So after writing the latest What Am I Doing? post, I figured I should keep my word and continue working on the website and portfolio. I did a really rough mockup (though the position of the image won’t change much) of my Transparency in the Sky concept for my home page.
I honestly don’t know how I feel about it. I like that it’s a different style than the typical streamline web design that sticks to standards as much as possible, but at the same time, I don’t know how practical it can be. My main concern here is still function and usability, and not so much aesthetics, although that’d be nice.
In the final version in my vision, this would not include the text box at the bottom nor the feedback box. If you want to see how it looks like without those boxes, roll over the edges of the “screen” box above the text box. (Don’t roll over the Flash slideshow, but the edges around it.)
With the links, I plan on shifting the tape and the transparency that holds “IVANWLAM.COM” up and down as the mouse rolls over the navigation items. I’ve actually taken individual photographs of each position, so it’s just a matter of changing the image upon cursor movement. Right now, it’s just one static image, but you may access the Experiments section in the progress report.
I think my main concerns with this concept are that 1) the image quality isn’t that good, 2) the image load time may not be practical, and 3) it’s not really accessible unless I do extra coding, though I don’t mind in the spirit of learning. At the same time, I do like how the background image accommodates to screen resolutions up to 2500px wide without leaving the image.
So this is one of those designs that I really need feedback on. Comment on this post or use the feedback box. (Notice I added a small “human verification” feature because I started getting robot spam through that form.)
Flush.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 22:47 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Hmmm.
Well I’m happy to be the first.
I definitely think it looks great, and more than anything: unique. I don’t think usability is much of an issue to me; it makes sense and is easy to navigate.
What is of concern, however, is making sure that additional components you may add in the future have the same feel as your navigation. Right now, when the feedback and news sections are visible, they feel out of place. Because its not possible to give all your text a handwritten font, I think the challenge is to create a container for digital text that makes sense with the motif you’ve created.
Maybe use opaque pieces of paper on which you’ve printed the title of the section in the same font as its content, taped to your window? Or maybe the main rotating image can be a hand-drawn version of what you currently have? I’m not sure but I would like to see everything feel more unified.
One side note: I think it would be worth exploring the idea of the background image changing with the time of day. Maybe you could have a number of versions of your site where the image changes from night to day. I don’t know if this is possible, but I think it would be sick.
Thanks for the comment, Sam! I’m slowly considering of removing the transparency concept and just put the image of the street in the background, although that will take away the window concept.
I’m glad you’re mentioning these suggestions that I thought about but didn’t commit to because I thought I was alone, but now I might try the (semi-)opaque paper concept as well as the different-times-of-day background concept too.
Thanks again for the comments!
[...] Main page: This is from the initial testing of transparencies on the window as site layout elements. You can learn more about this in these Flush posts: Transparency in the Sky, Transparency in the Nicer Sky, Preliminary Transparency Mockup. [...]