»navigation«

Before you jump at me in disappointment... not all the links are working:

The letter-links in the world map are only popping up but don't work.
The same is true for when you come to Poland the links to Routenplaner and the cities are visible but not working... I think it is pretty obvious which one is my favourite "pop up"-thingie but you may have a word on colors.

First sketches on the Polish-side wanted to have a comparison of the numbers from Germany and Poland - that's why I have the dots on the bottom right of the circle. I wanted to have the numbers to just pop up one by one but didn't do it because I might drop that whole business anyway. Any opinion?

I throw you right in....

Most links are not working.... but I'm hiding color every now and then... :-) Not happy with anything. And I'll have to take another type for the popping things for Poland... it's not very legible in small sizes...

I look at it tomorrow...

Navigation continued.... forgot how much time this scripting takes. Argh. But at least I'm pretty much back into it and this explains, too, why I didn't just drop it and continued to sketch: I love it, it's so neat. All this fiddling and problems where you don't even know where to start and then in the end it kind of works. So... here it goes.



Just note that I concentrated on Europe.
The text is still blurry sometimes (stupid mistake of mine but to fix that is gonna take way too much time). And yes... sorry, the letter navigation is not activated but I wanted to see what it looks like when the mouse runs over the letters.... I guess the result still needs to be re-worked but I'm not sure how.
What else? I'm a bit tired of looking for bugs.

Alright. Gonna start making sketches for the Polish starting page - eager to work on some content.

Something for you to play with.

I'm not so happy with the cross to close the maps. I'll try Inês' suggestion to take the sea as return-button later. Kind of had enough for today.



And there is still a lot of fine tuning necessary anyway. Still due:

• experiment with speed of zooming
• try a nicer way of zooming out
• fix the text, so that first of all it's not blurry anymore and that secondly these two long lines on the top can be separated more nicely
• programme navigation via letters (that's gonna be so complicate - I'm scared)
• kick out explanation as soon as zooming-things start
• fix these colors: at least a bit of contrast would be helpful
• find solutions for all kind of problems coming up when you haven't coded for a long time.

Went to try some navigation stuff - thus here a wild mixture. And don't tell me you don't like the pink (that's quite some color - you shouldn't complain). But honestly.... this is just to give an idea of where this whole thing is heading at... and yes, still need to rework the colors.


(the link might take some time to load...)

So....

sketch #1 and sketch #5 are in. The first one because of its clear structure (especially organizing the content to the left) and the later because of it's coloring.

But.... the first one is .... ouah ... very boring (I never thought anybody would ever choose for that one) but I have to admit that the last one (yes, it was my favorite) is (againagainagain) too decorative and playful. And I kind of think that the coloring is a bit too soft but I guess I can still add something there.

So now it's up to combining elements differently and actually try some animation stuff. Like zooming into the map and things.

So.... some bits and pieces of sketches I've been doing this week. None of them are what I really want. But what I like about them is that they look more serious - at least that's my impression, hope, belief, ... (pleaseplease, agree!).

But... ah. Just need to rule off to continue somewhere else.


1. little flash on happy color :) (clickable)




2. little navigation detail




3. another little navigation detail plus some I-go-crazy-colors




4. little page pretending too be complete (clickable)




5. little page based on the page that pretends to be complete but with colors kicked out (clickable)




And don't complain... this is already the best-of. With the other stuff I'm not even gonna bother you.

My web app is gonna be wonderful :) It's going to illustrate the daily cultural differences one - well, actually one is someone German - most likely comes about working in Poland. In order to promote understanding, culturally influenced behavior at the work place will be drawn upon historical events, educational structures, daily living conditions... That's all. (Why is "all" so difficult?)

There are four main categories: staff formation, promotion of motivation, meetings/organisation of the work flow, contact to externals. These main categories I wanted to function as independent "training"-units.

For example: contact to externals will have a page for each step that is to be taken.

1. Find somebody who knows the person you want to get into contact with, get introduced.
2. Call the "external". Talk about everything but work.
3. Write a letter. Write about everything but work.
4. Go and pay the external person a personal visit.
5. ...

In general these sub-pages-training-steps will be linked to the meta-level. The urge to establish personal bounds as foundation for business actions can be explained by the Polish history: on the one hand the control of the people by a socialistic regime brought the people closer together and on the other end during the era of deficiency in the 1980s a lot of goods for daily use for not publicly available but only by means of personal networks.

So... there is already the next problem. At what point, where in the training-unit can you navigate to the meta-level?

And to make it more complicate.... in order to have a network and to deliberate cultural complexity and to promote intuitive learning (and just to make some reasons up) I wanted the meta-levels to consist of different steps/units, too. It's like picking out a history book to look something up and then you start flipping through some pages and end up somewhere else. And at various points you jump back into the one or the other main category.

Thus.... now! Uff! What a huge knot! And my teacher wants to know what the start page will show... gee... good question. The start page, the second page, can somebody please scrap the good from the evil ideas out of my head. And worst of all.... what happens when you're confused? You fall back to the usual. I've been designing numerous websites these last days that would work for a restaurant just as well.... argh. I want my concept to show. I want the design to be nice. I want the website to be something special. I want. I want. I want.

Alright.... what needs to be on the very first page. Associate with the idea that the user has to directly see - oh, this is involving business! and oh, this is involving me going abroad to some unknown culture.

So... this is it. My state of mind. Do you still believe I'm happy with my project? I am. I'm so liking it. This is a manifesto.

• a bit more interaction
• try clicking on meetings or motivation for example
• trying to specify more clearly what is hidden behind the titles
• still need to work on the wording (now I mixed questions and notes and everything....)
• gave up in the middle
• not happy with it :-(

Yeah.... somehow done. Will still need some modification but that's why it's called a working model.