Our Bristol

OurBristol-An Interactive HUB Bristol is a culturally and historically diverse city which is famous for many different things. With our project we aim to achieve something alternative, to bring to life aspects of Bristol that many haven’t seen or experienced before. Any Ideas that subvert cultural norms (such as Street artist Banksy) and anything that the local people of Bristol find culturally/historically significant will be considered for our platform, creating a diverse representation of Bristol.

Aims/Goals Our project aims to create an interactive hub which allows users to experience a truly submersible platform, detailing cultural and historical aspects of the City of Bristol. Street art to home grown musicians, social activists to historical landmarks Any Ideas that subvert cultural norms (such as Street artist Banksy) and anything that the local people of Bristol find culturally/historically significant will be considered for our platform, creating a diverse representation of Bristol

Research Vannevar Bush: Director of the Office of Scientific Research and development during the second world war stated “Our ineptitude at getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing, when data of any sort is placed in storage they are filed alphabetically of numerically” We see these processes occur in many platforms of web media. Categorizing in such a way takes the fluidity of motion and creates an altogether boring experience for the user

Research We decided to carry out surveys to get general ideas from local residents about what is most important to them, from these we have picked some key locations and will continue to base the site around user input

Choices from feedback

Interface Our project will be HTML based but not limited to HTML code structures. To create a truly interactive interface we will incorporate imbedded media, such as, but not limited to.. -Flash buttons -Flash animation -Flash motion tweens (inc. video and still images) -RSS feeds -Social media feeds -Google maps

Interface An interactive navigation, inspired by Bristol Graffiti Art Different colours represent different things, hover over commands will display location names This animated graphic is the equivalent of a navigational map

Interface Simple hyperlink navigation, is it engaging? Is it interactive? “randomly” generated suggestions based on user input Tourist based, “Itinerary Builder” “Top Tours” What algorithms are used to determine these? Do these reflect peoples top choices? Often companies pay for this type of promotion.

Interface Google maps helps user navigate through the locations Animated flash tween displaying latest offers and news, simple, but can be used in more imaginative ways We will implement a similar feature that will include links and relevant info on locations in sequence with video clips Eg, st nicks market- as the user takes the virtual tour links to shops will appear in the banner as you approach each shop

Prototype Within our prototype you can see in the simplest form how we plan to implement and create an interactive experience. Using the example of Clifton suspension bridge, the user is presented with a looped video, in landscape view, of the bridge. This video is imbedded within the HTML page and is created using a motion tween in Adobe Flash. Our original thought was to use HTML pages and hotspots to achieve this, but after implementing this you can see that it doesn’t achieve the desired effect of a fluid interactive experience, as you navigate between videos another page has to load creating a clunky experience.