Client Prototyping: College digital signage mockups

Sample Trivia Game

Recently a client called and wanted a quick set of sample images, movies and Flash animations created. He was attending a Higher Education technology conference and needed sample content for his booth. The deadline was just a few short weeks away.

This was a fun project, with a completely “open” set of requirements. The only constraint was two fixed sizes. Colors, theme, layout, messaging: just make them”look cool, believable” and recognizable to visitors at the booth. We took a road trip to a few nearby campuses and got “inspired”. Here’s what we came up with. The client loved ‘em!

For rapid prototyping this, I was torn between using Adobe Flash, Adobe Fireworks, Apple Motion, and Apple Keynote ‘08. In the end, I decided to go with Keynote for a few reasons:

1. The client specifically asked for a mix of file formats (images, quicktime, SWF) to show off the capabilities of his demo system. Apple Keynote could directly export Flash, PNG, and QuickTime movies, so that would certainly be a streamlined workflow…no conversions necessary.
2. Keynote has an handy “instant alpha” feature to remove background colors from clip art quickly. It saves a lot of time versus “masking” and working in Photoshop.
3. I’m not efficient with Fireworks yet.
4. I have only used Keynote for typical “presentation” work, but recently start dabbling with it for some really simple rapid prototyping with another client.

What worked well:

• Keynote’s set of built-in shapes, textures, and backdrops made quick work of building backgrounds and simple transitions.
• Font controls were flexible and easy to use.
• Animation builds and wipes were sufficiently complex and nice-looking without being “Cheesy”. I tried lots of them, but ended up using just a few transitions and builds to keep the look and feel consistent.

What didn’t work:

• Rotated fonts looked surprisingly bad. Not sure what the deal was, but rotated fonts were consistently poor quality. Check out the “Australia” slide, although it might be harder to notice in this half-sized web version, all the rotated text looked rough and craggley.
• Layer controls. At times it was hard to get the right set of “front” and “back” that worked well with the graphics.
• Cropping graphics. If you need to crop something other than a square, Keynote is frustrating. That made it hard to layer things nicely too.
• Timing: Keynote is rather inflexible at transition/build timing when you export the presentation. During a presentation it’s fine, but you have three timing choices during export: Fixed Timing, Manual Advance and “as recorded”. The latter option is very flexible but time consuming. Maybe it’s better in Keynote ‘09?

Would I use Keynote to prototype like this again ? You bet. It did almost everything I needed and did it efficiently.  The client loved the package..and in the end that’s all that matters.

Gallery of Samples: (Click to see larger image or animation)

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