Welcome to my IT 810 Project 4 - Version 2 page. For this week's assignment, I have modified and hopefully improved the virtual tour for the Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center's obstetrical/gynecological department. For this project, I used Adobe Audition for the sound files, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Premiere Pro to continue to expand and improve my skills. The hope for this project is to help expectant mothers learn more about the services and people of the NMRMC OB/GYN unit from the safety of a virtual environment during this time of COVID-19 when live tours are unavailable. Enjoy!

The challenge for this week was to improve upon the video created last week in the first version of Project 4. Dr. Howell was instrumental in helping me to find design flaws which could lesson the experience for the viewer. It was suggested that it might be difficult for viewers to understand the layout of the OB unit without a map. However, for security purposes given the OB unit is a locked unit, a map was strongly discouraged. Instead, I chose to sequence the rooms in order of appearance just as if one was taking a live tour. I shortened the transitions between a still photo of the signage for each room quickly transitioning into the video clip of the tour host, Kristi Phillips RN as she provided an introduction to each section of the OB unit. Additionally, as the viewer was introduced to the various areas and rooms, I placed still photos over Kristi's narration so that the viewer could observe key components of each area. I had previously placed the still photographs at the end of the video clips. This was accomplished by placing the still photos at the appropriate times within the video clips by inserting them in an additional video timeline above the main video clip timeline. I edited the still photos to ensure they were the same height and width as my video frame size. I added very short "fade" transitions before and after the still photos to create a smoother transition from video of the tour host to still photograph and back again.

It was brought to my attention that the volume was varied throughout the video potentially causing the viewer to adjust the volume of the video while viewing. I made some standardized adjustments to the video clips' volume trying to match it to the volume of the music clips used at the beginning and end of the video. I believe the video has a more uniform volume level than before. While I chose to violate the left alignment recommendation for the major introductory slides which can be identified by the NMRMC logo toward the bottom of the image, I made some major modifications to the "a message from our nurses" portion of the video. I shortened the quotes of each nurse to a more manageable length. I changed the alignment from center to left for easier reading for the viewer. I also removed the quotation marks and chose to itallicize the quotes.  

Finally, I changed the order of the introduction to the nurses desk upon Dr. Howell's suggestion. It did seem to be a much better place to insert that clip at the end of the tour given the patient is invited to call any time they have questions. I edited some of the clip to exclude a comment by Kristi mentioning the monitoring of the mother and baby during labor so that no one would become confused, perhaps believing their privacy was being violated. Patients need to know there are absolutely no video images of their birth being displayed on the monitors at the desk. In fact, there are only tracings of the baby's heart rate and vital signs displayed as part of central monitoring. Overall, I am pleased with the final product. There are always more improvements to make or additional effects to try, but I believe patients and their families will come away with a virtual experience that is very similar to the face to face tours we normally provide to expecting mothers and their support system.  

Beyond the principles mentioned for the first version of Project 4, I used Mayer's signaling principle by showing a sign of the room or area to be addressed next on the virtual tour. By shortening the transition from fixed image to the video clip, viewers were able to understand the nature of the upcoming topic. I also used slides with major headings to signal important components of the virtual tour such as the "welcome" message, "how to obtain help or information" and the "a message from our nurses" slides. I also used Mayer's spacial contiguity principle when placing the quoted text and first names of the OB nurses close to their photographs to avoid the need for unnecessarily large shifts in gaze limiting the need for extraneous processing.