Website Research

Having looked and already experienced the Gorillaz website before starting this module, I decided that I needed to broaden my scope of interactive websites, to get the best out of this module and our website.
I began by going back to the module brief and basically going down the lists checking out what I liked and what I wanted to steer away from. Then with this information we will discuss as a group tomorrow about what interactive aspects we want to show on our own website.
Here's my notes on each website I checked out and a link so you can see it for yourself :

http://www.tenement.org/folksongs/

Good: Brilliantly interactive and easy to get the hang of! Really enjoyed messing around with using Victor Gana's folk songs, field recordings, spoken word tracks and music to make something new and exciting everytime.
The use of an interactive map as the very first thing the viewer sees is very good at grabbing your attention and I believe it is flash so this may be an area we should definitely think about working with for our project.
The titles and headings were straight to the point so the content is clear and easy to use right from the go, again an area we will consider for our own work as we want the website to be accessible and understandable to anyone who is interested so the content needs to be easy to understand and find.
Avoid: Lack of depth.
There isn't much else to do apart from make the music. Perhaps some interviews with those behind the project and why they created the website and project would benefit in giving the website and original idea more depth?
Also though the music is the main focus, in my opinion a more interesting array of colours for the websites design would do justice to how engaging the interactive and unique musical experience can be.
The content needs to be supported and linked to the visual layout in short to gain full emphasis of where and what the music is trying to portray, e.g. the sounds of city could include more industrial and city based colours such as yellow taxis, crimson brick etc. instead of plain greys and blues which made it seem more like a science project than an interactive personal expression of an area through sound.

http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/

Good: Begins mysterious as you don't know what the website is about, intrigued me to find out more and delve further in. The patterns of the text and the colours are interesting but....
Bad: ....Although it entices you in, it doesn't seem to deliver anything whatsoever.
In fact there is no point to this website nor interaction except button clicking to even more useless pages so I don't see how anyone could enjoy it anymore than the 3 seconds where you try to register this strange website with it's intricate patterns of text and colours, before you click once and tire of it completely.

http://www.diacenter.org/simmons

Good: The flash itself is brilliant to keep the viewer entertained as you try to beat the blocks of visual fading away before you can uncover more and see the whole picture. The humming music is subtle but really brings out the ballroom theme of the piece and makes you think about behind the scene and for me personally I thought of an old couple reminiscing of their time dancing together, humming their favourite songs and trying to remember their favourite places, yet as soon as they remember one part, it fades as they try to remember another. To me, this flash animation works superbly to bring out this amnesia feel whilst trying to be nostalgic as you remember what happened, what you heard and how you felt, but sometimes you just can't picture it in your head.
Bad: The first look at the website is just awful. It is so boring and I very nearly closed it down immediately because, though there were tabs at the top for various areas they all seemed far too informative and text based and didn't appeal to me at all.
In fact, the only reason I looked at these tabs was because the actual link to "Wake" was so bland and basic i thought of it more as a title than a link. For our own website the titles will have to pop and be obvious where the viewer can go, not standard and boringly subtle like this initial website was.
Also though "Wake" is very good as I explained earlier, this novelty does not last long and after 3 clicks through to different ballroom scenes, I'd had enough and moved on. This is an aspect we should avoid with our website as we want viewers to learn something and want to come back, not have one go then never return.

That's all for tonight but tomorrow I'll continue my research and post it to carry on from this research.
Take care,
Joe.