The initial  presentation idea was to have a super-real representation in a real-world scenario and show how Webit would be used. Sounds perfect until I tried to show that in an interim presentation with the feedback being “I don’t know what I’m looking at” and “I don’t get it”.

I realised I was trying to hard to show how the thing would actually work rather than what I should have been doing which was trying to present the idea. With realistic graphics and real-world scenarios there is the danger that whoever is looking at the presentation will be focussed more on the aesthetics of the presentation rather than the general idea. The idea is the most important part after all, everything else is just a means to make that idea more accessible and usable.

“Make it more human”

A great example of this is an OpenID video that uses a rough-around-the-edges approach to make you focus on what it is rather than what it looks like and the implementation.

Using this as a base, the character of Webit was created to showcase the idea for my final project. Webit is a small animated frog who helps you find things on the internet. In the scenario there is a stick man, Rob (voiced by Rob Strode), who is browsing the internet. Webit is introduced as a friend and shows Rob what else is on the internet.

The fact the the characters are roughly coloured and animated means there isn’t a glossy finish to them, making them more accessible.

The end result of this is an interview with .Net magazine and a featured podcast available to download from iTunes here or via RSS here.

The main thing that came out of it was focus on conveying the idea when you’re not there to explain it. To this effect there were several videos and interactive walkthroughs. This is something that needed to be addressed in the current project timeline. There was little time for a prototype due to the complexities of creating one and what aspect to focus on.

Today was spent creating a browser in Flash made of screenshots and illustrations of the toolbar concepts and trying to make them dynamic so someone can use the service themselves. This was done using actionscript and not animating directly in the timeline, something that needs a lot more knowledge and thought. The result was a very realistic browser with a slide-down toolbar that acted as it was designed. The features are static images at current but the hope is to make them dynamic too.

Frankly it is more likely that the ‘journey’ the user will take will be done using pre-determined animations and ‘gotoAndPlay’ rather than scripting. This will be quicker and then can be videod using screen capture software so it can be looped to explain the process situated in the exhibition space.

You can download the .swf here created today that you can and run it (ctrl-f for fullscreen) if you want to see progress. Otherwise there is a screenshot below.