Examining a 2002 Distinguished Award Winner: Wind Power Demonstration

By KAREN MOBLEY
Carolina Chapter

For readers who couldn’t see the winners in Nashville, Hyperviews:Online chose to examine a Distinguished winner from the international online communication competition (IOCC). Future issues will examine additional winners.

Introduction

The international online communication competition (IOCC) recognizes the outstanding accomplishments and innovations of technical communicators who design and develop online information. The Hyperviews:Online staff thought members of the Online Information SIG would like to see some of the winners, learn how the winners were created, and hear why the judges assigned the winners to the Distinguished category.

The Entry

Web-based, Animated Presentation on Wind Power,
Click Wind Power on the right side of the page

Category: Demonstration

Award: Distinguished

Winner’s Names: Wendy Littman, Jim Snyder, Bruce Green, Amy Lewis

Organization’s Name: National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Project Overview

Tools Used to Create the Entry

Adobe Illustrator was used to build all of the graphics for the animation
and storyboard. Then, the storyboard was generated as an Adobe Acrobat file from Illustrator. The graphics were exported as .SWF files from Illustrator to be used in Macromedia Flash, where all of the programming was done. The Flash file was published to an HTML document for the final product.

Team Skills

Graphic design, audio editing, Flash programming, project management, information architecture, writing, editing, HTML coding.

Project Duration

Four months.

Limitations that the project imposed upon the entry

Because the product was delivered through the Web, the file had to be as small as possible.

Project Specifics: Background from the Winners

Need / Opportunity

We conducted a survey of the Web to find out what Web-accessible, interactive products might be available to help home and small business owners understand what wind turbines look like, how they work, and their primary electricity-based uses.

We discovered that no products of this type were available. From the products we did find (static Web pages and some basic, animated GIFs), it was difficult to understand how wind system components interact with one another to generate electricity, because the components did not move or the illustrations were not detailed enough.

Intended Audience

Our primary audience was home and small business owners (consumers). Several studies have shown that consumers interested in buying or generating their own renewable energy tend to be well-educated and environmentally conscious. This group also uses the Web heavily as a source of information.

Goals / Objectives

Since our primary audience tends to use the Web as a source of information, and our survey found a lack of useful Web-based products, we decided to produce a Web-based animated presentation on wind power.

Our main goal was to help home and small business owners understand what wind turbines look like, how they work, and their primary electricity-based uses. To this end, we set the following objectives for our animation project. The animation should:

• Show different wind turbine components work together; include an interactive section
  
  
• Be easily accessible by a home computer and reach our target audience
  
  
• Help draw traffic to our Consumer Guide to Renewable Energy Web site.

Results

The result of our project was a 3-minute animated presentation that includes an interactive section where the viewer can select different wind turbine components to learn more about them.

We produced the animation in Flash to minimize the file size and be sure it was accessible through a home computer. The Flash file is 757 KB - smaller than many PDFs on the Web. Flash also allows us to “stream” the files to the user so the presentation can start before it has finished downloading.

We used bright colors and exciting background music to appeal to our younger viewers and to convey the feeling that using wind power is “in” - it’s the hip, new way to power your home or business, and it’s a technology that is accessible now.

The animation ends by directing the viewer to our new Consumer Guide to Renewable Energy Web site.

Challenges

Since this presentation was the first animation of this type that we have produced, our first challenge was to figure out how to produce the animation in the most efficient, cost-effective way. To this end, we:

1. Developed a preliminary storyboard (pencil sketch), which we revised until everyone was satisfied
   
   
2. Wrote the script and developed a computer-generated storyboard, which went through a second round of reviews and changes
   
   
3. Recorded the voice-over tracks and produced the animation in Flash.
   We found that it was useful to spend time in the storyboarding phase, because making changes to the finished product can be expensive and time-consuming.

A second challenge we faced was during the review process. Because animation is a relatively new technology, many of our reviewers were not sure exactly how to review a storyboard. We found that it was best to add visual hints, such as arrows, to show the reviewers which way different components were going to turn - that way they could tell us if the direction of rotation was correct before we went to the trouble of animating.

Budget / Schedule

This project took us four months to complete and cost $15,000. With the experience we gained from this project, we estimate that a comparable project would now cost $10,000.

Measurement of Effectiveness

Preliminary results suggest that this project was a complete success:

• Statistics: Our statistics show that a large number of consumers are accessing the Web site on which this animation is featured - 25% come from AOL alone. So we seem to be successful in reaching our target audience. Our statistics also show that the average viewer spends 3 to 4 minutes viewing the animation file (which is about the length of the animation). Since viewers are not terminating their visit before the end of the animation, and approximately 80% of those that reach the introductory page proceed with viewing the animation, it appears that their viewing experience is successful.
  
  
• Links: Although we have not yet advertised the animation, we already have 40 to 50 Web pages that link to the HTML page on which the wind animation is featured (including the largest wind-industry trade association, the American Wind Energy Association).
  
  
• User testing: To be sure that the animation was small enough to be accessible from a home computer, we asked a small group of people to access the animation at home and report back. Everyone that was asked to participate found that the animation was accessible.
  In the future we plan to do more in-depth user testing and marketing to increase the visibility of the animation.

Judges’ Comments

Consensus Judging Summary:

• The Flash Player check at the introduction was a good feature - extremely beneficial to users.
  
  
• The entry was extremely engaging with a strong call to action.
  
  
• The blend of interactivity during the pop-up section helped encouraged participants to become actively involved in the learning/discovery process.
  
  
• Overall the piece was deceptively simple and cleanly done.

The piece could be slightly enhanced by:

• Allowing separate time to read the text and listen to the speaker. Users cannot do both at the same time.
  
  
• A more careful edit of the pop-up text and its interactivity.
  
  
• Try to avoid text that blinks and moves simultaneously.
  
  
• Consider adding additional user controls.

Judging Form