The effective of user interface design should be visualize and inclusive, it will bring the user a feeling of control. The user could understand what they could do through the website and how to manipulate just using the direction through website. The website IOTORAMA is designed by Alpha-ville, which is a London based creative studio. It is an interactive project that arouses people’s interest of the world of “LOT” (Internet of Things). The interface is comprised of animations, soundscapes and multimedia projects that illustrate how purposeful design integrated with data and technology. The website separates the world in different areas including culture, social, home, body-mind and DIY. People could interact with web pages and explore each item with the example that the web offered. Each project would be linked from each graphic icon showing on the website. Meanwhile, the motion graphic and interactive design contains both aesthetics and technology, in particular to the internet of everything.
The interface design of IOTORAMA is very pretty, and audio background sound was added into the website. When you look through the website, even in the first page, you need time to figure out ‘what’s it for’. The motion graphic are very attractive to the users, however, to see if this page is discoverability, which means making it easy to figure out what is possible, the front page of this website are not designed so well.
f.g.1 The front page of IOTORAMA
At the beginning page of IOTORAMA (f.g.1), you could see the introduction and main purpose of this website. The black circle within a ‘question mark’ indicated what you could do for the next step. However, there is no navigation bar showing on that page, so the user could not get much information from the whole project through the beginning page.
f.g.2 The second page of IOTORAMA
After the user clicking on ‘explore’ from the first page, the second page shows up (f.g.2). There are some floating orange circles moving on that page. The graphs in each circle are well draw and clear, however, it is very hard for the user to link those graphs to the meaningful or educational thing that the website owner try to present. The word need to add within each circle, or the circle could change to word that the graph indicated, for instance, the image of a person indicated ‘body and mind’ (f.g.3).
f.g.3 item page of IOTORAMA – Body Mind
f.g.4 item page of IOTORAMA – DIY
The design of different colors and shapes for each item indicate different functional interactive movements for website users, or say, the design offers affordance that allow for users appropriate actions/behaviors. However, those differences dose not provide any clues for correct operations (f.g.4). The users have to try to click those colorful shapes without any instructions. Those background graphs somehow disturb the users’ attention and thoughts. Therefore, the website dose not signifies users’ action indicatively and directly.
f.g.5 item page of IOTORAMA – Design Fiction
The website feedback is done pretty well, which give immediate indication of an action’s result. For instance, When the user click the moving circle of the web, the different color circles (e.g. red and blue) will merge and then come with a new result for the next step that the user could explore (f.g.5). The feedback from this website is given directly because users could check the next steps easily just after clicking those moving graphs.