The new Experience Atmosphere Page and how it will interact with the newly designed Atmosphere Directory


Original Design Notes from 10/06/2002, click to enlarge

Explanation of Notes

A) Additions and Changes recommended for Adobe.com/products/atmosphere:

1. The Atmosphere Gallery page becomes "Experience Atmosphere" which is the Atmosphere Featured Content. This redesigned page would be linked from the following key places at adobe.com/products/atmosphere:

• Experience Atmosphere is the first link on the popup coming off of Download and Gallery
• Link this page from other parts of the site where possible.

2. Design of the Experience Atmosphere Page:

• On the Experience Atmosphere page there will be eight slots across the top, each featuring a category title, thumbnail image, and short descriptive text underneath. Each slot launches a target=_blank page which is a site containing an atmosphere plugin and content.
• The first slot should be filled by a featured adobe.com reliably hosted site that is titled Start your Atmosphere Experience. I recommend that the page contain the following:
  • The Faberge egg room from the museum, which is a wonderful representation of the spatial experience Atmosphere can create, embedded into a page of course. I recommend that the world included would just be the hexagonal Faberge room world and not the rest of the museum approach.
  • The world may or may not be connected to the community server (ask Michael)
  • The world may or may not feature music (pluses and minues, ask Michael)
  • On that page (in HTML) would be basic help information on navigation and other key affordances, including a link to a page with the total UI tutorial if the user wants to get in that deep.
  • Also on that page links to the builder or other resources could be useful, although you dont want too many levels of indirection off a popup.
  • The Start your Atmosphere Experience EMBED tag would ensure proper loading of the Atmosphere plugin followed immediately by the Viewpoint component. Also on the page would be links to help to resolve issues with plugin loading failure and of course run the test for and report unsupported browsers and OS.
  • Lastly, prominently displayed on that page would be a button "Close this page and experience more Atmosphere content" which closes the popup page and brings the user back to Experience Atmosphere.
• The subsequent six slots would feature user created sites with worlds in the categories: Personal, Commercial, Educational, Entertainment, Industrial, Art & Music
• The last item to the right would be Featured Atmosphere Club, an entry point for by the socializing crowd, Afterlife would target a new homeworld for here.
• For each of the eight sites you might consider having a small iconic graphic, identifying the site as having multiuser enabled on or not, so that people understand the distinction.

3. Other changes on Adobe.com in support of the Atmosphere Directory:

• On the Experience Atmosphere page, underneath the 8 thumbnail/categories, it would be the natural place to feature a link that says "For more content, visit the Atmosphere Directory"
• Under Gallery, the second and third popup items (below Experience Atmosphere) read: Atmosphere Content Directory, and Submit your Content, and would link to the directory page and the directory submission page respectively. You would remove your own Submit Your World form to prevent confusion amongst visitors.
• Under Community, Links&Resources, put a link and descriptive text to Atmosphere Directory before Atmospherians.

B) At the Atmosphere Directory hosted at Atmospherians.com:

Notes about the Atmosphere Directory, click to see larger view

1. Basic design of the Atmosphere Directory site.

• As Michael and I discussed, this site should be very simple, like Yahoo (Stuart agrees). Therefore, and as can be seen in the diagram above, you would have the Atmosphere Directory homepage as a simple yahoo like page with nine key categories arranged in a table 3 by 3 cells:

Logo for Atmosphere Directory Site Search Submit your Content Featured Content Personal Commercial Educational Entertainment Industrial Art & Music Clubs Unrated Adobe Featured Content About the Atmosphere Directory Site Search Submit your Content

Proposed site layout, top level

• At the top would be an additional link to Submit Your Content
• Site Search could employ the embedding of Google
• Submit Your Content goes to our submissin form
• About the Atmosphere Directory goes to a page explaining how the directory works, how to be selected for featuring at Adobe.com and our selection criteria for this site and Adobe.com
• Featured Content will be a top of the page link including a thumbnail that will go to an exceptional site we have selected.
• Other category links will feature the title of the category that links to the secondary level for each (see below)
• Adobe Featured Content will go back to the Experience Atmosphere page at Adobe.com (to be built as replacement of old Gallery page).
• As to graphical treatment, Michael wants something simple, without much embellishment. I would suggest that like Yahoo, we place some of Keltie's great artwork in the upper left hand corner. Other than this, Michael wants a plain white site with no embellishment of text in the listings. We will have to use some of Keltie's graphical skills for another project. I suggest we put the Atmosphere Directory inside the Atmospherians site replacing

Logo for Atmosphere Directory Site Search Submit your Content Directory > Personal Damer's Digibarn Visit our computer history museum in a barn Rolu's house Visit my house in holland complete with wireless network Stu's cafe The italianate cafe of the Gold family About the Atmosphere Directory Site Search Submit your Content

Proposed site layout, secondary level

• Same top and bottom navigation, search and submission bars. White background, simple text, version of Keltie's logo in corner.
• Textual hierarchy guide, where Directory returns you to the top level. Clicking on Logo for Atmosphere Directory also returns you to the top level
• Over time as we get more subcategories, we will extend the textual hierarchical menu: Directory > Personal > Familyspaces etc.
• Links to actual sites containing atmosphere content (HTML) are sorted in alphabetical order and push a target=_blank page.
• No thumbnails to be shown or collected unless we put someone up as Featured Content on the top level
• Short descriptive title (64 chars) is made clicakble, longer text is shown below for information.

2. Deliverables and timing

• As soon as possible we need the URLs for where the Atmosphere Directory homepage will be and where the submission form will be. That will allow Daniel to get going on requesting the updates at Adobe.com
• Changes at Adobe.com must be completed within 2 weeks and we have to be ready with this site.
• We should build this site by hand if the back end database will not be ready by then.

 

C) Pyramid Diagram from meeting of Michael Kaplan and Bruce Damer on October 6, 2002:

click for larger image