Unique interface design
Nikon moves one step closer to Minority Report
I don’t know anyone who didn’t want Tom Cruise’s virtual desk in movie Minority Report and the new Nikon Cool Pix web site has us one step closer to that dream. The site uses your web cam to let you explore and manipulate your photo libraries on the site with gestures like what you would use on their Cool Pix camera which amazing just like the ones you use on your iPhone. You can experience the demo with some sample photos here. The element that isn’t pictured here and is probably the coolest executions are that in addition to the Web site they also put the technology into ad units and for use on other sites like Flickr through a simple bookmark. It’s a really nice tie-in from the product to the interactive experience that lets you experience something on the camera without ever having one.
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Skittles.com Ends Social Media Experiment
Less than a year after Skittles launched their social media centric clone of Modernista.com they have re-designed the site yet again. This new version again looks to go against traditional conventions by foregoing navigation in favor of a long scrolling web page. I found it surprising that in spite of the page length there is very little content and even less interaction available. There are some photos include a clown in an astronaut suite, links to their Twiiter accounts and a YouTube video but that is pretty much it. Wrigley’s also launched a new microsite called ShareSkittles.com where you can upload video to a randomly paired interactive montage of two people sharing Skittles.
Though the content is light it looks to create a strong interactive platform for the brand that looks to make much better use of the medium than what we saw with the previous generation of work. It is also worth noting that this work is the first to come out of Wrigley’s new roster of digital agencies after they replaced Tribal DDB, Agency.com and Digitas with Firstborn, Big Spaceship and EVB. The three agencies collaborated on the Skittles work, with Big Spaceship handling Skittles.com, Firstborn building ShareSkittles.com and EVB doing their soon to be launched Facebook campaign.
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Social media content compose Grammy nominated artists
I can say with almost complete certainty that the launch of a new awards show Web site has never created the least bit of interest on my part until today and the launch of the Grammy Awards new site WereAllFans.com. The site creates pseudo photo mosaics of 11 featured artists from Dave Matthews to Beyonce out of YouTube, Twitter and Flickr content that was tagged with each of the artists. Each image only borrows from the photo mosaic aesthetic but is more of a semi-transparent image imposed over top of all of the content. Putting the social media content into this format takes it from the thing we have started to overlook because it is so ubiquitous on every site to an interesting and compelling experience that makes it fun to explore. You can look at all the content at once or narrow it down to just site through the simple control interface at the bottom of the page. ‘Join the Conversation’ lets you sign into any of the sites and post your own content with the correct tags so that your content will appear on the site for your favorite artist.
The other half of the site is the The Fanbuzz Visualizer that is a real time data visualization that monitors the daily and total social media buzz for each of the Grammy nominated artists. This experience isn’t nearly as well done as the social media mosaics as I found it littered with technical and design problems. I started with Today’s Posts and was only able to drag and scroll down the 3D list once in 10 tries. Frustrated with that experience I switched over to Total Posts that changes the view to a 2D list and I found that I could click and drag to scroll the content. That relief was quickly replaced by a new frustration as I found that if I kept my browser window in it’s normal more vertical shape the artists and the results were cut off to the point where I couldn’t read a lot of it. After some exploring I realized I had to change the window to a more horizontal shape and that would force the content to zoom back so I could read it. So while it would have been nice to see the same level of innovation and polish put into both halves of the site, the social media content mosaics make it worth checking out.
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Graffiti Analysis 2.0 – Documenting more than just ink.
I found an interesting site today called Graffiti Analysis that studies the unseen motion involved in creating a tag as opposed to just documenting the results. The original version of Graffiti Analysis, developed in 2004 as part of thesis research at Parsons in New York City and can be viewed here. The new version is done with custom software that records the motion data and archives it in a free database housed at 000000book.com in Graffiti Markup Language (GML) files, a new digital standard used by other popular graffiti applications such as Laser Tag and EyeWriter. Influential graffitis artist such as SEEN, TWIST, AMAZE, KETONE, JON ONE and KATSU have had their tags motion captured using the Graffiti Analysis software.
The custom software they use is Graffiti Analysis 2.0 that are playback and capture applications available for free in OSX, Windows and Linux as well as the open source code for both applications. You can also get both in one package with their iPhone application called Graffiti Analysis available through the iTunes Store for $1.99. The downloadable desktop applications require some handy work to build an acrylic capture stand that isn’t that hard to make but the iPhone application may be easier starting point for most people. The iPhone application records your tags with line thickness based on the speed you draw the tag and you can uploaded your tags to 000000book.com for free just like the applications. The resulting tags rendered in 3-D space with the ability to rotate the phone rotates the tag in 3-D and use multitouch to zoom in and out.
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Browser Pong
The guys over at Stewdio have launched a very cool new take on the classic pioneering video game Pong done with three browser windows. The controls couldn’t be any simpler but it still is fun and you can play against the computer or another person.
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Emirates iLingual lets your phone to the talking
Emirates has launched a interesting new iPhone app that helps you speak in three different languages (French, German and Arabic ). You take a picture of your mouth and then the app animates the photo so you can hold your iPhone in front of your real mouth and let the phone do the talking for you. The talking mouth gimmick isn’t original but unlike the MouthOff app this one actually has some real value beyond just a party gag.
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Tobi.com uses AR to bring the dressing room home
Everyone hates having to wedge themselves into a cramped dressing room flooded with never flattering fluorescent lighting but you now have another option. Zugara’s has created an augmented reality dressing room app called Fashionista and is being used by online clothing retailers like tobi.com. You turn on your web cam and then move an AR marker forward and back in front of you to scale the clothes to fit your body. Once that is done you can use positional gestures to see other clothing options, approve or disapprove of your choices or take a photo of your favorite outfits. Your approved choices are moved into your basket and the photo can be uploaded to Facebook to get your friends opinions of your selections.
In the past we have seen augmented reality used in mildly useful ways like the United States Post Office box sizer where you can determine what box you need to ship you gift but this starts to take it to another level. You can clearly see the potential of what this could mean to online shopping as it takes the content off the flat page and makes it interactive and more importantly – makes it personally relevant. I find the opportunities for this type of augmented reality execution really exciting unlike previous executions that were more gimmick than concept.
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Mashable.com draggable social media interface
I may be late to the party on this one but I just had a colleague show me the social media interface on Mashable.com today. On every other site when you want to share a piece of content you have to pick through a long line of small icons to find the one you want. As a designer I have never liked that interface because I think it makes every article I write look like the the United Nations with all the nations flags flying out front when they are in session. With Mashable.com you find the content you want to share, rollover the photo in the story then click and drag to it get the social media interface to appear. Drag it onto your network of choice and you done. The beauty of this approach is that it retains all of the functionality without any impact on the visual design of the site and it really cleans up the user experience by eliminating that multi-colored line of icons. You could put any site design under the interface and it would still work perfectly.
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The Toke 3-in-1 portfolio
I thought the interface design for The Toke portfolio site is simple but I like the way the used the same elements to create 3 different information design layouts for their portfolio.
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Personas – see how the Internet sees you
I came across another interesting data visualization site today called Personas that was part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. The site creates an aggregate display of your online identity by scouring the web for information based on nothing but your name and attempts to put you into a predetermined set of categories. It runs through a few different stages of analysis before it presents you with a colored, segmented line that shows what you are made of according to the internet.
I like this not only as an information design exercise but that it a great illustration of how the vast amount of data on the internet can be filled with near perfect insights as well as huge errors and mischaracterizations. I think that this ying and yang of good and bad is a natural result of pulling data from a one dimensional search, in this case only your name, and the inclusion of any other metrics would obviously greatly improve the results. That being said I think it is also a good reminder that all the data in the world is useless without the skill to be able to analyze and mine the data to separate the gems from the trash.
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