Scion has taken an interesting direction for the latest campaign/advergame for the new xD called Little Deviant. The site has an interesting look that it is like Corpse Bride and Dark City had a child. The heart of the site is game has you killing Sheepie which are dour colorless conformists who pop out of building to collect their green blood which gives you points. You work your way through all seven levels to complete the game and are rewarded with a closer look at the xD, see all the Little Deviant character, and get a printable Scion xD paper 3-D model. So with this site Scion stays true to their core message of nonconformity and creates a well-conceived and executed virtual world but my favorite this year is still the Got Milk? Get the Glass virtual world and game.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional experiences, Exceptional Flash, Online advertising review, Site review

I was a huge fan of Neostream Interactive for years because of their rich animation style in Flash. I still remember the preloader to their site was the first one I ever saw that was funny and more than just a vanilla loading bar. They fell off my radar quite a while ago but now they are back with a new online animated series called Shockboy. The series star their pointy headed mascot who has appeared on their site for years. The animation reminds me heavily of Samurai Jack and is an impressive display of blending traditional and 3D techniques in Flash. It will be interesting to see if the show can last as other companies like Mondo Media tried for year with brilliant content and couldn't make it last. I still think Heavy Metal Guy is the hysterical and brilliant Flash animation ever created. Hopefully this effort will finally find the fan base and revenue to keep this expression of the medium going strong.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional Flash

Papervision 3D has been around for a little while and has been demoed at Flash Forward and other events. You may have seen the underwater example that has been running around the net for the past few months. This week designer Carlos Ulloa unveiled what I think is the most stunning use of the technology thus far with a 3D controllable race car which races around his home page. For me it isn't that fact that you can control the 3D car which is as impressive as the little touch he added to bring it to life. The fact that the car ramps up to speed, has weight when it moves and the steering centers itself when you aren't turning make it a really wonderful and fun experience.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional design, Exceptional experiences, Exceptional Flash, Unique interface design, Viral

If you have a dark sense of humor and have a friend who's a lady's man you will love this. Go to SheHasYourEyes.com and send your friend a video message featuring a young lady claiming she had a daughter from him. The site was created by Happiness in Brussels for Condoms.com and obviously the point is to promote the use and the purchase of condoms. The viral aspect works since the message is unexpected and the experience is memorable but I am not convinced that it will move the sales needle.

Labels: Design and user experience, Digital culture, Viral

Cartier has launched a new site for their LOVE line of jewelry. The animation, music and creative design make it a much more engaging experience than I was expecting.

The two most interesting sections are the LOVE gallery and LOVE stories. The LOVE gallery has all forms of art from drawings to photography from young artists from all over the world who are exploring the concept of love. Love stories is an interesting concept made up of 12 black and white interactive films by Olivier Dahan. At the end of each of the movies you interact with a red colored ovject which is used to move into the next segment. It is nice to see that Cartier too the opportunity to put a concept behind the site and make it into more than just a sales site.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional design, Exceptional experiences, Site review, Unique interface design

Still Alive is a really interesting multiuser interactive experience where you can stitch nature and animals from the Brazilian rain forest. Enter your name to get started and will see a ghosted back image of a tree you can use as a reference or you can stitch whatever you want on the canvas. You can also see all the other users who are on the site at the same time as you and you can see what they are stitching on the canvas. It is interesting to watch to see how people use the canvas as it ranges from some people who use as intended to make art while others do all sorts of things like use it as a visual chat engine.

The interface for the stitching is simple enough but you can also access more detail about the project through navigation at the bottom of the page. This content appears thanks to a cat's paw that moves the canvas out of the way to reveal the content. I struggle with how a house cat fit's into a project about saving the rain forest.

So while the site is cool and is an interesting experience, it seems like it could be doing a lot more for the cause since there is no call to action, no action being taken by based on visits to the site or anything more than a semi-hidden awareness message. The multiuser aspect does set it apart from other sites like NEC ecotonoha but since it doesn't have the actual impact like that project did in the real world makes this site feel more like just a cool design than actually making a difference.

Labels: Consumer generated content, Design and user experience, Digital culture, Exceptional experiences, Exceptional Flash, Site review, Unique interface design

One of my partners in crime at work sent me a strange and interesting site today called AH le film. Very little of the site is in English but I think this is a promotional site for a animated film. The interface is one of the most unique and disturbing ones I have ever seen since it has you controlling a little girl running through a Dali style wasteland littered with bits of alphabet soup and half-buried kids. You run up to one of the heads and the alphabet soup style letters float up to reveal what that section contains. This is an interesting and engaging way to get around the site but it can be hard to find the content you are looking for since the whole world looks the same and sometimes getting the content to trigger is a bit of a trick. So while it is disturbing I really love the visual style and unique approach this site uses and it is worth checking out.

UPDATE:
Thanks to Arturo over at BBDO Atmosphere for the info that this is actually a student film created by three students. Click here to see the whole film on YouTube.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional Flash, Site review, Unique interface design

So the Wiki, which lets users create written content that can be shared and edited by multiple people, has been around for a while now but I saw a site today that put a really interesting twist on the concept called Wet Paint Please Touch. Like any Wiki the site lets you browse, contribute and create to the content on the site but in this case the content is not written but visual.

Would-be virtual artists start with a blank canvas and have a variety of tools and colors to create their mural. Once their masterpiece is complete the canvas can be forwarded to friends so that they can contribute their own creative vision to the piece. Once all of that is finished the painting is exhibited in the online gallery where visitors can explore and rate the work. Not forgetting the social media aspects you can also downloaded your work to post on you MySpace pages, Facebook profiles or get your own domain like http://bobsmith.wetpaint.com. So the simple interface and social group art concept make it one of the more unique and interesting sites I have seen in a long time.

Labels: Consumer generated content, Design and user experience, Exceptional experiences, Great exhibition, Viral

For those of you who are interested, I will be attending Adobe MAX this year in Chicago so if you are planning on attending and want to grab a drink and talk shop let me know.

I know it has been way, way too long since I have uploaded any new open source to any of my sites. I used to have a better balance between design and production/actionscripting but lately have been concentrating almost entirely on design and I wanted to get things back in balance. I have started work again on the new version of my portfolio site, have been sprucing up this blog and have been coding again.

I started back in with this simple file that uses a preloader to control the progress of a timeline animation. In this case the couch animation is broken up into eight parts and each part will only play once the corresponding percentage has been loaded. If the whole file loads right away like in this case the animation will play straight through. The best way to see it in action is download the file, publish it and run the 'simulate download' under the View option.

The heart of the script looks like this -

p = Math.round((_root.getBytesLoaded()/tkb)*100);
// This calculates the amount of the file that has loaded in bytes and concerts it to a percentage.

// This uses the range calculated what part of the animation should be played.
if (p >= 90) {
this.couch.targetnum = 8;
} else if (p <= 89 and p >= 80) {
this.couch.targetnum = 7;

and so on. This runs in a loop until the file is loaded and it goes on to play the transition to the image.

Download for Mac | Download for PC

Labels: Flash open source

A friend sent me a link today to a really interesting site from The Wall Street Journal called The Creative Leadership Series. The campaign is not new since it has been going on 15 years highlighting over 100 of the world's best advertising creatives. I love this campaign as it is one of the only high profile platforms that the creative who work behind the scenes get to take a bow in a non-industry forum. I personally agree with a lot of the selection but I also think that based on meeting and working with some of them that they are mediocre creatives with good PR agents.

The Wall Street Hournal is now re-lauching the campaign and they are opening up the process to the public to choose the new creative that will be featured in the new campaign. All you have to do to enter is interview the person you want to enter, add your comments, upload their photo and you are done. All entries must be in by midnight June 23rd so hurry up and enter!

Labels: Consumer generated content, Digital culture, Great exhibition, Great resource

Anyone who has been paying attention the past year and a half knows that video is the new standard on the Internet brought about by the rise of broadband. Last Christmas finally saw hi-definition video enter the mainstream with the price drop of HDTV's and the introduction of technology like Blu-ray and the PS3. The combination of the two have slowly been finding they way on to the Internet and I usually get my fix from the movie trailers on Apple.com but lately I have been using the new beta of Vuze. It is a BitTorrent client that was developed to be a high-resolution content platform and houses a lot of great content. Most content is free but there is some content that can be purchased or rented and this is mostly broadcast content from channels like Showtime, A&E and more. One of the biggest reasons I keep coming back to the it is the that when you sign up it downloads the application to your desktop so all content is unified into one simple and very nice interface. The dark grey colors and content buckets make me nostalgic for my past life as a Discreet (now Autodesk) Flame video and special effects composting artist but interface is very well done and makes navigating the content easy. It will be interesting to see if content channels like this continue to grow as I would much rather use something like this than for video content than wade through the floor on YouTube.

Labels: Exceptional experiences, Great resource

Simple, product focused and funny.

Labels: Offline advertising

This Coke Faithless & Paranoid site has been around for a little while and has been described as a visual poetry application. It was created by the multidisciplinary collaboration of the music of Faithless, the video artists from Paranoid and the German interactive agency Argonauten. The process to create the site started with Paranoid and Argonauten creating the storyboard for the site that centers around Faithless character Mr. Neant. That story board was then given to Faithless who use the storyboard as inspiration for the music.

The site lets you create works of art using your keyboard, mouse, microphone and webcam. These devices will help you do things like define the shape, position, size and color of your personal artwork. Typing letters will make different shapes appear on the bottle. You can use the microphone to make the bottle shake and remove elements from the bottle. Different speeds of motion from the webcam will shuffle the elements on the bottle. The site uses a lot of elements of the Flash player I haven't seen in this combination before to create an engaging experience for a while but once I did it one time I didn't have any urge to do it again.

All of this artistic collaboration is to support a new limited aluminum bottle Coke has created with artwork from from collaboration. They used a new process to put UV ink on the aluminum so it it will glow in the dark and it is only being sold in the "hippest" clubs across Europe. Coke has been searching for a new and stronger brand position for a while so this It is an interesting start as they play to take the brand up scale with not only the project but the exclusive and limited edition bottle. It seems to be working since I was intruiged enough about adding a bottle to the collection of toys and collectibles in my studio that I took a spin through eBay and found a bottle on sale for $50. That is a little steep for me but it would look good next to my set of Tokyo Plastic figures...

Labels: Design and user experience, Digital culture, Exceptional experiences, Exceptional Flash, Site review, Unique interface design

I saw an absolutely fascinating new piece of technology this morning from Microsoft Live Labs called Photosynth. It takes a large collection of photos of a location or an object and analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space. It is based on another new technology called Seadragon that lets you scale images of any size and resolution with amazingly smooth motion and speed.

I know it hard to visualize so check out the tour and then download the tech demo. You should also check out this talk given by Photosynth's architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, at the TED conference where he shows it off.

Once you have the demo up and running you can see the 3D model made up of hundreds of dots and each of which represents a photo from the collection that has been mapped on to the model. You can click or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle in a very seamlessly zoom in or out of every photo no matter the file size. You can also turn on the camera cones to see where pictures were taken in relation to one another which is interesting because the groupings show you areas of interest. If the 3D model becomes too much you can see the photos in a contact page style layout and then click on photos of interest to see where they fall on the model.

Labels: Design and user experience, Digital culture, Exceptional creative, Exceptional design, Exceptional experiences, Visionary designer

Over the years Flash has taken a beating for a lot of reasons - some of which were legitimate and some that were over inflated. To help address this problem the development team at Nurun | Ant Farm Interactive created a site to defend the technology called 'The Flash Files'. The site is designed like a noir detectives desktop with the coffee cup, lamp and a six file folders each labeled with specific Flash criticisms. Topics covered include "Flash is a discouraging plug-in," "Flash cannot be optimized to be search engine-friendly" and "User behavior cannot be monitored on a Flash website.". All the topics are well researched and do a good job of not being too tech heavy in their explanation.

While I saw clients take a strong stand against Flash at one point, I personally haven't seen any push back in the past few years so I am not sure what triggered them to create this site. Maybe I should take it as inspiration and create a site about how the idea behind the Flash is more important than the production technique used to bring it to life.

Labels: Design and user experience, Great resource, Site review

OgilvyInteractive in Belgium has launched a new microsite for Pfizer and the World No Tabacco Day. The site is in what I am told is French or Flemish and lets visitors craft and send a "personalized" smoker's cough to their friends. I imagine the combination of a serious subject like this presented in a new a way with possible offbeat humor will make it a viral success.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional creative, Online advertising review

I came across this really nice portfolio site called kelvinzhao.net. The interface is simple but it finds a lot of elegance in that simplicity and I LOVE the open quote.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional design, Exceptional experiences

I can't image that I am alone in the fact that if I never hear the term 'Web 2.0' again it will be too soon but I love working with the technology and seeing what people are doing with it. To that end I came across what is being billed as the definitive directory Web 2.0 directory called go2web20.net. The interface is minimal to be able to jam as much content into the page as possible but it makes exploring the sites hit and miss. Each time you click on a small logo it brings up a minimal description at the bottom of the page and you have to hunt out the link to the site. About 1 out of every 5 or 10 sites is intriguing and the are pretty run of the mill. So the site is an interesting collection but I expected a site about 'Web 2.0' to have a AJAX panel slide out with the site info for a better user experience.

Labels: Design and user experience, Great resource

I recently discovered COLOURlover.com. I like the site and will use but it does get dangerously close to the Adobe Kuler project at times. Like Kuler, the site lets your create, save, rank and comment on palettes usually made up of 5 colors. The site does differentiate itself in the Colors Blog and Trends sections. The Colors section is strange since it is the same functionality as the Palettes section but each submission is limited to one color. Aside from the social experiment of see what is the world's favorite color I am lost as to what I would use this section for. The Blog is the standard fare but it does have nice content which obviously focuses around color. The Trends section is one of the more interesting sections as it has palettes taken from popular magazines and websites. I think this info could lead to an interesting starting point for designers or it could lead to a lot more accurate copycats - I hope for the earlier but expect the later.

So in the final analysis I tried using Adobe's Kuler but it didn't stay in my toolkit for very long because the overly clever interface just couldn't do everything I needed. I will give COLOURlovers.com a spin and see if the additional content and functionality keeps it in my good graces.

Labels: Great resource, Site review

Today Apple released a few new products at their developers conference but they also released a new design for their site which brought a new visual design and content organization. Those of you who are regulars to the site probably saw the change coming as they have been moving away from the Aqua style that was launched with OS X to a cleaner and more modern design that mirrors the brushed titanium look of the towers and Pro notebooks. The content was simplified into 6 main nav options so you will have to re-find some of your favorite sections. The Store and iPhone were untouched but the Mac and iPod+iTunes sections got the biggest overhauls with a horizontal scrolling product explorer to see all their offerings. It is a clean experience that brings focus to the top of the page but I struggle with the rest of the content pages as they all now use Web 2.0 technology where modules have sliding tabs that reveal more info about the content. It is a nice way to get a lot of content into one page but some of the pages use so many that it feels overwhelming and you don't know where to start exploring. They are always tweaking and tuning the design so it will be interesting to see if this system continues over time or if it moves towards the more simplified theme we have seen and evolved in the past.

Labels: Site re-launch

Click any image to enlarge.

It was great to see and meet everyone who made it to the Microsoft Surface live demo at the Sheraton New York in Times Square. Microsoft brought 3 Surface demo machines loaded with all the software applications they have demo'd so was packed from open to close. My compliments and thanks to Microsoft and the Sheraton New York for a great event.

I am writing a full review of the technology that I will post in a few days.

Labels: Great exhibition

As long as I have been doing this it is rare for something to catch me off guard but something did tonight. I was surfing around and found the site for a company called NetEye in Denmark. You are met with the usual "Launch in fullscreen" prompt we have all seen a million times before. Since I work on a Mac a just expect this to open the generic new browser window at the full monitor size but this time was different. It was the first time I have EVER SEEN a site open a seamless, menuless, full screen window on a Mac and it is impressive. They make the most of the effect with a nice site that has a lot of video and animation to keep your attention. So if any of my wildly talented readers out there has any ideas of how they pulled it off I would love to hear about it.

Labels: Design and user experience, Exceptional design, Exceptional experiences, Exceptional Flash

I came across an interesting site for Garnier in Belgium where they have launched a new microsite for their shampoo line. While not anywhere near as entertaining as the Philips Bodygroom site this
site does do a nice job of letting the content and subject matter become the interface for a site and create an interesting experience for something that could easily become very boring. You control a guy standing in front of the mirror in his bathroom and you can have him point at different things in the room to see the different content.

Labels: Design and user experience, Unique interface design

Altoids has launched a new game called "Where's Cindy". The game is a straight rip off of Where's Waldo with the only unique twist is that it is done in Google Earth where you follow clues to Where's Cindy. So while this gets some credit for being the first attempt I have seen to use Google Earth in a game, the problem is that there is no explanation about why I should care about finding her.

The game play consists of you typing a location into your passport and correct answers will give you Google Earth kml file with the corresponding place mark of the answer on Google Earth. When you load the place mark all it does it link back to a new page on the website with a new clue. This constant back and forth creates a bad user dynamic because you have to keep switching between your web browser and Google Earth as each new clue comes in a new kml file. So while this is breaking new ground, the way it is executed keeps it from being anything more than a forgettable first attempt that will be lost to the hype that will surround concept that gets this channel right.

Labels: Design and user experience, Gaming, Online advertising review

I came across an interesting site today called the Border Film Project which is trying to shed light one of our country's most heated issues - immigration. The project is run by three people including Weiden + Kennedy Rudy Adler who are trying to convey perspectives from both sides of the literal fence by handing out 73 disposable cameras to undocumented migrants and the Minutemen guards trying to prevent them from crossing our borders.

The project recently finished and the nearly 2,000 photos have been posted to the site with statistics, and other information. The project also comes in book form and that is being sold in several places including Amazon.com and American Apparel worldwide. The artists have also been taking the show on the road with exhibitions around the country.

Labels: Digital culture, Great exhibition, Viral

In my continuing thread about the interactive work by MSN they have release a screensaver called MSN NewsStream. It is a simple interface that consolidates and colored codes over 100 RSS feeds in one place. It is another interesting expression of their integrated design style.

Labels: Design and user experience, Digital culture, Exceptional experiences, Exceptional Flash, Integrated advertising

I have worked on several car accounts in my career so I keep tabs on what the car makers are up to and I saw today that Volkswagen has re-designed their site. This new site was created by Cripsin Porter + Bogusky, which is their agency of record, with Domani Studios and Oshyn Inc..

The most noticeable difference is that the entire site is now done in Flash, though it is broken up into individual pages to help with marketing and search engine optimization. The main navigation dominates the home page and is made up of a large search field and the main nav options. I spent a lot of time tinkering with the search functionality and I was really surprised that such a dominant piece of functionality was pretty much useless if you do anything but a really generic search. Searching for terms like "New York dealers", "New York City dealers", "Rabbit replacement parts" and "Rabbit accessories" all came back with nothing of substance since the top return was always about the Kelley Blue Book cool car awards. You only seem to get useful results when you stay to broad search terms like "special offers" or you click one of the top search terms from the drop down in the nav.

I then went through the rest of the site looking at the design, usability/interface design and functionality.

Visual design & Content
The design of the site is something I struggle with since background of the almost the entire site is white and most cars are shown in white and create this very sterile feel that I have trouble with because I don't see the brand as something that is this vanilla. I kept looking for some twist or Easter egg that would bring the site to life but I never found it. Sections like the Gypsy Cab Project and the Jetta Report add some color and diversity but this is old content that has been brought into the main site so not really part of the re-design.

For me the biggest disappoint came when I clicked in to look at any of their car models. The section felt very light on content and were almost completely devoid of any interactions. The features and specs sections are the best as they offer at least a little animation. I still think that Acura does the best job of letting you explore their cars online with the interactive showrooms they have created for each of their cars. You can open the doors, play with the radio, turn on the lights and really get a sense for how the car is designed.

Usability/Interface design
The usability and interface design of the site is a mixed bag since some areas are really engaging while others areas take more trial and error than they should.

The heart of any automakers site is the 'build a car' functionality since this is the point where you find the most sticky content since users can personalize their content. This car builder does set itself apart since it is the most visual and unique car builder I have seen but at times it is tripped up by usability issues. I thought that the usability around how you move between steps in the building process and how some of the items were added and remove could have been a lot clearer. I did really like the fun and creative touches in the process like when you finish the process or building a Rabbit it says "Breed my Rabbit" or how the last step of building your GTI is customizing your Fast creature. These kinds of fun touches are rarely found in this process and are a welcome addition.

The Compare-o-tron is also a really nice section that lets you graphically compare various VW models to their competition. Different car brand take different approaches to this type of content since some stay completely away from it while others really embrace it. This version does nice job as the VW will throw out all the parts that are not found in the competitive model. This graphic style and content as the interface usability make this process more engaging than on any other car site I have seen.

Another interesting areas is the find a dealer which is a mash-up of Flash and Yahoo maps.

So overall the new VW.com is an ambitious site that moves the bar higher in several area but is plagued by a mixture of design, functional and content problems that keep it from really standing out from the crowd.

Labels: Design and user experience, Site re-launch, Site review