Finishing the essay and thinking about interface design

http://mariacamilleri.com/moira/

I haven't really been updating my blog so often because basically I have been immersed in the essay. I am find it so difficult to stick to 3,000 words. So many details are being left out- although perhaps this is my fault for finding a wide subject to write about. Nonetheless, I still think I have a good argument and I still think there are plenty of things I can afford to remove.

In the meantime, my developer is finding ways of how to display multiple videos at one go. A couple of things we're discussing:

• I want this to be online so loading too many videos will be slow, therefore I have to restrict the number.
• For the show, for bigger impact I will host the website on my laptop and load a greater number of videos.
• If I display this on a touch screen, the area where the user will drag to make the videos bigger or smaller, or just move them about, will have to be better suited to fingers.
• The borders look bad so we will use a black background, black / transparent borders and when the user hovers, these will be highlighted.

The project is basically "An impossible quest for closure" and it reflects what I am writing about. There will be text on the interface which will give the user the illusion that it is trying to help them find a meaning. Instead this will simply play disjointed recordings, pieces of music, or refresh the page to reveal new videos. Maria, the developer also told me to consider changing the actions of the buttons (text) every time the page is refreshed. Therefore the user might see "What does this mean?" and click on it - only to refresh the page. "What does this mean" might not be there when he/she refreshes, but if it is - this time it might trigger a recording.

I will be compiling a reading list (because I'm afraid I will lose track if I don't!) and also update my Abstract.