This week we have been working on creating and finishing prototypes of our outcomes, and I wanted to try something a bit different for mine. While my outcome is made for a digital space (scrolling website on desktop or phone) I am a huge fan of physical interactive elements – like playing with popup books or being able to hold a publication in your hands, feeling the texture of paper-stock.

I made a printed version of my story. Firstly, I cut and glued a long mobile view, with separate small interactive elements- baskets, flowers and books.

I then went to the AUT bindery and created a fake phone screen – Outside only. The way I made it was with thick card and tiny popsicle sticks, cutting it carefully with a craft knife. Gave the user the ability to scroll down the page like you would with a phone, seeing only sections of story at a time – 2 illustrated panels worth.

During the Wednesday prototyping session, my group enjoyed being able to play around with this and look at the way the narrative flows on a phone screen. As some feedback, they suggested that it would be good to brighten my colours in the introduction section, as New Zealand has beautiful bright fruit trees and flaxes, make the most of the web RGB.

Very little text is needed in the story, as the illustrations tell enough. I need to only make the plot line a bit more obvious through the imagery itself – shorten the narrative slightly. Use ambience to show how we should be feeling as we read.

On my large web print out, we were able to see the artworks more clearly and I could show people the details of the scenes – book titles, the interactive nature of the moving panels.

As a fun little moving section, I printed and bound a tiny book with string in the Bindery lab. (stayed up much too late doing this.) It opens and flips in the same way that it will when you tab the screen of the website.

After talking with a member of my group, I am thinking of mocking this up not in Adobe XD (web design platform) but by making a moving video/ tutorial in after effects. The way Adobe XD works is that it designs in flat layers, you cannot insert audio or animation of any sort. this is a problem for me as I plan to add ambient sound to my story (rain, wind, birds). If I mock it up in the style of a game tutorial – moving down the page and interacting with the mouse clicker, I can show the story – have social links and include these audio elements.