Interview with Tami Sutcliffe [bikechic] on Whohub

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What is your specialty in the interactive world?

Instructional design, where an expert trainer wishes to create a digital version of a live presentation, using the strengths of an online experience and removing many of the more challenging boundries implicit in the offline world (time, space, energy)

Where can we see some of your work online?

What kind of projects do you usually undertake?

I work at the university level, with professors and other experts who want to expand/migrate their well-honed presentations from face-to-face lectures into other formats, with exclusively Web-based delivery platforms, usually for credit. This usually involves translating an existing course worth 1-3 credit hours into an online learning module "worth" the same acreditation value.

What was your first job in the field?

I designed web-based library training courses for The University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science as they launched a pilot program in 2005 titled "Library Education @ Desktop". Funded by a grant via The Institute of Museum and Library Services, these courses were aimed at librarians who were seeking advanced training in librarianship topics without travel from their home libraries. Le@d was successful and morphed in the "Lifelong Education @ Desktop" program under UNT's Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment, and Redesign, currently at http://www.leadonline.info/

What is your professional background? What did you do before?

I have a bachelors in English, a Masters in Library Science, and a second Masters in Art History. I became a PhD candidate in Information Science in 2007 (defending my dissertation in 2009, barring disaster.)

So I was a librarian in my past life, with an emphasis on research and reference.

Other gigs included stints as an instructional web designer [Ernst & Young], technical writer [Alcatel], content developer [iThought.com], knowledge manager [Verizon,] director of research library [KPMG] web designer [Texas Women’s University School of Management] and bibliographic instructional reference librarian [Collin County Community College]

With which technologies do you normally work?

At the university level, most online course development is handled by a few delivery platforms. I specialize in Blackboard's WebCT Vista Academic Enterprise System, which means I handcode my designs offline and then massage the HTML files back inside the limits of a quirky and arbritrary user interface.

To work remotely, I sing along with Dreamweaver, and drop in bits of Perl, PHP, HTML, CSS, MySQL and JavaScript.

As a librarian, I speak DIALOG, OCLC, Lexis/Nexis, and ABI/Inform.

As an all-purpose design geek, I also use FrameMaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, Paint Shop Pro, Quark Express, Adobe Acrobat, Visio, Captivate and the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, FrontPage, Outlook)

Lessons learnt on user interface design

Be careful with scrolling. Triple check spelling. Be cautious with .swf files. Even though they are clunky, PDF files are fairly stable for many students across platforms. Simplify instructions. Always include a HOME button and HELP of some kind. Dont assume anything works until you see it work.

Do you work by yourself, or in a team? how is that team?

My team is remote and powerful. I rely on them to launch my courses and edit my content.

My subject matter experts are superb, which is not usually the case in many purely academic instructional design environments, so I am lucky.

I design the course layouts and upload the HTML files, tweaking the text and graphics untill I am happy. Then the team kicks in, editing and uploading the final versions. The team also administers the courses after launch, which requires a lot of careful and patient effort behind the scenes.

Does anyone REALLY work completely by themselves any more??

What is the secret to keeping customer expectations under control in interactive development?

Customer expectations will always be an uncontrollable variable. Customers often cannot verbalize their expectations accurately, and dont have time to research their options.

The best approach is to present a proposal and then deliver it.

What was your first computer, and which is your current?

(Then) TRS80 (1980) with line printer, cassette tape backup and green monitor running CPM80

(Now) HP Presario running Linux and XP with flatbed scanner, web cam, 200GB external drive and DSL modem.

Online virality: isn't it the same as traditional word-of-mouth?

Except your online presence is purely visual. This can be good and bad. Traditional word of mouth included things like verbal recommendations which do not always translate effectively into a visual medium.

Do you think the digital gap is a social problem? What would you do to accelerate digital literacy?

Access is still the issue. People who do not have phone lines in their homes and who do not have the basic equipment needed to login are analogous to people who lived without electricity in the 1900s. They know that magic is out there, and they may have seen the magic working, but they live in the dark almost literally.

Literacy is not as large an issue as access. Those who wish to learn have opportunities to learn.

But if you dont have access, you are silent and invisible.

What were you doing in March 2000, at the height of the "dotcom bubble"?

Creating consumer reviews for a triumphant dot.com startup named iThought.com in Dallas, Texas They eventually sold their data to SBC Yellow Pages, after creating a really interesting splash. The idea was for members to review consumer services and collect actual cash for submitting reviews. This was an early precursor to AngiesList and others, and almost succeeded...sigh...

In the current interactive world, what is the most relevant trend?

Widespread access. Finally.

What do you see interesting about the Web 2.0 phenomenon?

My dissertation topic is related to collaborative visual art production: why is Flickr so fascinating to so many of us? Our urge to share what we have made, and our appetite for seeing art made by others, seems remarkable. So far, this is one aspect of human creativity that occurs without the thought of profit, at least in terms of the people making the images. People make visual art and want to show it off. And they dont even care if they get paid. That is unusual and interesting, I think.

What would you do to terminate Internet spam once and for all?

Hmmm. Was it Einstein who said we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them? There must be a technological way to end this nonsense, but it seems illusive. Perhaps we will resign ourselves to a certain amount of garbage among our treasure, although that is a depressing approach to take, I admit.

In some ways, this is related to the idea of 'Net censorship. It is almost impossible for any one entity to completely censor the entire system, by definition. Unfortunately, that same is true for keeping out noise.

Will bandwidth one day cease to be a limitation?

No. However wide the bandwidth, there will always be someone tinkering to discover a new way to play with the existing toys. Greediness and curiosity are not always bad things, though, so limited bandwidth will keep people creative, subverting the existing systems.

Your tips to make money online

No one makes money online.

I dont care what the late night TV ads say.

You make money by selling ideas (fashion) and products (cars) and services (plumbers) and art (Bob Dylan) and files (Microsoft) and expertise (WebMD) and entertainment (YouTube) and information (The New York Times).

There is no secret. You have to produce something to make money, even if it is intangible or useless.

I hate this question because it cheapens the beauty and power and genuine meaning of the Net. But I also understand that porn was the only profitable thing on the Net before 2002 or so, and I am resigned to that.

Maybe it's just the nature of asking "How do I make money online?" I would rather you go get a job and leave my online world alone.

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