December 7, 2010, 3:26 pm
What Color are Your Tentacles?
By Henry Woodbury
Thanks to the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, you can build your own squid.
The Build a Squid interactive is akin to the avatar-builders associated with online games and social media sites. It is a great example of the advantage of fewer choices. There are six components, each with three options, and, for all but eyes, the same palette of 14 colors, blends and patterns. All the naming and design options are accessible all the time. You can cycle through options using “Next” and “Previous” but there’s no need to be sequential.
Also refreshing, for a man who has spent a number of hours logging his children into Disney web sites, is the absence of terms, permissions, and validations. Which isn’t surprising since once you create your squid and drag it back and forth across your screen, you’re pretty much done. All you can do is release your virtual creature into the virtual deep.
How interesting is that?
Interesting enough I guess. After you release your squid, it is easy to find it again using its name or your email. You can check its age, weight, and mileage and drag it around the screen again.
Since the real point of Build a Squid is to drive traffic to Te Papa’s colossal squid exhibition it would seem to be doing its job. The application is two years old and hosts plenty of squid.
Comments
This is really well done and would make a great candidate for a Facebook application as it would allow you to add a social component and handle notification aspects.
Posted by Ales on December 28, 2010 at 9:48 am