The Objective

The objective of the program should be formulated as early in the work as possible. A reasonably precise objective forces us to make important decisions and it supports these decisions. Such an objective should go beyond that of a requirement analysis.

The objective must be formulated before our project can be evaluated relative to usefulness or in terms of pedagogical and commercial criteria.

The objective will fill many purposes:

• If it is sufficiently precise it will be an important part of the foundation for all decisions regarding both content and form.
• Questions about limitations will appear throughout the whole design process. The objective is a good tool for decisions of what should be in and what should be thrown out.
• The objective is the foundation for the metaphor we choose. The concepts and the images that we use must correspond to the user profile we establish as part of the objective.
• The objective is also an instrument for evaluation of the product. Operational objectives supports a precise evaluation.
• The objective is the raw material for marketing of the program where who and what is the basic questions.

A systematic approach is to formulate the objective as answers to the following questions: Who, What, Why and How:

Who

Who are the users? The same way an author must have a clear picture of the reader, the program designer must anticipate the skills and interests of the end users.

In educational software the solution may be to formulate this as the users age and grade. This may however be too indirect for our operative needs. It may be better to describe the necessary prerequisites of knowledge or abilities. In programs with other purposes the description of the users may find other forms: Language, age, experience, cultural background, education, occupation etc.

What

What should the user achieve by using the program? This is in many ways the central part of the objective, and in most cases the most difficult part to formulate. It is however worth while to try to get it as clear and operative as possible.

Insight - Knowledge - Skills - Practice - Information - Overview

Pedagogical literature contains a lot of material for formulating teaching and learning objectives. The planning of a program differs from general pedagogical planning in that the demands for precision is probably greater. If you consider a program as "canned" pedagogy, the possibilities to be adaptive in your conduct is dramatically reduced.

In some cases it is possible to formulate objectives that may be measured with a reasonable degree of precision. For typical tool programs it may be possible to measure efficiency in terms of time on task.

It may be useful to consult the taxonomy that is established for cognitive and practical achievements. Se for instance Bloom [5]. The formulation: "The user will get insight in .." is much more of a challenge than the formulation: "The program will give an overview..".

Why

We should take the time to formulate a reason why we want to use a computer for the task at hand. In many cases this is implicit i all the reasoning we do, but still it may be worth while to test our thoughts by writing them down. Maybe this will reveal that other teaching or learning methods or materials are better ?

We must investigate if we are reinventing the wheel. We should also do a survey of existing products in the same category, or products with similar what-formulations. The task may have been solved by a program already, or our objective may be achieved by combining existing programs.

How

Early in the work we should give some thoughts to how the program will be used. This goes for all programs, games, tools, pedagogical programs etc. Some relevant questions:

• Is the user alone or will others be present? Others may be teacher, client, supervisor, student, customer, depending on the type of program.
• Do we have another person as a necessary participant ?
• Will there be any sources for stress when using the program? Customer on the phone or at the counter, time limit on task, etc..
• Will the program be used as an electronic blackboard for demonstrations or instructions for groups ?
• Will the program depend on a pedagogical plan that must be staged for the program to be effective?
• Should the program be sold at the gas station and be completely self contained?.
• Will we be based on updates of data from the internet ?

Maintenance

The objective must be maintained during the design process. It is not necessarily a defeat if we decide to adjust the objective as we dive deeper into the project. It is a common experience that the work will reveal possibilities for broadening the objective, both with respect to who, what and how.

Sample