Website Analysis 001 - Pocket Clouds

When the user first arrives at Samuele Granzotto's "Pocket Clouds" one cannot help but see the metaphor between his site and classic 16-bit games from the late 80's and early 90's such as Sonic The Hedgehog and Rainbow Islands. The index page informs the user s/he has one credit inserted, can choose to press play or choose a one or two player experience whilst a jolly tune plays that is reminiscent of so many other 16-bit classics. Unfortunately the experience is not as in depth as one would hope with only the "Press Start" option (activated by left clicking the mouse on it) been available.

Once into the site truly, the music stops (which, to be fair, I could only take so much of before over-dosing on aural sugar), a rainbow appears some jelly like hills pop into existence, a candy can drops from the sky with the sites name attached to it, an information pane appears in the centre of the page and several small characters rise from the ground, each relating to various parts of the website. When the mouse rolls over the hills the wobble like jelly on a spoon with a matching noise, the icons grow and wobble pleasingly whilst creating an appropriate sound (one which I am sure is appropriated from Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Megadrive) all the while bitmap style clouds roll over the jelly and glass landscape at a rate of knots.

This interface although fairly sparse is appealing to me as a designer and as a child who grew up in the 80's. It offers the end-user a window into the world of Samuele Granzotto, showing his work in a fashion that befits them whilst also allowing the user to mirror the feelings they may have felt way back in 1991 when they first plugged that copy of Sonic into the Megadrive.

Overall, though the site is appealing it is a fairly simple one and one that can easily be dissected and storyboarded as in the end all it is an index/about/works/contact/download/links with various sub menus appropriate to each section.

In my opinion "Pocket Clouds" is good concept which is well executed but does not quite live up to its promise of interactivity.

Welcome to the other side...

Hello, welcome to my blog for Interactive Design at Otago Polytechnic. I am a second year student (lets call me "Chris") and I'm currently studying Communication Design at Otago Polytechnic.

The aim of this blog is for it to act as my handbook for the paper [Interactive Design]. It will track my personal learning and show my personal contribution to the project which is made up 4x4 teams.

The project brief is still been finalized although what I can tell you is that it is based around a hospitality interactive learning interface. Overall it should take 10 weeks to complete. Please feel free to comment on any of the posts I make.