Customer Reviews

Managing Interactive Media Projects

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I highly recommend Tim's book to anyone working in interactive media. It's one of those books that you'll keep close by in order to easily grab it for reference. Tim breaks down all the essential steps and provides relevant case studies. He's very engaging and you can tell that he really knows his stuff and is passionate about his craft. This book will help me in my role as an Account Manager as it really touches on the people aspect of interactive media creation. I will make sure to accidentally leave it around the office for others to also learn from it.

Even if you are not a web designer or interactive media creator, the book "Managing Interactive Media Projects " by Tim Frick, is a great resource. I use this book in my college-level web design introductory class and it is a God-send. This book breaks down the complete creative process for you and is replete with comprehensive and practical advice -- as well as great case studies that illustrate what can go right or wrong.


Reading this book will help you to understand many phases of the project management process, such as:

* Managing projects
* Conceptualizing an idea and initial planning
* Proposal writing
* Defining from your project specification
* Understanding different design processes that are effected by content
* Presenting your ideas to the client
* Flowcharting your idea
* Creating scripts and asset lists
* Art direction
* The revision process, approvals, scope and feature creep
* Design production
* Production and programming
* Testing, revision tracking and quality assurance

All projects, no matter what type of media, have specific logic-flow or development order from its inception (idea) to completion. All of the above concepts go through specific cycles, whether you follow an "ADDIE" or Agile routine ------ this book works. Frick's book helps you to understand the process within the process ------ it's a great investment.

As a person who deals with Designers and Developers on a daily basis, I will recommend Mr. Frick's book as a reference tool to help them understand the details involved managing web projects. The book is well organized and the PROfiles in each chapter are a great addition.

Mr. Frick leads the reader, in a step by step process, from creating a project proposal to taking the project live. Along the way, Mr. Frick shares his insight and it is clear that he is experienced with the subject matter.

Frick's Managing Interactive Media Projects is an ideal textbook for college media professors who want to introduce their students to the world of professional media development. Founder of the Chicago media design firm Mightybytes, Frick takes students from conceptualization and early planning all the way to launch, promotion and management. He does what many multimedia textbooks fail to do, which is to accurately and effectively represent the entire process, not just the content creation and software use in the middle.

For Frick, creative design happens through effective project management. Frick provides his readers with tools for creativity at the points where they will function most productively for the designer and the client. With plenty of examples, discussion and exercises, the text lays a strong foundation for students to begin developing their own projects. In addition to taking readers through his firm's redesign of a website and offering his own insights on the business, Frick also incorporates a series of "PROfiles" in which other professionals share their perspectives on topics such as rapid protyping, testing and content management systems.

The book is well-organized and thorough, while at the same time lively and creative. As an author for a college audience, Frick's tone is perfect. His enthusiasm for his work is evident. He writes with the kind of friendly authority that comes with having worked successfully in the field for some time.

One of the things that I especially like about Frick's approach is the care he has taken to make the book feel like it is engaged with the ideas and activities under consideration. Its design concept replicates the busy work environment of a professional media developer, right down to the coffee cup stains. All the way through Frick includes photos of people engaging in the process he depicts. Whereas often in textbooks, these kinds of photos look staged and artificial, the people in these photos help create the feel of a design studio and reinforce Frick's message that it's interaction between people, first and foremost, that makes for good interactive media design and project management.