I did some concepts for an agency website a few months ago, which I’ve just dug up and thought I’d share.

Shelves

To make the site more personal, each member of staff would have a shelf with a range of objects specific to their interests and work.  So, for instance, if someone was an avid fossil collector there would be a few scattered on there, perhaps with a link to wikipedia about that particular type of fossil, or maybe some info about where and how they found it.  Each person would also have a few of the agency’s projects on their shelf, ones they’d done a lot of work on, or that they particularly liked.

Camera-pan

Same Speech

Here, projects could be presented next to three members of staff who worked on them.  They would all keep to a very similar dialogue, but from each area’s perspective. So you could be listening the the creative person talk about how the navigtion of the site worked and then switch over to technical, and they would carry on the dialogue but from a build point of view.

Staffroom

Quite similar to the shelf idea, but with a bit of a different look. It would be built as a 3D environment, which you could explore and meet all the people who work at the agency with their stuff.  It would all be white with 3D shading until the objects are clicked on, at which point they are seen in full colour to indicate the agency coming to life.

I also did a few concepts for the stationery:

We Met At …

The idea was to make a bit of a joke about not remembering who people are, even though they gave you their business card at some event.

Light Reactive

The card would be made of light reactive material - so you would purposely spread your business cards about on your desk, so when you handed them over to new people you’d also be handing over a faint copy of what you’d been working on recently.  The cards might be left with shadows from pens, or the edges of sheets from your layout pad.

Museums and galleries make an increasing use of interactive exhibits to engage their audience, and allow them to take part.  With children specifically in mind (although it could be tailored to adults) I thought it might be interesting to connect the museums’ physical presence with their virtual presence, as a way of promoting their centre and engaging their audience during and after the visit.

I feel museums could get the experience of their exhibits through to prospective visitors much more effectively by communicating between online and offline entities.  Encouraging previous visitors to go to the website to relive their experience at the museum would increase chances of a return visit, and given the tools they would promote it to their friends via social networks.

The best way to explain what I’m thinking is probably a list of how this could work:

-  Puzzles within the museum could be played live against people on the website, with a webcam also streaming a video of the player in the gallery.

-  Children on the website could control parts of the galleries, e.g. pumping bubbles in to the foyer or changing the music, and then see and hear their work via a webcam.

-  In the museum children could adjust the design of the website, perhaps via a ‘lightbox’ they could arrange and place objects on - which would go up as the background image to the website when they pushed a button.

-  Recorded reactions from the exhibits - video cameras could record childrens’ reactions.  So if there was a surprising element to an exhibition, the camera would record the reactions when it got to that part.

-  Sound levels could be recorded throughout the museum could measure the levels of excitement throughout the exhibitions and be mapped out live online (and on screens throughout the museum), showing which parts of the museum are the most lively at that particular time.

-  Photo stations throughout the galleries would allow kids to upload shots of their day to their Facebook or Bebo profiles - and would also automatically go on to the museum’s profiles and website.

The museum could make real use of the online/offline interactions by creating projects the pupils could begin during their visit and continue online when they’re back at school.  A possible execution of this could be for the pupils to be given electronic cards which they would punch in or swipe at each exhibit and their reactions would then be recorded or documented.  Back at school they could map out their reactions as data and illustrate or explain what the exhibit did.  They would then upload this to the museum’s website and map out their day.  The data would then be collated to create an interactive map view of the museum and its exhibits that visitors to the website could view.

As well as providing marketing and promotion tools to the museum, the results would deliver invaluable information as to which types exhibits are most popular and how well the museum is working.

Earlier this week I briefly considered becoming vegan, without going in to all that, I looked around the internet to see what food options I’d have left.  I was quite surprised how little information there was in terms of buying food from major supermarkets.

My idea is for a website that pulls in information from the online supermarkets to create tailored shopping baskets for specific diets.  So if you were allergic to gluten, for instance, you could easily create your order without having to go through all of the ingredients each time you’re considering a product.

My Supermarket is a supermarket price comparison website that pulls in and compares products from all the major supermarkets to find you the best price.  This could work in a similar way so you could see which supermarket can offer you the best choice, and allow you to fill your shopping basket on the site itself.

All major online supermarkets have a list of ingredients and allergy advice  with each product, thereby it should make it possible to eliminate certain unsuitable products.

Potentially products could also be sorted according to place of origin, for those concerned about food miles.  Obviously this may be a little more difficult as this would vary with seasonal groceries, but I think it would be a very useful tool, and may mean people are willing to spend a little more for environmental reasons.

Sorry to bring it up, but with the current economic climate I’ve been thinking of how banks can present themselves to customers as the market picks back up.

Managing Your Credit Card

-  The ability to set payment goals for different types of purchases.  You might choose to pay off clothing and food purchases at the end of the month, whereas you may give yourself 6 months to pay off a holiday.  Obviously these purchases would essentially be on the same card, but your statement would separate the payments so you can keep better track of your debts.

-  Categorised payments on credit cards, e.g. clothes, eating out, groceries, so you can see where spending can be cut.

-  The ability to set budgets for these categories, and track when going over-budget.  It could alert you when you’re nearing a specific budget - “No more clothes this month!”

-  Suggestions for how to make most of remaining budget - so if you had £20 left in your groceries budget and 2 weeks left till payday, it might suggest a £20 Asda shopping list that could provide 2 weeks worth of meals.

-  Case studies of other people and what their budgets / spending profiles are.

Vouchers / Saving money

-  Internet browser add-on - if you were on the Boots website the toolbar icon would flash to indicate vouchers/coupons are available

-  If you created a budget online and it indicated you spent a lot on eating out it might offer you 2-4-1 meal vouchers rather than just suggesting you cut-back.

-  A feature that shows on a map which shops charge more or less for certain items.  There used to be a kids’ TV show which each week would have a product that viewers would win prizes for finding the highest or lowest price for.  So if it was Hula Hoops someone might ring in with a price of 94p at a petrol station, and someone else might ring in with a price of 29p at their corner shop.

-  It could also incorporate current vouchers available on the map.

Tips

-  Pledges - e.g. pledge to take sandwiches in to work.  Other people could join your pledge and everyone’s progress could be tracked.

-  People could suggest money saving tips, and others would be given the ability to digg them.  Digged tips would appear on your facebook app (or rss feed, or whatever)

-  Suggestions to have one free day / evening out a week.  Or suggestions based around current time of year - e.g. free family days out just before the easter holidays.

Credit Rating

-  The good side of credit cards - how to use them to improve your credit rating and effectively manage your money.

-  Introductory credit cards for people with low credit ratings - very small limit (£100?) that helps them to rebuild their credit rating.

-  Case studies of different people and their credit ratings - and how they can improve them.

At the moment I’m working on my new site, but in the meantime some examples of my work are up at www.katherineaherne.com/currentwork

During the i-Design conference there was a lot of discussion about the way the internet is used, how this affects the purpose of print (in particular newspapers) and what the future of digital will mean for the internet as it is now.

Without getting in to the full discussion, what I think is the obvious advantage of the internet in terms of news is it’s instantaneity, the opportunity for discussion and it’s editable nature. It is possible that journalists could take something from how news is presented on the television and the radio, and discuss news topics online, with the advantage of being able to update the discussion anytime there is an new development. Essentially the stories would be documented live on the internet as a newspaper journalist might do their research, from the first traces of the story.

What I am thinking is something along the lines of how messages are displayed on the iphone or msn. This would lead to the facility of being able to trace the full discussion, which could work alongside larger articles once more evidence or details were known. Each journalist’s piece would be displayed as it flowed, but could also be searched through by point of view or side of an argument. So if there was a particular part of a story you wanted to know more about you’d be able to search through the piece and to find journalists who had focused on that point.

Twitter has been broadcasting information faster than news sites can react, but if the whole point of the site was that they released snippets of information, which they then built on, they might be able to keep up.

Mapping and city navigation is a big topic at the moment, especially with all the iphone apps going about. Here are a few thoughts I’ve had around the topic:

Street view offers a whole new dimension for potential visitors to a city, that I don’t feel has been fully taken advantage of as yet. With extra elements added in to the current format it could be great way to view the city and plan where you want to go. ‘Signposts’ could be added to direct users to local attractions, potentially targeted to the user’s interests. Comments and reviews could also be tagged to places as you ‘travel’ past, in a similar way to the how augmented reality city apps work on iphone. Tours could also be done, so you could be guided around the best places in that neighbourhood whilst getting much more of a real vibe of what the place looks like before you go. Or maybe I do far too much research in to cities before I visit!

Although I do find all the augmented reality city apps very exciting, I do feel that it may interrupt the actual feel of the city to a degree. Following from a post by Russell Davies along the same lines, I started to think of how you could be guided around the city without it disturbing your experience. One idea I had for an actual navigation tool would be a vibration on your phone that directed you. So you could set up your phone to direct you to your destination, and each time you needed to turn it would vibrate a certain way. To turn left it might be a solid “buzz — buzz — buzz — buzz” and to turn left “b — buzz — b — buzz — b — buzz”.

Information overload in cities as been mentioned a lot as well. Initially this idea may appear to contradict that thought, but it would eliminate the information for half of the day, when essentially it isn’t necessary. Directions to nightlife venues could be advertised in street lights - essentially creating shadows to form the lettering. This could also be used for public notices that are more necessary at night such as for warnings about using crime or maybe even taxi ranks.

Another thought is for interactive sign posts, obviously this is isn’t really necessary for the smartphone group, but as the majority of people don’t use them at the moment it may still have some relevance. Signs could have digital displays that would change according to what events are on at that time. But also, if someone was looking for a particular event, they could text the sign post and it would turn to point in the direction. Obviously this could essentially done by a touch-screen computer, but I thought the signs might be something a bit nicer than a screen people have to crowd around, as there could be multiple sign-arms and they seem a bit more human.

The idea is to replicate or create a landscape in an ‘empty’ room.  By projecting strong beams of sound, vibrations and possibly light down from the ceiling people could move around to room and feel like they’ve travelled around the scene. So if it was an area in the Lake District, for instance, at parts of high altitude vibrations with a very high frequency could be pumped in, with whistles and high pitches of sound, and sharp fresh light.  At lakes, the vibrations would be quite soft and almost muffled, with deep softly pulsing sound, and almost muggy light.

I went to see Anthony McCall’s installation at the Serpentine Gallery a couple of years ago, and the way he focused the light in to very tight areas is something I would like to replicate with the sound and vibrations, but through cylindrical columns projected from above, so they can be passed between easily to experience the different areas.

Potentially imagery could be projected down the cylinders, but I’m not sure whether this would add to the effect or dispel the senses evoked from the other mediums.

When I am searching for information on the internet I always end up with a lot of tabs open, which can become quite irritating when the amount goes beyond the screen’s width, and I have to use the arrows to move through it all.  I end up with multiple search results and am not sure which pages are from which search terms.  An application could be created to organically track which results came from what searches, and which pages lead to which search terms.

For a recent project I was researching how to create an online drawing application in Flash and ActionScript 3.0, but I wanted quite specific tools within it.  This meant I had to take bits of information from various tutorials and forums.  The way I usually work in a situation like this is to cut and paste text and images from websites and compile a word document of all the relevant information found.  So when working on the project I can easily refer back.  This could be made a lot easier through an application that would allow you to select any information from a website, and compile it in to the application.  It would then automatically track what web page it had come from and what search term found it.

Within the application’s compilation you could customise the information to appear in any way.  So for my drawing application search I would have a boxes for text, ActionScript code, images and flash applications.

These boxes would be movable, so they could be resized or reorganised to suit however the user wanted to view them.  It could just be a list of the information saved from each webpage visited in a session, or by search term.  However tagging would allow for more specific compilations.  For my project I might have tagged some information as ‘line drawing tool’.  I would then be able to view all the information I had found on that subject, regardless of what search term it had been accessed through.  Or I could choose to purely view the ActionScript coding I had found for creating a line drawing application.

Obviously the way the information was compiled would depend on the subject matter.  So the application would be completely customisable.

This overall idea could be taken one stage further with people’s searches and compilations being accessible to others.  Before trawling through vast pages of irrelevant information, you could look through other people’s searches to find what they had found useful enough to save.  And look at the sections of information they took from the webpage, rather than reading the whole thing yourself.  You would be able to search through their search terms, tags and within the actual text they had selected.  This would make searching for information a lot more specific for very particular subjects.

Another problem it might solve is I often don’t know the technical name of what I want to do, so I know what I want to find, but don’t know what search term to type in.  This means I have to fish around for a while until I find what I’m looking for.  If you were searching through other people’s search terms, rather than what the website called it, it might make it easier to get straight to the information.

Whether this would breach copyright issues I am unsure.  No information would be passed off as the searcher’s own, and the original websites the information came from would be easily accessible and quoted.