生活多色彩 Life is colorful: May 2007

The purpose of designing this representation

Firstly, I have discussed with one of my classmate to brainstorm the ideas of our assignment, however I completed the job individually after my partner had dropped out. The topics of “representing of mood” and “Egypt’s Tour” that we raised, and I choose the latter one as my representation. Browsing over the websites available, I found that there was full of information available for someone to search, but it was not easily to be differentiated and graphics should be selected precisely. For the convenience of both the friends and viewers who might came across with a glance or impression with limited time, it is essential to have a simple and vivid website in a visual and interactive format to introduce the sightseeing spots in Egypt. As my traveling experience 2 years before, photos and information might be used to construct our representation for the attraction to viewers, I regarded that a simple and colorful designed visual interactive representation could help to attain the objective. I decided to make the image as a type of planner book that could introduce basic attractions within several pages. Undoubtedly, there were many conditions to handle the software of flash in more assessable way. The last prototype was the challenge for me to handle well in operation of flash but it helped me to know how to make the product to be vivid and interactive with viewers.

The Use of the representation

This interactive visual representation was mainly designed for communication of information. Target users are able to get impression and basic information they need from this representation. The design of planner was made with more user-friendly process. Viewers just did a few clicks to get information needed and graphics were the main information. .This representation could also be used as a reference material for teaching and learning. For instance, when students were asked to write an impression and basic information for an essay or do a project to introduce tourist attractions in Egypt or to plan a trip in Egypt, they might collect useful information from this representation and it might help in learning purpose in a certain extent.

The functionality of the representation

Through these interactive visual representation tourists, someone could get preliminary information about the areas in Egypt. They would find the photos that attracted them to seek further information by clicking the pictures. Then the picture could be chosen to have a glance. At the same time, a page of hyperlinks appear to refer information if the viewer hoped to get something browsing for. The page of route and map presented my trace, photos and information. Someone could put the mouse on the interaction buttons to get information vividly. Then certain relevant information of books, CD would pop up as someone who clicked the links. The design was simple enough for all kinds of viewers who wanted to know more about tourist attractions in Egypt.

Reflection

As I have mentioned above, this representation is for the intention of sharing basic information and data for those who want to get initial glance on Egypt. With the technical limitation of IT skills and the time constraint, it is certainly necessary to improve in some areas. For example, the size of interactive stage and fonts should be bigger to attract others and presented clearly. More tourist attractions and information icons could be included in the representation. I have experienced a series of tasks that could make me insights on how to improve the interactive presentation and make a good representation.