Beautiful because its interesting I guess… I had to make a wiki entry for my HCI (Human Computer Interfaces) class and I wrote this up. I’m reposting it because unless any of you are in my class, you can’t log into the wiki to read it…
Wiki #5 – Beautiful
Finding a “beautiful” webiste to me proved to be a difficult task. I either saw the websites I use as just useful, but boring, or overly agressive, and hard to use. Therefore I found myself puzzled on what I would use for this 5th wiki that would be considered Beautiful. Stuck, I did what I usually do when I run into a problem I cannot solve. I entered the words that were troubleing me into google and did a search. I turned up the Webby Awards website. (http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10#best_visual_design_aesthetic) Of course I decided to start with the Winner, and I found the site fascinating. I spent time on the site, navigating through the design, interested in what I might uncover under each link. Here is a rundown on the setup of the site. Oh, if you want you could just go visit it. It can be found at http://www.leoburnett.ca When you first enter the sight, you are presented with a nice image of the signature of Leo Burnett with a pencil above his name.
When you move your cursor over the image, you “pick up” the pencil, some short music is played and it becomes your cursor and the letters spread out on the page… Around each letter you see logos an small images. As you move the mouse around the screen the pencil draws little lines wherever it has traveled. This is entertaining in and of itself, and I found enjoyment in filing in white space on the page. (The lines disappear after a while, and the enjoyment does wear out some…)
If you move your cursor over one of the words, or images, you find that it magnifies, and most become a logo or at least colored. If you then click, you are zoomed into a sub category of the page. For instance off the B I clicked the Samsung Logo, and this zoomed in to reveal the next image.
It turns out that this is a “web” of infomration – some of the links have sub links, and most are for ads, or creative campaigns created by Leo Burnett Worldwide. (The company who owns the website.) The way to get back out is to click in white space. I was so intrigued so much by the site, that I looked Leo Burnett up on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Burnett) to learn about him. Each of these links represent a campaign or marketing product done by his company. The final aspect of the website from a navigational standpoint are the little apples around the image. If you click an apple, it zooms in and shows you a quote from Leo Burnett himself. These quotes are dressed up with animation and are also fun and enjoyable. From an HCI aspect, their site has great asthetics. I guess thats why it won the award. It even has other good things. In the bottom right there are some small links. One says “Feeling Lost?”. When you hover over that it brings up a list of the clients that you can then click on to see their sub section. You also get a second box which tells you how to navigate through the site. From an accessability standpoint this site is not designed to offer much to the visually impaired. In fact, as a marketing site it is designed with seeing as its most important aspect. This site was enjoyable to spend my time on, and I probably should have spent less on playing, and myabe should have put a bit more into this…
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