The wheel navigation of my portfolio site gives the viewer a different but not to complexed way to look at my work. A nice transition with the help of tweenlight happens when you click on the nav to the left and explore that way or simply by clicking the corners of the project above or below. The farther you jump the faster the wheel spins and the nearest you jump the slower it turns. With in each project you can go in depth with more views and you are given more information as a caption or a description with a rollover. Contact page which could be a image of my business card and on rollover maybe reveal the back.
2 comments:
Hiiiii Gentry.
overall usability of the site:
Very easy to navigate! It was a really good idea that you had it animate right when your page opens, to show it's functionality. It makes it nicely self-evident for a user that has never been to your site before, and they don't have to take any time to learn what to do. To get picky though, I feel that the curved vertical type on your site ("graphic design", "photography", etc.) might be a little hard to read. I didn't mind it as horizontal type when I saw it last night.
the degree to which it pushes boundaries / questions traditional presentation of portfolio work:
I think the subtlety of the cards is a nice metaphor, without shoving it in your face that they are cards. So with that said, the rotation is a really nice way to showcase your work. I don't think I've seen anything quite like it, and it's effective. The click through of your "sub images" (like 2a, 2b, etc.) is very traditional though, but I don't see that as a problem. I think if you did that rotation thing that you were talking about (for your contact me card), it would be way too much going on. So nice work!
same as above but for overall site navigation
The site navigation is kind of the same as the presentation of the portfolio work, so like I said, I think it's good. It's also a nice choice that you incorporated two different ways to navigate through your work- the more experimental sifting through cards, or clicking on the buttons at the left, with is more standard, for people who may not understand what's up.
if the site utilizes linear / cinematic elements (such as transitions, image sequences, etc) and the success of those linear elements:
Like I said before, the card sequencing is effective, engaging, and easy to access.
overall organization of the work -- logical? interesting?
I think it works. The only thing I might suggest is somehow separating the contact me and about me sections from the rotating card format, since they aren't a real part of your portfolio. It might be a bit confusing to the user. I'm not sure how it could be changed though- maybe just have a screen pull up on top of everything? Just to show that it's a different kind of information? Just a thought.
Great job though! It's awesome to see the final functionality.
Gentry,
The think the initial animation that your website plays is very effective in showing the user your unique circular arrangement of elements.
There are some issues that need to be resolved in your navigational menu though. I'm not sure how well the curved text and boxes are working - I thought the shape/rotation was supposed to reference where it was in the circle, but this was not the case. (But then again, perhaps I think this because I saw earlier versions of your menu?)
Some minor functionality issues though: For a lot of the movieclips, when your click on it again will rotate the entire portfolio 360 degrees, even though it should stay still? Overall, I feel that the organization of site elements is pretty well done. Although, I wonder if you should assign certain colors to the "design" section, and another for the "photography" one. The use of rotation as a tween works really well though - its refreshing when we consider all the web pages out there that simply use grids of boxes.
I wonder though - is there anything unique that a circular organization can offer compared to a gridded one?
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