Lecture Task

ITEM 1
This interview with Dan Saffer, is very informative. He goes into quite a lot of detail and also gives good links. He gives incite into his world and some good advice to the budding designer.

His personal site
His blog has a lot of quirky posts. I find it interesting to see the way designers find inspiration.







He also has written a book: Designing for Interactive
Other links mentioned:
Stamen Design
Stimulent
Dopplr




ITEM 2
Through Joel Schafers brief answers to the interviewers questions, he parts with some quite useful links




Cap & Design- a Swedish magazine for...
Web Desiger- English magazine

Dope Awards
Kirupa
Flash kit
jsgd.se
strange fruits


IDEO
This website instantly grabbed my attention with its bold purple hompage and interactive elements. I hadn't come across IDEO before so I wanted to know who they are. This was answered straight away, by hovering over 'WHAT WE DO' giving me no time to get distracted or loose interest.
As you navigate yourself around the site, the visual stimulus depreciates some what as the site's objective turns to a functional website with informative, however interesting content; rather than design. This made me feel a bit let down to a certain extent....

The site is quite easy to navigate around although I felt a bit overwhelmed by the quantity of links.
SONY
Sony have clearly designed this site to suit the audiences needs. This site is funtional. People will visit it wanting to find information or purchase their products and thats exactly what they can do. It has some nice elements of design like the bar at the top but interactivity is minimal and I didn't feel any urges to explore the site. Like the Sony brand i'm sure its faultless in its funtionality and usability, however some elements of flare would make it more visually stimulating.
APPLE
very much like Sony's site; the design of the website is quite simple which makes the information easy to navigate to. This site is for people wanting to buy apple products and so it gives the audience the information they need and doesn't over complicate things with fancy design.
NOW
I'm not a great fan of the new VLP. The main thing that I find a bit frustrating is the layout. The areas of the site that are used the most (timetable, email etc) are small and squashed at the top of the page while the rest of the page is covered with unuseful information and white space. Its trying to be a social network, with your own profile and buzz, which is also hidden.
One benefit is the library search which takes you where you want to go quite painlessly.
The visual design is very simple and unlike the VLP you can't adjust any settings apart from the font and font size as far as I can make out.


FWA-flash content
(3) For 2 websites with FLASH content from http://www.thefwa.com/ discuss them in your online journal using the same criteria as above.

(4) Have a look and go at the FLASH tutorial available for FLASH CS3, via a link in top right hand widget on the Exploring Multimedia homepage, do this before the seminar in Week 14 28/10/08.