Tohir Solomons

Multimedia Business Analysis

Posted on the December 7th, 2005 under Uncategorized by Tohir

Web Application Development has a much more rosy future thanks in part to the development and standardization of interactive technologies. Not to go off on a tangent, lets suffice with a comment that Jakob Nielsen and Luke Wrobwelski are alerting everyone that there are differences between web design and application development.

Noting these differences becomes important as it impacts on the outlook of your project, particularly if one comes from a ‘web background’ as opposed to a software development background. There is definitely becoming more than one web, or the web is becoming more than what it was.

But as the web and software lines blur, it seems that traditional business analysis is being superimposed as is on the web – an unfortunate scenario in my opinion, and hence I’ve been thinking alot of a conceptualisation of Multimedia Business Analysis in recent days.

The web changed the world with its emphasis on design, interface and interactivity. And with web application, we seem to be losing this. The web can be used for application purposes, but without losing the sizzle that people seek in websites.

In his latest alertbox, Jakob Nielsen touches on Video on the web. He presents the guideline of “avoid using video if the content doesn’t take advantage of the medium’s dynamic nature“. I’m sad to say: even without bringing in video that WE ARE NOT taking advantage of the web’s possibilities.

At a time when broadband is becoming the norm, and we have the ability to generate graphics and flash (GD and Ming for the PHP guys), it is belittling that the multimedia aspect is lost. We lack the vision to present information in a multimedia format. Multimedia defined as: the presentation of information in text, image, animation, sound and video format.

Business Analysis particularly for the web, needs to be revisited. The web is growing fast, and I don’t think BA is keeping up. You snooze – you lose.