Bill Harvey's page has an interesting user interface. There’s an element of the ZoomingInterfaceParadigm (JefRaskin’s idea that you arrange stuff in a plane and allow people to zoom in until they get to actual documents that they can edit, without having to map their suroundings to an application, and metaphorical files on their metaphorical desktop to real documents on their real desktop). Harvey’s website only has two levels, however: You can click outside of the pictures to zoom out and get an overview of the various pages in the area. It works pretty well because of the smooth zooming.
There’s also the element of an InfiniteCanvas (ScottMcCloud’s idea to draw comics on an infinite plane and have the story progress from one pane to the next in any direction you want). The Harvey website has simple pages consisting of collage photos linked to each other via trails that you can follow. It works really well because the starting pictures map out an appartment, and there’s a floating picture of him following you around as you move from room to room. His face is video animated and gives you an introduction and starts singing songs from his latest album.
The two ideas are linked together in that there are side-stories you can find that are not connected to the appartment where you start out. You have to zoom out, find another group of connected pages, and zoom in again to see the pictures and read the scribbling.
The idea of the 2D layout is reinforced by a cool audio effect: The floating Harvey image follows you around when you are loooking at pages in the first group of pictures – the appartment. When you move away from this group, his image doesn’t follow you anymore (no trail for him, and he can’t zoom out!) and the music gets softer as you move away from him.
Totally cool.
Found it via Blow your mind in Z-space by Kathy Sierra on Creating Passionate Users.
You should visit the infinite canvas blog and read some of the infinite canvas-using webcomics, too.
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