Wong Assignment #1

X-Sender: mathew@po7.mit.edu (Unverified)

Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 00:09:22 -0800

To: "Janet H. Murray" <jhmurray@mit.edu>

From: mathew <mathew@MIT.EDU>

Subject: Re: change in assignment for 21w765j

Cc: mathew@mit.edu

Mime-Version: 1.0

EXAMPLE OF BAD DESIGN

Evening by Rachel Emily Molenaar

I like Rachel's concept of the user being able to occupy and immerse

himself into different bodies and see from their point of view. However,

the text is simply not enough. This design is a great idea but I feel that

a visual map of the house would greatly enhance the reader's sense of

place. See attachment "house.jpg" for an example.

Having a map would also greatly enhance the user's ability to navigate

from place to place instead of having to force the user to imagine

where he is. When the user is "inside the hall" and has to move to either the

kitchen, bathroom, girl's bedroom, boy's bedroom, living room,or

outside hall, just text is very plain and unimaginative. An image map

of the house would make it much easier for the user to visualize the

experience, and would make the site much more enjoyable.

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EXAMPLE OF GOOD DESIGN

The Party by Aseem Agarwala

His java applet is simply awesome. It gives the user full control over

the time and space of the story. It gives the user an omniscient

point of view, and complete control over every possible part of the

story. At any given time and any given place of the story I can

find out what is going on. This applet did a much better job as a

navigation tool

compared to the many other sites that used clumsy clickable maps.

The only potentially bad thing about the applet was that the storyline

could NOT propel itself forward, or guide the user through the story.

It relied solely on the user to advance the time. Some users

may enjoy this extra measure of control, but I personally like to sit back

and have the story take me along for a ride which it did not do.

Attachment converted: Grasmere:house.jpg (JPEG/JVWR) (0002379B)

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Mathew Wong