Transcript Effects of Radiation on the Ecosystem

MURMER: A Method for Risk
Mitigation During the Requirements
Phase for Multimedia Software
Systems
.
Kohl Witmer
Dept. of Computer Sciences
Rhoda Baggs Koss, Ph.D., Asst. Professor
Research Proposed
• Many multimedia systems are put together with some
pieces that are expensive to produce.
• Hacking together presentations with costly
components is a high risk endeavor.
• A method is proposed for representing the
presentation (or tutorial in this case) stripped of costly
components, as a sort of prototype.
• It is called MURMER: the MUltimedia
Requirements Method for Easy Risk mitigation
What is Multimedia?
• For the purposes of this research multimedia implies a
document which includes text, video, audio, and images.
• The proof of concept prototype produced for this research is a
“Composting 101” tutorial for school age children.
• Macromedia Flash software is produced merging the audio,
video, and images with text.
• A child is expected to read through the tutorial at his/her own
pace, toggling audio and video, and reading along with the
tutorial.
Multimedia Research
• “Multimedia research through the middle 1990’s
focused on the development of infrastructure to
support the capture, storage, transmission, and
presentation of multimedia data.” [1]
• Now that products have matured (and are a lot
cheaper), it is time to get more formal in requirements
and design documentation for Multimedia systems.
Traditional Multimedia Development is
Often Flawed
For example, as B. Adams, et al. point out in [5], a
typical viewer of a video is expecting to watch a
movie, i.e. to be entertained or educated somehow.
However, without planning, a lot of video that is
produced is not planned out or thought out, and
therefore lacks the necessary elements to make the
content interesting or informative.
Multimedia Presentation Characteristics
• Historically unobtainable due to cost and available
media. Currently an “explosion” going on [5].
• As usual, many presentation software systems are
hacked or done on the fly with little thought as to
continuity and to how to present video and audio
together.
Multimedia Design Methods
• UML? Somewhat burdensome and complicated for
simple systems. A “challenging task” since “UML
itself is quite complex and difficult to master”[4].
• UML Profiles are being developed for various
applications.
• None publicly defined yet for Requirements
Engineering of Multimedia Systems [7].
Multimedia Design Methods: An Idea
• Why not use “the traditional three-part creation
process used by professional filmmakers”?[5] This
includes
– preproduction (storyboarding and scripting)
– production (principle photography)
– postproduction (editing)
• Then a typical requirements document could be
represented as a storyboard plus some other elements
representing behavior and content.
MURMER: the MUltimedia Requirements
Method for Easy Risk mitigation
• Goals:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Simplicity
Completeness
Mitigate Risk
Be customer/ end user friendly
Represent bare-bones layout and content
Be able to handle audio, video, images, and text
Risk Mitigation
• In [9], Elaine Hall defines software risk as “a measure
of the likelihood and loss [due to an] unsatisfactory
outcome affecting the software project, process, or
product”.
A High Risk Example
• For example, let’s say our customer is the “chamber
of commerce of Brazil” and requests a multimedia
presentation of the Amazon as a promotional item for
Brazilian tourism.
• They will supply video and images that are costly to
produce.
• They won’t sign on the dotted line until they see a
prototype (like the one created by MURMER)
showing layout and other content.
A High Risk Example (cont.)
• If the customer (Brazil) and the developers can agree
upon a layout given the costly video and content
provided by the customer, then in the eyes of the
customer, risk is mitigated. (In the eyes of the
developers too!)
• This is done at the Requirements phase.
• See [3] for justification and benefits of using
requirements engineering to negotiate with customers
or potential customers.
MURMER: What is it?
• Simply put, three sets:
– Powerpoint Storyboard: A set of frames representing
layout, flow, and content of the final presentation.
– Content Filelist: A set of filenames representing four
types of media content: 1) images, 2) video, 3) audio,
and 4) text.
– Finite State Machine: Representing the flow of the
presentation. There is a one-to-one correspondence
between nodes here and frames in the Storyboard.
Frame Templates
• For purposes of the Powerpoint Storyboard, Frame
Templates can be developed to show layout of media
within the frame.
• Most likely several (or many) templates may be used
for any given presentation.
• For instance, tutorials may have a set of templates
that are slightly different from promotional or more
flashy presentations.
Advantages of the MURMER Method
• Works well with customer
• Frame templates are reusable
• Completeness: together the three elements of
MURMER represent a subset of multimedia
document types; i.e. works well with a tutorial
• Simple and easy to follow (unlike UML)
• Not costly to produce
• Mitigates Risk
Proof of Concept: Composting 101
Informal Requirements:
• Task was to produce a Composting Tutorial for school age
children (1st grade and on).
• Composting is the depositing of organic materials such as
vegetable and fruit scraps, coffee grounds, lint, hair, cotton, and
other natural wastes into some sort of container, in order to
return these to the environment as an alternative to depositing
them into landfills and garbage dumps.
• Develop all original video, audio, and text content.
• Use Macromedia Flash to merge content and produce a
presentation.
See the Composting 101 MURMER
Requirements Definition
• Kohl put filename here for Requirements
• Also put link so they can launch from here
See the Composting 101 MURMER Flash
Presentation (Final Product based on
Requirements)
• Kohl put filename here for Actual presentation
• Also put link so they can launch from here
Summary
• There is a need for some formal methods for defining
documentation for sound software engineering
principles for the design of multimedia systems.
• MURMER is a simple set of sets which strives to
meet this need with the goals of simplicity, easy and
cheap to produce, customer-friendliness, and risk
mitigation.
Possible Future Research Directions
• Identify subsets of multimedia types that could be
used with MURMER
• How to merge in web links?
• Investigate the possiblity of defining a UML Profile
for Multimedia Requirements
• Create CASE tools to assist in the Requirements
gathering and definition process
References
[1] Rowe, L., A., and Jain, R., “ACM SIGMM Retreat Report on Future
Directions in Multimedia Research”, ACM Transactions on
Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications, Vol. 1,
No. 1, February 2005, Pages 3-13.
[2] Kazman, R. and Kominek, “Information Organization in Multimedia
Resources”, ACM Transactions on TBD, SIGDOC, 1993.
[3] Sommerville, I. and Sawyer, P., Requirements Engineering, A Good
Practice Guide, Wiley, 1997.
[4] Tilley, S., Murphy, S., and Huang, S., “5th International Workshop on
Graphical Documentation: Determining the Barriers to Adoption of
UML Diagrams”, Proceedings of SIGDOC ’05, September 21-23,
2005.
[5] Adams, B., Venkatesh, S., and Jain, R., “IMCE: Integrated Media
Creation Environment”, ACM Transactions on Multimedia
Computing, Communications and Applications, Vol. 1, No. 3, August
2005, Pages 211-247.
References (cont.)
[6] Newman, R., “Team Accessible Methods for Production of Safety
Critical Hypermedia Documentation”, Proc. IEEE IPCC/SIGDOC
Technology & Teamwork , IEEE Computer Society Press, September
24-27, 2000.
[7] Bell, D., “UML Basics, Part II: The activity diagram”,
http://www.therationaledge.com/content/sep_03/f_umlbasics_db.jsp,
Rational Software, 2003.
[8] Object Management Group (OMG), “Introduction to OMG’s Unified
Modeling Language”,
http://www/omg.org/gettingstarted/what_is_uml.htm, 2006.
[9] Hall, E., Managing Risk, Methods for Software Systems
Development, SEI Series in Software Engineering, Addison-Wesley,
1998.