MURMER: A Method for Risk Mitigation During the Requirements

Phase for Multimedia Software Systems

Kohl WitmerDept. of Computer Sciences

Rhoda Baggs Koss, Ph.D., Asst. Professor

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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.