This first design is based off of a Museum map that gives each student a room in which their life & personality can be exhibited for the viewer's discovery & education. The rooms would most likely have colored borders that appear when rolled over and onClick would make the room open up to be viewed.
This design is a kind of sneaky detective approach to discovery. The tools on the side of the screen can be dragged to a file and used to open it up and zoom to different items. The file would have paperwork, including the student's name, age, etc & pictures.
8 comments:
Hi Julie,
I like both of your interface ideas a lot. Both look really clean and well organized. On the "museum map" idea, how would I know to whom each room belongs, or would that be part of the discovery? If not, you might want to have either text or some sort of icon system to differentiate each room (maybe a museum map that you could pull up?).
This one seems pretty straightforward, easy to understand without much previous experience (everyone understands filing cabinets). Would the files always be put back in the same order or could the user choose how to organize the information within the file cabinet?
Layout 1 Your museum concept feels very old-fashioned (in a good way of course). I like the colors so far. I know you used a magnifying glass in the second layout but it might enhance your design a bit to use one here too. Say the user clicked or moused-over a room and it would be magnified that way.
Layout 2 This concept is really cute, especially the part about being a sneaky detective. If you really wanted to push that idea you might use some creative lighting. I'd try using real objects and see where you go with it. Like a real filing cabinet, a real 'naked' bulb, and maybe a creepy shadow in the background that moves ever so slightly. I like that it looks like a little game.
Layout 1 I like the concept Julie and the color is nice, but I think it would be more interesting if the image that popped up more resembled a room. Like if you took a picture of a glass display case and imposed us inside. I assume the info boxes are for our pictures, and can you only travel to adjacent rooms or go anywhere? I think it would be a good idea if the person's name appeared when you moused over their box too.
Layout 2 I think this idea has more promise, but I've always been a fan of gritty detective type stuff. The tools are good too, but if you only have a few it might get annoying to switch between them, maybe make it more context sensitive. A window with blinds on the back wall would be awesome, maybe a burning cigarette on a desk too.
I really like the museum map idea. However, to make the design more dynamic, make the layout of the museum asymmetrical. Also, like the other comments, make it clear who belongs to which room either by displaying the name on rollover or design a key that at least identifies each room by whether it is a girl or a boy.
The file cabinet approach is clever for the main screen. A suggestion to enhance the detective approach is to make our defining objects "evidence" Through Photoshop, you could place our objects in bags and have them come out of a seperate file cabinet when the file is pulled with our information.
julie.
although both ideas are cute...i think te map has more places to go. In general I think the file cabinet becomes more problematic when you get deeper into the content.
in terms of the map...push the design more in the direction you want it to go...cute, illustrated...old timey map..or clean map design...
in other words...would this be more like the london underground map?
kids video game?
or cortez to thenew world map?
all of them have potential...don't be afraid to toss this design fully ingot one of these camps though. rightnow the design is still tentative...
if you are looking for the map and real paper though...
http://etniesgirl.com/
http://www.homeskilletfest.com/
http://www.designmeltdown.com/chapters/OldPaper/Part2.aspx
Layout 1 I like this design aesthetically, and I think there is definite potential in the concept. At the moment theres not much going on in the map itself though. It would be nice if each room had its own character or personality, so we had a least a hint of who belongs in what room. Also, how do we get from the close-up view of a room back to the main map? Another thing you might think about is dividing the rooms up so that they all aren't one big grid. Perhaps divide it into males and females, or short people/average people/tall people, etc.
Layout 2 Overall I like this one better. It reminds me of old (circa 1990) adventure games, where they just started using the mouse for interaction, and you'd have different "tools" to interact with the world. I like that exploration aspect of this one. I think aesthetically it would really benefit if it were presented in the gritty, photographic film-noir style, which lends itself to the whole detective theme.
Layout 1: I like the feel of this one. It's kinda like Old West or Indiana Jones. How were you planning on showing which room you were choosing before it enlarges? There isn't a lot of contrast, which isn't bad, but it makes it look kinda flat with such a clean style. You could texturize the map to bring it together. How do you navigate between the other pictures or are there other pictures? I like this one of your two style frames the best.
Layout 2: This one is more interesting as far as interface. With only two options you could probably have the mouse do a different action for each button and have the menu part as a legend. Or you could activate the cursor by clicking on it and then the it would have that functionality. I think it might be confusing to people if they drag it and release before they get to the file? Old people have weak hands.
Layout 1 I like how this one looks. I think the rooms should be labeled somehow though, otherwise it would be too easy to forget who was where if you were looking for a specific person. It might be more intersting if the rooms were different shapes, and that might also help with remembering where people's rooms were.
Layout 2 This one could be really interesting and offers a lot of possibilities. I think it's better at involving the user in the experience. My thoughts here are along the same lines as the first one: if all the files look the same how does one find a particular person? I like this one a lot. (But I think the success of this design also depends a lot on what the file itself looks like.)
Post a Comment