[Sigia-l] RE: Interesting Interface

[Amy Silvers]

Seth Earley wrote:


> Criticism and cynicism aside, these are very creative and at 
> first glance
> interesting.  Agency.net has actual content management 
> applications behind
> the scenes driving what they are doing.  Clearly these bring 
> a new level of
> artistry to UI design, but is there more than initial 
> entertainment value?
> Not sure.
> 
I have to agree here. Visually, these are enticing sites, but I kept
feeling like I wasn't hitting all of the right rooms or buttons or
whatever widgets to get a complete picture. At Agency.net (which I
thought was the best of the four, though the room metaphor seems a
little bit tired to me), it took me a while to figure out what was
where, and I got two different screens each of the times I clicked on
the Contact link. The gas station metaphor at Pixel Gasoline is very
appealing and clever visually, but I got very little sense of the
company's capabilities (on either the French or the English site), and
the "samples" (which I expected to be actual samples of work) were more
baffling than explanatory. Matthew Mahon's site had the least intuitive
navigation of all, but it was great fun to explore; since he's a
photographer and not selling marketing or agency-type services, the site
model seemed more appropriate for his work than for a corporate site.
All in all, though, I'm not sure any of these interfaces would make me
more inclined to hire one of these organizations than a more
straightforward interface would. 

The Tracy Locke site is a little less bells-and-whistles-y, but I
thought it struck a better balance between textual information and
visual dazzle than any of the more "innovative" sites. (I couldn't get
to the intriguingly named dontclick site, which is apparently overrun by
traffic.)

Amy Silvers
Experience Architect
VML