[Sigia-l] Facets, Flash, and Fun

[Joe 10]

Thanks you David - you said what I was holding back on. I think that 
example, and the whole site for that matter, is a bit "not ready for 
prime time". The display would have to have another couple layers of 
data to making it a decision maker. Professional camera vs non, 
detachable lenses, user reviews, E-pinions rating,tech specs, link to 
manufacturer, where to buy, lowest price, etc. and how is that 
display grouped? why can't I display it to order them by x facet... 
and on and on.

As it is, it's a show of what a single technology (the slider, not 
even flash) could do to make an interface richer, and it doesn't even 
do that very well.

/Joe

At 1:02 PM -0700 4/22/03, David Heller wrote:
>Both the Cannon & iokio to me are examples of poorly designed experiences
>using Flash. Not b/c of the exact controls but rather b/c the experience
>isn't giving me enough richness to overcome the learning curve in either
>case.
>
>Cannon to me is a no brainer to do in simple DHTML so the flash piece and
>the demo is just a waste of my time.
>
>The iokio is an example of bad information visualizations. What's the point
>of all those cameras there? They don't tell me anything about how they are
>grouped as there is no surrounding context. C|Net used to have back in the
>early days of Java coolness the same type of tool, but instead of showing
>pictures of items, they would pot them out on a graph where on mouseover I
>got more information. Then I was able to limit the # of items on the plotter
>by using sliders (but they were bi-directional, not just decreasing a max,
>but also increasing a min).
>
>Considering this was done in about '97, I'm really unimpressed that a
>company doing this today can't do any better than that. Flash again isn't
>adding enough richness.
>
>If you read the whitepapers on the Flash site one of things that flash can
>do really well is not just make query systems better like this does, but
>also combine form & list on the same screen to reduce navigation. In this
>case I would expect a product summary in some way available on the same page
>as the query builder. Broadmoore is a better example of this, as is the Pet
>Store example on the macromedia site. This separation is a standard HTML
>requirement (though not a necessary one), but is something that is so easy
>to avoid in Flash enabled apps that it is almost inexcuseable not to do it.
>
>-- dave

-- 

Joe Tennis
Information Design Honcho
Joe 10 Group
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