Week 9 (7/20 - 7/26)

This week I continued to work on reorganizing the world and remix show pages. The dilemma became that the world show page led to animations, while the remix show page led to worlds. So while the functions seem repeated, they were still technically different. Thinking in that space, I came up with some new designs. In talking with Caitlin, I found that while I had been creating sketches for the remix interface, I was trying to come up with reasons for the design, rather than the other way around. This is definitely not the way to do things (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4). I spent much of the rest of the week trying to think like a kid again and figure out why a user would try to use the remix pathways.

On Friday, I spent some time thinking about redesigning the world page to make better use of the white space. The white space is especially apparent when there are no animations on the left or the right of the world video. 

Monday, I spent the day thinking about how to select one system of animations over the other. Again, the main dilemma is that the world show page provides links to the animations and the remix show page provides links back to the worlds. Getting rid of one or the other would result in a gap in the path way. To compensate, there must be some other link between animations and worlds. I believe that concentrating the remixing things on the remix show page is a better idea than spreading it across various pages. Running with this idea, I worked on designs that removed some of the animations from the world show page and substituted them with a link. Much like the link that shows who likes the video, I was thinking that the number of remixes could be a link that leads to the remixes from the world.

I tried to model these sketches after other show pages currently on the website, primarily the challenges page. I also moved away from the three column design back to the two column design. The side columns on the three column design are very lacking in space and do not provide much room for showing any other information, even when there aren't any animations available. The two column design provides more room on the side and we can shift information from beneath the video to the sides.

Tuesday, I showed Caitlin the sketches. The remix pathway I had designed bounces between worlds and remixes. This allows users to explore all of the remixes that may result from a world as well as all of the worlds that may result from a pre-fabricated remix. What would happen is that clicking on a link on the worlds page will lead to a results page of remixes where essentially the search term is the world chosen. Likewise, clicking on the link in a remix will show a results page containing all of the worlds that have that remix in the world. This was a fairly good idea, and Caitlin suggested working on the search page to make it more intuitive for the user. Showing information selectively, so that it depends on the query. For example, if the user searches for remixes that will help them complete a badge, then the results page will show the remixes with badges highlighed. If a user searches for remixes from a particular world, then it will show all the remixes from a particular world.

In my discussion with her, it turned out that I was trying to fit reasons for remix visualization to my designs instead of fitting my designs to reasons for remix visualization. Caitlin suggested getting back into the mind of a child and continue to think about reasons why kids would actually explore the remix visualization. The two of us worked on coming up with some reasons why kids would follow remix paths, mainly falling back to two reasons: boredom and purpose. Either the kids are just randomly exploring website and clickin on links or they are searching for a particular animation.

Wednesday and Thursday, were spent thinking like a kid and asking myself why. Why users remix? Why users might follow the pathway? Remixing ultimately results from users being lazy, the user lacking knowledge, or the user has found something cool. There might be a long animation that really isn't too difficult, but is just very tedious to put together. Remixing offers a way to use the animation without wasting time. If the user is inexperienced with coding or has found something cool, they might find a particular animation that is awesome, but they can't put it together themselves. Remixing is a way that the user can put something together that contains this amazing animation and gain experience with the particular code that is being used. 

The remixing pathway offers a different way to explore animations and worlds. If the user found a cool animation remixed from a world, then if they want to see other animations that the world contains, they have to be able to find the link between the animation and the world that it came from. If they want to see the interesting worlds that this remixed animations as become, then they have to be able to find the link in the other direction. One example is that if the Rock Kick world is remixed into a variety of animations (karate kick, soccer kick, triple axel backflip), some kid will hopefully be curious enough to try and find out how rock kick became the triple axel backflip and will try to follow the path through. If the world that contains triple axel back flip is interesting, perhaps someone will remix that into some intricate dance scene from StepUp or turn it into a different unusual animation. Curiosity may be able to drive some of the use of the remix visualization and allow users to find animations that are related to projects that they are working on.