IV » Design Progress

ImagineRIT and the Latest Updates for Newsiversse

Kristen — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:23:17 +0000

Hello there…

Sorry for the delay, but Team IV has been busy tweaking and coding away at our lovely senior project yu know and love. Plus, having ImagineRIT in our minds kept us driven to keep working and put off a bit of sleep for a while. No harm there!

Anyways, we have changed a lot since our last post. We have found a great transition from the nodes’ closed state to their full story window state – flipping them on their sides! The transition helps change the node from circle to line/square (on it’s side) so we can pull out a little window for your feed-viewing pleasure. Also, Matt helped to add some awesome particle animations to give some added visuals to the project.

We changed the transition because companies from Industry Day advised us to take away some clicking points. In other words, we wanted the story to load immediately after one click, not after seeing the tweets load and THEN clicking to get the story. So now, the full story window loads and the tweets appear on the right side of the window. Done and done.

We got this design functioning just in time for ImagineRIT, which was May 2nd here at RIT. We had visitors ranging from ages 8 to mid-70′s and all seemed to be impressed with our concept and accomplishments. I found that middle-aged visitors really appreciated out site as they could get all their various news sources in one location without too much text to read/filter through. But, we still got a lot of feedback based on how the visitors experienced and used our site for the first time:

- Node sizes. A handful of visitors asked us if the node sizes they saw on the idle screen indicated levels of importance in terms of the news. We were confused at first, but then we understood that the presence of depth in our site is not so obvious. Since we have been staring at this project for two semesters, we understand that you are to click and hold down the mouse key to surf through the nodes. Yet, this evidently was not obvious enough. The users understood that the sizes were due to your current position on the z-axis, but only after we told them how to move through the nodes.

To fix this problem, we implemented a more 3D-like cursor to help show that you are to move forward and click on things. Also, we added a “breathing” design to the nodes in hopes of drawing people to the distant nodes. The subtle movement/change can catch a users eye and indicate that they should click on the node as well as dig deeper into our site. We are still fine-tuning the concept to ensure that there is little confusion from the start as to how to use our site.

- Smoother transitions. Since ImagineRIT seemed to sneak up on us despite our constant reminders that it would, we showed our project with a few snags and incomplete designs. Our transition from node to full story was a bit rough, but it at least functioned properly and showed the story. Our YouTube nodes were working great and we showed an AWFUL amount of Susan Boyle videos. Fortunately, we discovered that YouTube has a standard “Most Popular” feed should you not specify the date. Once we realized this, we changed the feed link in Flash and immediately saw videos from Obama and from shows OTHER than ‘Britains Got Talent.’ (No offense, but really).

- Last minute additions. Since ImagineRIT, we buckled down and got the final touches in for the most part. We removed unecessary features like the “sound on/off” button and replaced it with our new ‘filter’ button. I mentioned our new 3D cursor above, but I think it really adds to the project. We tweaked the full story mode so that there isn’t a HUGE window for small feed description as well as smoothing the transition all together. Tweets now come in perfectly and have a subtle transition when hovering over them….aaaand we finally added Matt’s partical loader, which explodes into our current, starry background. Everything has been falling together quite well and we are in a very awesome position!

As of now, we are wrapping up our final presentation to show off our hard work. Our project is 97% complete and we are excited to see what our peers and professors think once they get a full showing of it. Here’s to the final week and our upcoming graduations!

Design Progression – Brooks

Brooks — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:45:41 +0000

First Round:

Comp1-1

Comp1-2

Comp2-1

Comp2-2

Round 2:

Comp3-1

Round 3:

Comp4-1

Comp4-2

Round 4:

Comp5-1

Comp5-2

Design Progression – Joanna

Joanna — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:15 +0000

comp v1.0

comp v2.0

comp v3.0

comp v4.0

comp v5.0

Design Progression – Randy

Randy — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:05:40 +0000

1) Let’s Start at the Beginning…

Our initial concept was some form of growth, either organic in nature, or more scientific. I went with the latter and tried to visualize nerves and synapses connecting feeds together.

Comp v1.0

2) Abstracting a bit

After seeing some killer growth stuff by Grant Skinner we explored some different methods of showing growing vines and trees. I tried to abstract that as a secondary graphic element while the articles and tweets would sprout and float around these vines.

Comp v2.0

3) Nodes, nodes, nodes

As a group we decided that nodes would better visualize our concept. While growth and organic progression sounds good in theory, it is just too abstract and open to best showcase the specific articles and bits of information we were trying to display. I tried to get back to a more tangible and relatable style by displaying articles as bouncy-ball-like planets on a wooden floor. Not quite chic, but kinda fun.

Comp v3.0

Comp v3.1

4) Shiny Things are good

When all else fails make it SHINY! Clean and glossy normally isn’t my strongest style, but I really wanted to capture the look of the interior of a space craft, complete with shiny knobs and glossy buttons and a clear view of space beyond. The extra time and research really helped on this one, and I was pretty happy with the result.

Comp v4.0

Comp v4.1

5) Greater than the sum of its parts

Throughout this design process the coolest part was not only pushing myself while designing, but also seeing how Matt, Brooks, and Joanna’s could solve the same problem in totally different ways. Every week I’d check out their comps and really examine what ways their concepts were successful, and how I could incorporate these assets into my own design.

Comp v5.0

Comp v5.1

After 5 weeks of designing – about 40-50 comps between the 4 designers – how our solutions could all meld together into one coherent, successful design? Stay tuned!

Design Progression – Matt

Matt Austin — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:48:05 +0000

Here’s a look back at how my designs have progressed. Enjoy.

Version 1

Comp v1.0

Version 2

Comp v2.0

Version 3

Comp v3.0

Version 4

Comp v4.0