As Creative Director at Definition 6 I am continually reviewing others in the industry to see what works, and what doesn't.  I recently wrote a piece for DMNews Magazine that discusses the new online ordering portal at Dominos.com. Below is an excerpt of the article. To read the full article, click here check out the latest edition of DMNews. 


"Due to my occasional desire for one of America's favorite meals — pizza — I recently was checking out Web sites to place an order. I was sorely disappointed and frustrated to learn that most pizza chains' Web sites have cumbersome ordering systems and clunky designs — until I visited Dominos.com."  Read More.

by Arondale Withers

Brief History of Personal Computing
The first breakthrough in personal computing was the invention of the computer mouse by Engelbart in 1964. The first computer to be marketed with a mouse was the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981. The Apple Lisa is one of the first known computers to have used a mouse, but at $9995 US in 1983 ($21,482 in 2008 dollars), it can hardly be called a “personal” computer. Altair, IBM, Apple, Commadore (Amiga) and other IBM Clones all made advances in personal computing in the 80s and early 90s that brought computers to the masses, standard with mouse controllers. In 1985, Amiga was the first personal computer to ship their computers with a two-button mouse as standard.

A lot has changed in the world of personal computing. Today computer scientists are making some existing technologies more accessible in the market place and are changing the way in which we interact with computers. Gestures are quickly becoming the preferred and most logical method of quickly and efficiently navigating new interfaces and accomplishing tasks that are accomplished by mouse clicks today it’s a natural step toward Fitts Law.

A New Era of Multi-touch Gestures
Many companies have been working on multi-touch interfacing since the early 80s. In January 2005, Apple Computers applied for a patent titled Gestures for touch sensitive input devices (pictured right). In it you will see the pinching gestures used to zoom an object in and out. In that same year, Apple released a PowerBook with a trackpad that would accept a limited number of multi-touch gestures. One example is using two fingers being dragged vertically to scroll thru content. Another circular gesture with two fingers would page up/down content.

Multi-touch in the Marketplace
Over the past few years there have been many advances to bring multi-touch products to the marketplace. Most notably, the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Featuring single and multi-touch gestures, users can quickly and easily navigate thru songs, playlists, contacts, resize images, magnify text, access special menus and more.

Jeff Han of Perspective Pixel has one of the most advanced customizable multi-touch solutions to date. His solutions are currently reserved for private government applications and Fortune 500 corporations. Han’s 3x8 foot interactive wall starts around $300,000 with the ability for his 10-man team to customize the solution to your exact needs thru custom development and configuration.

Bill Baxton, one of the pioneers of multi-touch technology, is now working for Microsoft to further develop the Microsoft Surface tabletop computer. With Surface, you can put a wifi or blue tooth-enabled camera on the table top and its sensors will recognize the camera, extract the pictures from the camera and display them creatively on the screen to toss, resize, and more.  Its sensors are so advanced it can recognize a number of objects. If you set a glass on the MS Surface, it will animate creative imagery from the placed object. Set two phones on the MS Surface and you can trade contacts between phones... all wirelessly. Today’s applications include trade shows, car show rooms, luxury hotels, and homes. Pricing is between $5000-$10,000 US. As pricing falls, you will soon see an increase of these interactive coffee tables in homes and offices.

Replacing the Mouse
Replacing the mouse and changing the behavior in which we interact with computer interfaces may happen sooner than you think. Note: it took 20 years from the time the mouse was introduced by Engelbart in 1964 until the time the two-button mouse became standard in personal computing in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. It has been approximately 26 years since the conception of multi-touch technology. The transition of from mouse controllers to multi-touch interfaces has already begun and is becoming more affordable every year. Not only are we starting to see touch displays on the shelves of computer stores, but we are also see multi-touch interfaces in the audio production industry.

Mark my Words
In the next several years you will see an exponential growth in multi-touch technology. It will trickle down from government and corporate usage to many types of home applications; from personal computing to your microwave.

Multi-touch technology is changing the way we use computers and interact with devices. In 2007 the iPhone was introduced, selling millions of phones. The very next year A/V installers began offering iPhone solutions to their high-end clients to control their blinds, lights, HVAC systems, home theater and more with their phone. It is only the beginning. Soon, personal computing will be using multi-touch as the standard method of operation. Companies like N-trig, Jazzmutant, Perspective Pixel, Apple and Microsoft are working hard to be the first to change our digital lifestyle with products available at affordable prices.

Mouse be gone!

Steve West, a Definition 6 Senior Graphic Designer shared this on blogs...
In 1929 Franklin Roosevelt began delivering his now famous fireside chats while he was governor of New York. After becoming president in 1933, he delivered his first presidential fireside chat on March 12 to talk to the American people about the bank crisis. After that, he delivered 29 more fireside chats until 1944. On November 15, President-elect released his first radio address and posted the same address in video on YouTube talking about the economy.

The Obama campaign brought his presidential campaign to the web in a way like never before. It involved a website that solicited $5 donations, a blog that talked about the campaign as well as an in-depth resource about their stand on current issues. This unprecedented approach brought in more support than any campaign before and brought people closer to the candidate. Now that the election is over, President-elect Obama has taken this same initiative and created a new website, www.change.gov. On there you can read news posts, follow blog posts about the transition, learn about the agenda and look at the nominees.

This new spirit of bringing the oval office to the people is an example that companies can follow. A blog is one way to way to connect to your audience and put a face on your company. In this arena, you can easily discuss what you believe and what your goals are. Subsequently, if you are using search engine optimization marketing as a tactic to drive customer acquisition, having a blog will increase your chances of being ranked with the search engines.  Or if you haven’t updated your news section lately maybe a blog would be a better way to show what you’re doing. Just because you haven’t been in the news doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to say or should be saying.

Steve West, a Definition 6 Senior Graphic Designer, recently shared his thoughts with our Creative Team on conventional verses non-conventional website development...

October marked the 10 year anniversary of the original iMac computer. When it came out was met with polarized opinions for and against the little desktop computer. Instead of the beige or gray computer box with a separate monitor, it was a complete computer in a jelly colored case. Aside from looks, it also came standard with what was a new connection, USB 1.0 and did away with the floppy drive only coming with a built in CD drive. At the time it was widely criticized for doing away with the ubiquitous floppy drive because that was considered the normal way to store data.

The same strategy can be used for website development. As the internet has continued to grow and evolve, standards have become entrenched. The most common being that the logo should be in the upper left with the navigation to the top or down the left side. Who says that your website has to do the same? When does one make the decision to continue following the "norm" or even the competition?

Magnum Photos website, http://www.theplaceswelive.com, is an example of an easy to navigate site that's visually enticing as well as a bit unconventional. The main navigation is placed in the upper right. While in a different location it's easy to find and use since the type is white on a black background and the rollover state makes the type bold. Along with color, there are only five links but they¹re also a bit unconventional by having the home button on the far right instead of the left. As you dive into the site you're greeted with large images on the left with the copy pertaining to the section on the right. This seems pretty easy to use so why all the fuss? Because it¹s not what's normally done.

For Magnum to put the photos large and to the left makes sense since this is a site showcasing photography for their new book. Photographers in general seem to forgo conventions and blaze a path that engages the user to explore their sites. The better photographers have put more into this idea of engaging users and built both large showcases of their work but also created an environment that takes users on a journey. Photographer Jill Greenberg's site, http://www.manipulator.com, showcases her large body of work in both an easy to use navigation as well as thumbnails that you can peruse through choosing to view larger. What's more interesting about this site is that it's a few years old but still seems fresh. While the content is regularly updated, the unconventional nature makes it feel different from other sites. So there's really no need to revamp it, just update the work that's showcased.

In this post, usability is something that should be discussed. To put your menu off to the right or even bottom right isn't a license dismiss usability. When you break the convention, consistency is paramount. Putting your menu in a new location on each page may seem like a fun idea but after a couple of clicks followed by a search for your navigation, your user is going to become frustrated and most likely move on. Consistency needs to be maintained and once usability is established, your user will continue to navigate effortlessly through your site.

So what can breaking conventions do for you? It's a great start to separate you from your competitors and it also portrays your company as a bit different. The web is a great place to brave new approaches that help your company stand out and call attention to what you do. After all, when was the last time you saw a computer with a floppy drive?

By Ethiopia Hewitt, Definition 6 Web Production Specialist

Today, there are several popular browsers available. Currently, it is impossible to know which browser a person will use. I know many web designers will concur with the hope that their personal favorite browser will crush the others, but the sometimes aggravating reality is that each browser continues to hold their own loyal fan base - similar to the ongoing war between PC and Mac. However, that conflict doesn’t affect me personally, as I have already chosen my side and pity those on the other. The Browser war is a different story.  As a part of Definition 6 Interactive Media and Web Design family, browser compatibility affects me and our clients every day.

I currently work on enhancements and updates to websites previously completed and launched.  The number one issue that I see is that the site doesn’t look or behave correctly in all browsers. The site looks and functions beautifully in the browser of the original designer’s choice but the others . . .  not so much. It usually requires CSS patchwork skills and (gasp!) a couple of hacks to get the offending page to behave in all browsers. This work can sometimes take hours of work to pinpoint the CSS style that is being interpreted differently and still more time to develop a style that all browsers can agree on.  This then brings up a question:  When is it okay for the site to be different on different browsers?

As the designer, a line, albeit a tenuous one, could be drawn as to what are acceptable browser differences and what are not. For example, if a Javascript powered drop down menu is working only in IE7, the hours needed to make it cross browser compatible, are more than necessary. But if on Firefox 2 there is more space between the lines then on Safari, how much time should be spent to correct it? It becomes the responsibility of the designer to advise the clients to the facts of different browsers and educate them on this blurry line of acceptable and unacceptable different browser interpretations.  

Each release of a new version of a browser leaves the design community  searching for the end of the browser war, but really can it ever end without one browser triumphing over the others and becoming the one and only browser used? And speaking of new versions of browsers, if you are an Internet Explorer user, why not upgrade to the latest version? How is it that IE 6 stays around? Oh well, that is a discussion for another time and place.
 

Definition 6 recently re-launched our own web site with a sparkling new flash homepage with lots of fun things to do.  One of the elements that we are particularly proud of is the ‘paint on canvas’ feature that allows you to paint with different colors to reveal images of our previous client work. 

Originally we got inspiration from an open source painting proof of concept created by the design group ‘Stamen’ (http://stamen.com/projects/splatter) and later showcased at the Jackson Pollok site (http://www.jacksonpollok.org ).  

The Definition 6 Creative Department has many unique talents and one of them is Ethiopia Hewitt, a Web Production Specialist. She is our resident Math expert and holds her Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics.  Using the original work that Stamen did, she worked hard on refining the equations, smoothing out the generated lines and reducing the amount of paint splatters emitted from the paintbrush. She also consolidated the code to one action layer and added listeners to the layers to allow onClick painting.  This allows the targeted paint layer to change depending on what color you picked.

Then Ethiopia and I tackled the hardest part – turning it into a mask instead of the actual paint itself. Instead of painting solid color vectors, the paintbrush reveals the bitmap images underneath.

Our goal was to paint it as a mask, which is no small feat since Flash masking requires that a solid vector object be use. Lines or Strokes are not viable masking in the normal Flash schema.  Instead, we applied a solution of converting the layer to bitmap mode before the mask was applied. With some added tweaking, this approach worked brilliantly!

Feel free to check out our new and improved site. Go to http://www.definition6.com, grab the paint brush, and have fun!

Alyssa Gobelle, Interactive Designer