This is the interactive screen the user sees when they first pull it up.
As the cursor moves around, the user discovers certain things change as they roll over them. The seaweed turns green if it will play a movie when you click it.
The bubbles will play a sound when you click on it.
These last two are just screen shots of the actual video playing after you click the appropriate seaweed.
- what music, voice, and sound effects bring to a narrative that is different from visual communication channels
- All of the above make the videos played more entertaining as well as bring new depth and understanding to the videos. Serious sounds or songs could have cast a depressing/downer tone on the videos, but upbeat "happy" sounds bring the sense of playfulness in that I wanted to portray with my original movies.
- the different communicative qualities of music, voice, and sound effects (compare and contrast)
- Music generally denotes a beat or rhythm. Fast for a fast-paced movie, slow for a slow paced movie, or a contrast of the two in order to bring new understanding to the video. Sound effects can either reinforce or jumble the users experience and bring new levels of complexity to the piece. Voices are very personal. The user will interpret a piece differently no matter who says it. Man/woman, screaming/whispering, singing/ben-stein happy/sad all effect the viewers experience.
- the differences between simultaneous and sequential communication
- sequences generally keep the experience less confused and less jumbled. Simultaneous- the more you have going on the more complicated something becomes with a potential of creating chaos. Certain levels of chaos can bring entertainment to some. Sequences can get boring/"lame"
- user vs designer control of your project
- as a designer I had to decide what I wanted the user to have control over. I decided to give the user many options. All of the sounds can overlap and play at the same time, but the user can only see one movie playing at a time. I decided too many movies at once would be annoying. Sounds can be annoying too if they are all playing at once, but there is a chance to include different sounds into different parts of the single movie.
- participants’ ability to discover relationships through interactive play
- certain sounds work better with certain movies. Certain sounds work well together, some end up jumbled. It is up to the user to decide what makes sense and what works for them. They have a chance to create whatever experience that they want. What are you in the mood for? Order? Chaos? Diversion? Systematic?
2 comments:
The layout is great and is a nice unexpected change showing the end product (print) as your interactive screen. The black and white work well and emphasizes the videos well. The seaweed and bubbles work well as the video and sound activation buttons; its very logical and easy to understand; I appreciated the word rollovers to indicate which sounds were which. The navigation is very easy and accessible. The music, lyrical and instrumental, was very appropriate and added a fun attitude to printmaking. The sound effects were a nice range of literal and unexpected. The selected clips were a nice touch of going through a linear and nonlinear time line of your animation. I had a little confusion of finding how many seaweed buttons were actual videos, but other than that it was a nice cohesive interactive experience.
Your interface layout as well as look and feel are great, I love the high contrast of the black and white. The subtle reveal of color with the movie roll-overs is very nice as well as the type reveal with the sounds. I love the fact that it is sort of a "hide and seek" layout, much like mine is, it is nice that you really have to interact with the piece to figure out what is going on and what does what. The quality of the sounds is great and they are very fitting for your interface. Separating the clips so that they pertain directly to the sound effects is a nice touch and makes the interface well rounded and cohesive.
One of the only things that bothered me was that the sounds looped after they played and the only way to make them stop was to click on it again. Just a minor detail that can be fixed with some good ol' actionscript.Again, something minor, but I would have liked to be able to click on the movie clip itself to turn off the clip, that way there are 2 ways to escape the movie as it may work better than having to find the right roll-over again. Your background layout works very well in framing the movie clips and it is nice how you integrated your sound and movie clip buttons in to your background image. The monochromatic feel throughout the interface and movie clips works very well and makes this very successful.
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