Portfolio
.: Multimedia Application for Mobile Device
Project Title: An Introduction to Ancient Rome
Brief Description of Project
To create an application for a mobile device that will give an educational overview of Ancient Rome for younger teenagers. This will include different media elements, such as images, sound and interactive features, as well as text and factual information. A timeline detailing major events from the founding of Rome to the fall of the empire will be built-in, as well as a map of the City detailing important and historic locations. General information about Ancient Rome, such as the Military and structure of the city-state will be included.
Hardware and Software
The application will be built using the Adobe CS package, primarily Flash and Photoshop to run on an HP iPAQ PDA. The application will be built for a screen resolution of 240 x 320 (QVGA) and a colour depth of 8bit and optimised to perform on this handheld device.
Designs and Colours
The design of the application will be based on the colours of the Roman legion, a dark red and dark yellow/gold colour. In order to maximise contrast between the text and the background, white and black will be used for the text and titles, this is made especially crucial due to the small size of the PDA’s screen.
Screen Design
The final application functions with a pop-up style menu that is accessible everywhere within the application, this creates a consistent and intuitive user experience.
The rest of the application is designed to in keeping with the Ancient feel, while providing an enjoyable and educational experience for the user. Advanced features such as the interactive Rise and Fall Timeline give the user a sense of immersion within the content.
Problems and Solutions
In order to provide an intuitive and simple application, I intended to create a both a map and timeline features that the user could navigate through via dragging. While I was already familiar with making such a feature, the main problem came from having a layer of clickable buttons that would drag with the map, yet still function as navigation hotspots – allowing the user to click away from the section in order to view detailed information about locations on the map, or events on the timelines.
The problem was eventually overcome by settings the background image (such as the street map) to act as a button, instead of a graphic. This meant the navigation buttons on top of the map would remain active and would still work. This combined with using the “_root” function in the hotspots code, allowed for navigation to function as planned.
The second major problem I faced during implementation related to my navigation menu, which acted as a pop up. This problem was similar to my map issue, in that in the differing layers and properties of flash symbols often created conflicts that would render other parts inactive; such as implementing working menu links breaking the pop-up animations and vice versa.
This was overcome by implementing a logic check into the menu button, assigning ‘true’ and ‘false’ values to menu open and menu closed, and then using if statements to check against these values when MENU was clicked.
stop();
panelhidden = true;
stop();
panelhidden = false;
on (release)
{if (menubar.panelhidden == true)
{menubar.gotoAndPlay("open");}}
on (release)
{if (menubar.panelhidden == false)
{menubar.gotoAndPlay("close");}}
Aside from the coding issue, the main problem encountered came from tailoring content to match the limited screen size, while still being usable and readable. This required a lot of the content to be rewritten and condensed a great deal, and for pictures to be resized.
References
Cavazzi, F. 2008. The Roman Empire.
Retrieved from: http://roman-empire.net
2008. Capitolium.
Retrieved from: http://www.capitolium.org/eng
Carr, K. Ancient Rome for Kids!
Retrieved from: http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans
Crystal, E. 2009. Ancient Rome
Retrieved from: http://www.crystalinks.com/rome.html
Heaton, C. 2009. UNRV History.
Retrieved from: http://www.unrv.com
Wikipedia, Ancient Roma, Roman Culture, Roman Military.
Retrieved from: http://www.wikipedia.org
Just, F. 2009. Ancient Rome: Images and Pictures.
Retrieved from: http://catholic-resources.org/AncientRome/
2009. Ancient Rome.
Retrieved form: http://www.rome.info/ancient/
Weigel, D. De Imperatoribus Romanis: An Online Encyclopaedia of Roman Rulers and Their Families
Retrieved from: http://www.roman-emperors.org/lindexxx.htm
Hello....
I'm Adam, and I'm a multimedia designer. Or at least I try to be one. I focus on accessible web design and development, but I'll try my hands at other things too.
Feel free to contact me and get me to do some things for you.