don't know where the bullseye is at.
Next, decide how the application will be presented to the user: Tone, approach, and emphasis on the different multimedia elements in the application.
Fourth, create a flowchart and storyboard to start placing the elements together in line with your ideas. Specifications include the arrangement of elements and the functionality of each. A flowchart will help to pinpoint any aberrations in navigation scheme before work begins. Planning out the user interface of an interactive project is important because employing design guidelines becomes more crucial. Such elements here to scrutinize are optical balance, unity, movement, and simplicity.
After all of this be sure to test the application for consistency and user control functionality.
