Towards a taxonomy for guiding multimedia application development

For research into multimedia development practices to progress, the actual processes and activities performed need to be recorded and compared. For accurate comparison, some agreed means of describing the material is needed. In other fields such as botany and zoology, taxonomies are constructed to facilitate such recording and comparison. We draw on the published literature on multimedia to obtain appropriate terms, and then constructs a taxonomy using traditional techniques, in particular, faceting. We compare our results with existing taxonomies and argue that the latter´s focus on aesthetics is not suitable for research into process and estimating issues. Finally, we discuss the use of the taxonomy as a basis for comparing multimedia projects, and as a basis for identifying the critical factors in multimedia project development. This will be used to support the development of improved process and estimating models.