Case Study: IVI Publishing

Challenge
Produce two multi-million dollar CD-ROM projects in half of the typical development time.

Background
IVI Publishing began as Interactive Ventures, a joint venture with Mayo Clinic. The company had negotiated the rights to the content from two Time Life for Children books about the human body. “What is a Bellybutton” and “Welcome to Bodyland” were to become IVI Publishing’s premier CD-ROM titles. The company’s first title, “Mayo Clinic Family Health Book CD-ROM,” had taken 18 months to complete – an acceptable time frame. These two children’s titles needed to be produced in nine months or less. They also had to look exciting, work flawlessly, and engage children in computer “edutainment.” They had to compete with titles from Broderbund, the country’s leading children’s CD-ROM publisher.

Solution
Lee Snyder, founder of On-Demand Productions, partnered with Michael (Chino) Yap to form an organization that could complete the projects on time and on budget while infusing creativity into the project at every opportunity. The key was to gain approval on every project element before diving into development. We were primarily interested in how the CD-ROM interface looked and felt to the target audience – kids.

To facilitate those approvals, we planned and delivered weeklong design sessions with the project’s content provider, Time Life for Children. In one week, the team accomplished these goals for each of the titles:

1. Determined what kinds of things kids were interested in doing on a computer.
2. Developed a navigation scheme that would work best for kids.
3. Understood the critical success factors for children’s videos and CD-ROMs
4. Generated a preliminary content outline (information architecture).
5. Created preliminary storyboards of each scene for the entire title.
6. Developed a preliminary list of “Easter eggs” - small fun animations hidden in each scene.
7. Delivered a detailed outline of images, sounds, and interactivity for one scene for prototyping.
8. Developed a production schedule with enough time for review and approval.

We hired most of the graduates from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s new media class and put them to work. They already knew how to work together, having done just that in school. We figured out who would do what, bought enough Mac computers to get the job done, and went to work – around the clock for five months. Each title included original music, musical transitions, original artwork and animations, games, and more.

Results     View Video
Both titles made it to market on-time (less than nine months each) and on-budget. Both received industry accolades, competing well against Bruderbund and Microsoft titles. Both were featured at IVI Publishing’s shareholder meeting as a demonstration of the company’s titles. Both eventually were sold nationally at Toys R Us.