Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008...9:49 pm - Catherine Gleeson
the rise and rise of the zoomable…
Twice this week I’ve stumbled across interfaces which I’ve found irresistible and blog-worthy. The first is PicLens (not brand new this week - but certainly within living memory ie: several months). The second is the Zoomii interface for browsing Amazon books.
PicLens is a Firefox 3.0 plugin which allows you to navigate through sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo, Google and this week Amazon in 3d. When you enable PicLens, images and videos appear in an almost 3d infinite wall which re-sizes and zooms according to the velocity of your click n’ drag. (It’s so responsive that it gives me motion sickness…) When you click on a thumbnail, the interface becomes 2d while the image zooms up and resolves itself, quite rapidly, into higher res. The whole experience seems a lot faster than navigating a space like Flickr in a regular browser. This may have something to do with the ability to see more images simultaneously, in an environment which mimics our visual perspective in the “real” world. I like not least because I feel it assumes an intelligence in the participant/user.
Like Piclens zoomii offers a click and drag interface, but without the 3d immersion. Zoomii utilises many of the same navigation metaphors as Google Maps, so it’s instantly familiar that way. The attraction here, is the ability to browse books almost as if one were in a physical bookshop. It’s a welcome move away from the functional, yet incredibly dry visual environment of a regular Amazon page. Currently zoomii offers only a couple of hundred thousand titles from which to choose (quite a lot really).
Both interfaces prompted me to reflect upon the satisfaction factor in design. For me, both successfully deliver a satisfying experience for the viewer/user/audience, well beyond offering mere eye-candy or a distracting toy. It is genuinely pleasurable using both interfaces because they work at a practical and an intuitive level. They help close the gap between perception and experience, removing that “arms-length” feeling one sometimes has when navigating a space. It somehow physicalises navigation bringing us into greater intimacy with the content. I’m sure that this is only the beginning of a general swing towards more “physicalised” spaces no doubt influenced by the rise of virtual worlds, MMPORG’s and the rapid spread of multi-touch interfaces generally.
Heads-up on the zoomii interface via information aesthetics and Ars Technica
- y’know, a friends...
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