How to Review Your Products
As part of the writeup (or commercially, as part of the project evaluation) you should review what you have created, including details of the processes. This provides an important opportunity for you to reflect upon which parts of the process went well, and what didn’t go so well. Identifying these areas allows you to do a better job next time you repeat the process.
You should use the following headings, and provide an explanation for how and why your work meets those criteria. If you are unable to complete a section, it means that you have not completed enough research or testing. Very rarely should your opinion be used as evidence for meeting the criteria.
Quality of Digital Graphics and Animations
Please refer to Quality Metrics for Digital Graphics and Animations.
Suitability for Audience and Purpose
In this section, you should summarise feedback to demonstrate that the product(s) are suitable for the target audience and that they meet the original purpose.
When verifying suitability for target audience, you should ask a range of people to identify who they think the product is aimed at.
Identifying the purpose is as simple as asking people to describe what they think the product is intended to do or achieve.
None of this information should be your opinion.
Suitability Against Original Requirements
This section requires you to state how the original requirements have been made. There is no need to collate feedback for it, as the requirements should all be quantitative, and as such, you can provide evidence for them.
For instance, you need to create a set of six icons which measure 144 by 144 pixels: the evidence is the six icons, along with information backing up the image size.
Legal and Ethical Considerations
If you have used any assets that are not your own work, you must have recorded their source and licensing arrangements.
It is your responsibility to ensure that no copyright infringements are made by your work.
You also have a duty to avoid libel and slander in your work.
Technical Constraints
If there were technical constraints that affected your ability to complete the tasks, you should describe them. Perhaps you wanted to render a 3D scene, but the render time would have been so long that you wouldn’t have been able to submit the work on time.
Maybe the software being used had a limitation on the number of effects that could be applied and therefore part of the design could not be realised.
Strengths and Potential Improvements
You will have produced a portfolio of work during this unit. Clearly, to get that far, something must have gone well. This is where you get to identify what you did well.
Look at everything from section B and C. Was there part of the design you were particularly proud of? Did you get glowing feedback about something you did? Are you proud of the icons you created?
Equally, no matter how well the project went, you should be able to pick an area where you would do something differently in future. This could be related to the timing – perhaps you’d seek feedback earlier on in the design process if you did this again. It could be related to skills that you learnt meaning you could edit image more effectively in future.
Optimisations Made
As previously identified, there are many different image formats, video formats, audio formats, colour schemes and so on. You will not have used all of them in your work (hopefully).
However, you will have made decisions as you completed this project, and this is the time to justify them.
Used lossless compression on some images? Why. (And you should have – refer back to here for why)
When you did use compression on images, what did you choose and why? (Refer here for reminders)
Picked a particular compression codec for a video? Why. (Refer to here and here for hints)
What tools did you use for parts of this process? Why. (A list of common tools is here)
What techniques have you used in your work? Why. (A list of techniques is here)