Transitions – utterly useless from a usability perspective? Rubbish.

Transitions can often contribute more to an application’s look and feel than fonts, colours and sounds. Most of what we present as multimedia comes down to pages of data, laid out attractively, with some way of navigating in-between them. But why have just a simple page to page sequence when, with thoughtful use of transitions, you can give a sense of space. A few examples:

http://www.leoburnett.com/
This is an old favourite, but still a goodie. It’s a portfolio site that is just a series of pages, but the way they are connected together makes it feel like a 3d environment to be explored. The pen scribble that you leave behind is the most inspired trick, as this a) orients you to show where you’ve been, b) leaves ‘evidence of use‘ behind as you explore (much underused in multimedia).

http://www.sixthsenseuk.com/
This is by our local chums futurlab, and I like it a lot. The desktop metaphor is a well used cliche, but to do it as smoothly as this you find yourself exploring just for the joy of watching the transitions, not just to find what you’re looking for.

http://www.wefeelfine.org/
This isn’t Flash, it’s processing, but there are plenty of great navigation ideas in here. In fact it’s essentially a site of nothing but experimental navigation ideas. Again, it is so visually appealing it wouldn’t matter if this was data about the sale of dental equipment, it would still be great.

There were two sessions at FOTB that got me thinking about transitions, especially as FM are planning a showcase site at the moment, which will be a great opportunity for a bit of experimental navigation. Firstly, Tink’s Flashing Flex talk, showed how simple it is to style Flex and not feel limited by the framework. There’s no reason Flex cannot have the same dynamic animation behind it as Flash does, because they are essentially the same product after all.

Secondly, Carlos Ulloa’s demonstrations of Papervision showed how it can be used for much more than just animating 3d fish and spaceships. Just a simple 3d transition between two planes can make the difference between an application being a series of pages to it being an “environment”. See Carlos’s work for Sony Bravia as a good example.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 4:47 pm and is filed under development, flash, flex, fotb, papervision, processing, usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.