Whilst looking at other examples of non-linear, interactive websites I found ‘Out My Window’, by Katerina Cizek (2010). Here you can see 13 different apartments in 13 different cities across the world, giving an insight in to each home and what they see out of their highrise windows. To select which apartment you want to see there is a collage of photos for each one or you can bring a map down and select from here. Once selected, there are photo collages giving a 360’ look around the room. You can hover over objects or people and find out more information and the stories of the inhabitants lives. This information is either represented with sound and still images, or 360’ films made with Yellowbird cameras, where the user can navigate around within the film. There is also some background audio noise in each room, or sounds when you hover over an object. The project is incredibly complex but from this I am encouraged to try and use as many different formats as possible – images, clips, sounds and so on. The idea of using a map made me think of doing something similar for my section on Ikea – I could show a world map and indicate how many stores were opened in quick succession in different parts of the world. Also I liked the opening screen for ‘Out My Window’ – it almost looked like titles for a film, with the title appearing, with information on what it was, and then an ‘explore button. I could do something similar using the titles from the film perhaps, or the cover of the book with an ‘open’ option.
Another example of interactive documentaries was ‘Welcome to Pine Point’ by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons (2011). This is technically a linear narrative as you can only navigate to the ‘next’ page or the ‘previous’ page. However within each page there are interactive aspects. One that was used often was to be able to click through a set of photos within that page, as well as have a scrolling screen within a box that you could scroll up and down in. This would be a simple way to get lots of images in to one screen level rather than having to make lots of new ones. A place this may be useful would be for the ‘Soap’ section in my project – if I include a step by step recipe of how soap is made, but you can click through each step one by one within that screen. Each image would have the instructions and a picture to go with it.
HBO Voyeur is an example of an interactive documentary however it is fictional, and although you can click on what you want and see what you like at any time, it is the same footage being played on loop so you could in theory see everything there - just in alternative orders. This is more like my project as the same material will be available to everyone, but you cannot change the meaning or ending as in some interactive docs where you choose the paths for the characters etc. Mine is an informative, factual piece.