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Viewing films and television, in one form or another, is something most of us partake in. My goal was to understand the landscape of viewing, and harness the advantages and disadvantages of the multiple platforms that we view movies or television shows on. Since the advent of internet TV, humans value content and search ability much more than before. Notice how classical cable television, doesn’t offer this search “flow”, because the physical tools related to classic cable do not afford searching (no keyboard on a remote control). The beauty of internet TV, is the endless content, and the ability to search for a specific show. With that in mind however, we can not negate the fact that browsing is innately fun. Flicking the “channel up” button on the classical remote offers a unique experience of discovery. Furthermore, some people know exactly what they want to watch, others don’t. Since humans will naturally “browse” for hours (without even watching a whole film or episode) I wanted to make this experience of browsing, seamless, fun, and relatable. By making the film covers very large, and giving them a limited amount of viewable results (that they can flip through), makes it very easy to browse, and omit certain content. They say to never judge a book by its cover, but humans always will. This is why the film cover is on top of the hierarchal layout. Also notice how the search bar is dead center on the page. Most sites have it hidden in the top corners of the page. Why? If search ability is the beauty of internet viewing, make it obvious. Also, with this system, users cannot only browse by title - but also keywords and tags. They could type in a directors name, a genre, actor, or a vaguely loose term such as “gross”.
The content on the page is displayed in rows and has 3 separate sections. The beauty of these sections is that the user can customize what they want to display on a specific row. To add a deeper level of interaction, I incorporated a blogroll for each show page where users can “like” user comments. If they “like” a user comment, that users film “likes” will be used to offer recommendations. This concept was built off the old movie store paradigm, where they had (on the wall) critique’s “picks”. When the user is looking through someone’s “picks” if they notice they like a movie that you like, it indicates that they share similar tastes, and their other picks should also be enjoyable. With MovieFreak, you could have “Joe_203’s” picks on a certain section - or even multiple users. In this way I am harnessing the old with the new, to create a simple solution that takes advantage of search ability, browse ability, and compatibility. Get your freak on, your Movie Freak on.
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PhotoShop Exercise
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