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The development of any assessment should be an iterative and careful process.Ideally, this process is guided by a well-defined framework (see for example Downing in:Downing and Haladyna (eds) Handbook of test development, Lawrence Erlbaum Asso-ciates, Mahwah,2006; Mislevy et al. in On the roles of task model variables in assessmentdesign (CSE Technical Report 500), Educational Testing Service, Princeton,1999; AERAet al. in Standards for educational and psychological testing, AERA, Washington, DC,2004), but such a framework is not always available when the instrument to be developedis new or innovative. Frameworks for the development of traditional computer-based testshave been published and experimented with since the late 1990s, by which time CBT hadalready existed for more than a decade. In an earlier empirical pilot study, we described anew type of assessment for Dutch vocational education, called multimedia-based perfor-mance assessment (MBPA) (self-revealing reference 2014). This CBT uses multiple mediaformats and interactive tasks to measure skills that are currently measured by performance-based assessment. In conducting that pilot study, deficits in the existing literature made itdifficult to ground all developmental steps in sound scientific theory. To remedy thosedeficits, this article presents and validates a framework for the design and development ofMBPA, combining a search of the relevant literature from several subfields of educationalassessment and consultation with assessment experts. The framework unites assessmentdevelopment and multimedia development theory, focus solely on vocational education, and answers the call for a framework from the scientific community. The first step invalidating the prototype framework involved five semi-structured interviews with Dutchassessment and multimedia experts to produce a final version of the framework. Second,the pilot MBPA was reconstructed in accordance with this finalized framework, resultingin an improved MBPA and demonstrating that the proposed framework is a useful andapplicable tool for the design and development of MBPA in vocational education.