I’ve just played with MSNBC’s new ‘visual newsreader’, which they have named Spectra.
I love…
- simplicity and elegance of the design – it’s one visual concept, uncluttered by controls and embellishments – which I’m a big fan of
- gorgeous use of colour reminiscent of Adobe’s new product branding – adding the slight gradient to each colour block makes it vibrant and delectable
- the third dimension – perhaps inspired by Apple’s forays into 3D like Coverflow (although why couldn’t they have put more 3D in the Apple TV interface?) – adds a delightful sense of depth in a natural, instinctive way
I hate…
- The inappropriateness of this as a news reading device! I scan through probably 50 to 100 news stories on my feeds each day, which I could never do with this
- I chose ‘order by time’ but I can’t tell how the order is represented
- Clicking on an item before it flies by can be pretty challenging
- When I pick an item it flips over as it comes to the foreground – so shouldn’t it now be upside down or back to front?
- Even though it’s 3D I can’t zoom in or rearrange it – which I would like to as half the stories are off the top of the page
The mere fact that they’ve built this is very exciting, and I see on Organic’s blog that it was made with Papervision, which is a very neat extension of Flash that I’ve been watching for a while. This is definitely one of the most interesting projects built on PaperVision but it saddens me that they were so carried away with the high concept that they couldn’t keep it practical too.
P.S. For this topic I’ve created a new category – Folly – in the architectural sense
Filed under: creative delivery, folly, style , 3D, adobe, apple, apple tv, coverflow, folly, msnbc, newsreader, papervision, rss, spectra, usability
