Benchmarks+Index

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__Benchmarks/Best Practice Index__ // Use this page as an index to your benchmark page and needs to articulate through words and image a thoughtful analysis of the exemplar. This page is in response for Benchmarks/Best Practice wiki participation assignment. TC ETcC

Founded in 1994, launched 1995. Amazon was originally set up for selling books online, but eventually branched out to carry other products. Now, with 50 million visitors in US alone, Amazon is one of the successful e-commerce giants that uses user-centered design as its primary marketing strategy. Some highlights include: For annotated walkthrough, click here.
 * Personal feel for every user (changing homepage or suggestions according to previous purchases or searches)
 * User involvement (through customer product reviews, product forums)
 * Easy ordering experience (1-Click ordering: this is what makes customers want to go back to your web site)

[|BBC British History Timeline]
An interactive timeline shows the history of Britain, chronologically categorized by period. Users can view the timeline in a macro view which allows them to compare the lengths of the different periods. The micro view reveals individual events and attempts to provide more context by also highlighting other related events that were occurring around the same time. Each event can open to display more information and related links which load in the background window, allowing the user to preserve their place in the timeline. [more]

[|Cabinet: How Designers Collect Visual Material]
This is a new way for designers to collect visual material that is not based on the computer. It's a really neat concept and is highly tactile in nature. It's easy to use, and is very useful as well. I though this was relevant because it's dealing with a way to organize imagery in an interactive and, in my opinion, a more human way. This could give us inspiration as to how we could organize the images and information in a more fun way. Watch the video, its really cool.

[|Cooliris]
Formerly PicLens, Cooliris is a type of visual browsing web browser add-on that goes beyond the traditional experience of image searching. It transforms your web browser into a "interactive, full-screen 'cinematic' experience." Some features include: [more]
 * 3D window shopping
 * RSS support
 * Toggle on/off
 * Sharing capabilities
 * Visual news
 * slideshows
 * ability to customize layout (rows, background image, slideshow speed) according to preference
 * favorites
 * feature films and tv shows

[|CyberMuse]
A part of the National Gallery of Canada it is dedicated to art education and research site, accommodating different audiences such as kids, youths, teachers and researchers with appropriate resources and activities in their own part of the site. The home page provides points of entry into the various parts of the site for first time visitors and casual browsers and clear search options for those looking for information. The site engages people in art as it captivates kids with interactive games, educates youths on career paths, provides teachers with searchable and comparable lesson plans, and researchers with interviews and articles. In addition, "[|gallery channels]" or podcasts help people see artists, curators and even technique demonstrations, enriching the site experience.

Perhaps one way to organize CCCA would be to also separate resources and functions according to the type of audience. This way, the user would be able to quickly browse and locate the information that applies to them. This method also accommodates for different levels of knowledge from complete beginners to art enthusiasts.

Another interesting aspect of cybermuse is its [|artist showcases] which acts like the artist's personal site, displaying their work, biography, chronology, and techniques in a personalized flash interface. Similarly, CCCA artist profiles can also be more comprehensive and even personalized (with customizable templates perhaps?).

[|An Elemental Fascination]
This is an interesting way to interpret a more visual representation of the Periodic Table of Elements. I think it's kinda funny looking, but is a more fun way of looking at information that is usually dull. This was originally a side hobby of Theodore Gray but what seemed like a small task actually took him four years to complete. It's an amusing story, so find out more [|here]. Why I think this is relevant is because this hit upon what we should think about in our projects; how to create a more fun and visually interesting way to view/organize the artwork as well as all it's information. So maybe this is lacking on design, but it's funny :)

[|Design Education]
Design Education is a social networking site like facebook on a way smaller scale focusing its target audience towards designers. This site is fairly new and has less than 50 members. With most its members coming from the GTA. There reason I chose this was to see how feedback and community could be built in the context of design. Similar to facebook there are many applications a user has. more]

[|Digg]
A social networking website originally founded by Kevin Rose in 2004, Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted by the users, as it is classified as a social news website. Anything from images, websites, videos, and news, it offers a wide range for the user. The main cornerstone function is the digging and burying aspect. Stories get submitted everyday, but the stories with the most diggs appear on the front page. Digg has set a precedent for other social networking websites that have a similar voting feature. [[|more]]

[|Flickr Clock]
Flickr Clock is just one way to explore new and growing media in the flickr system/database. It organizes its feeds based on the time of the day in which they were entered. Totally a 24 hour period, users can view what types of these we're being posted at certain times. The way the information/data is organized in this timeline view is a similar idea that the CCCA has with its artists page having a chronological order. This is unique in that there is a wide vareity of themes/topics in all of the feeds/pictures/videos that certain things that we might not usually see together are group based on the time they were updated. Interesting Juxtapositions are created. more]

[|Hexaplex]
Based in Amsterdam, Hexaplex is a small firm consisting of Cheryl Gallaway & Micha Bakker. Their works provide examples of how pieces of simple coding can be combined to make something new and experimental. Using only the simple tools of HTML/CSS (sometimes java) and Wordpress they are able to do some very interesting things, not only in terms of the fluidity of style and layout but also in the way that their information is presented to the viewer. Some of the examples linked off of their website worth checking out: [|www.stby.eu] [|www.charlottewooning.com] [|www.vanessavandam.nl/]

[|Indexhibit]
Indexhibit runs on PHP and MySQL. It was created strictly for artists and designers to publish their work on the web. Indexhibit describes itself as: "A web application used to build and maintain an archetypal, invisible website format that combines text, image, movie and sound." [More!]

[|Imagery]
An image search engine that is created to prove searching for images can be improved and fun! The site is still in the process of developing. Like the Google search engine, by typing in something in the search box related images will appear soon on the result page. read more...

**[|Mediamatic Foundation]**[[image:Picture_8.png width="238" height="58" align="right" link="http://www.mediamatic.net/"]]
Based in the Netherlands, Mediamatic is an on-going research project and social networking system that investigates the complex relationship between culture and new technologies. At once it is a social platform, a research foundation and a place, both virtual and physical, to entail a certain culture surrounding new technologies. [More!]

[|Moo.com]
Moo.com is a custom printing site for people to produce items such as postcards, business cards and greeting cards. The unique section in Moo.com is the way they organized their Designs page. Users are able to browse through the designs and drag the ones they wish to use on their product down to an area that is allocated to them. The designs are displayed in box form for easy browsing and organization. more]

[|Museum of Modern Art]
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is one of the most influential museums for modern art (and contemporary art) in the world. It was founded in 1929. It holds over 300,000 books, artist boooks, periodicals, and individual files on 70,000 artists. Here, we are faced with the same dilemma as CCCA with similar, though not entirely the same, ideologies and nature of. Therefore, it's beneficial to examine the decisions they've made when designing their website. Some highlights include: For annotated walkthrough, click here.
 * Clear, direct and elementary vocabulary (balance between too-dumbed-down that it loses integrity, and too sophisticated that the casual non-Art-savvy user would feel intimidated)
 * Visual impact (not just spitting out a full page with just words, but makes use of the imagery available)
 * Multiple access points to one page (can be accessed from the global nav, visual teasers)
 * Related materials to the query made are made available upon user input
 * Respects technology (or takes advantage of it to make it more relevant to today's audience)

Through a rough sketch, Retrievr allows users to explore and search for images on [|Flickr]. It finds images according to the shape and colour that viewers draw in the sketch pad. The site is based on research conducted by Chuck Jacobs, Adam finkelstein and David Salesin from the University of Washington - Fast Multiresolution Image Querying; and imgSeek, which is an image management aplication that uses the same method. read more...

[|Rhizome]
Rhizome.org is an online artist community that facilitates discourse on art, online portfolios, calendar of events, and calls for collaborations, submissions, and proposals. It is a useful tool for artists to get involved with others and to keep up with their peers. Not only does the site allow for personal portfolios, it also offers a [|widget], which allows the artist to virtually embed their portfolio in any site. The option to include videos and discussion posts on [|artist's profiles] helps the audience understand the artist, enriching their experiences with the artist's work.

It would be interesting to see online portfolios such as the ones on rhizome not as static and distinct webpages but more as part of a network of artists where a sense of community and integration is evident.

[|Universcale]
Using a timeline based structure, Nikon's interactive informational graphic demonstrates the relationship between objects of different sizes–comparing all entities, from the microworld to the universe on a single plane. By setting them up against a scale, we are able to compare and understand things which cannot be physically compared.

The intuitive interface allows the viewer to cognitively understand size in relation to comparisons within the context of the "chart" that the site presents. For instance, one can directly compare the CN tower to Mount Everest since they are relatively close on the chart, while the distance of atoms from the CN tower indicates a world of difference.

In the case of CCCA, this concept of augmenting knowledge through context may be critical to understanding artwork in the historical, social, and political scene of the era and may be something to consider in including on the interface.

[|Wordpress]
Wordpress is an open-source blog publishing application, the successor to b2/cafelog written by Michel Valdrigi. Originally launched in 2003, it has now become the largest self-hosted blogging tool, used on thousands of website and by millions of people everyday. The materials were created by and for the community, and the software has been downloaded millions of times. [|[more]]

[|NOTCOT.org]
NOTCOT is a user-driven link sharing website for anything related to art, design, architecture, fashion, food, and the likes. The ease of use for NOTCOT comes from the fact that the site uses a system where it displays each link with an image and a small blurb about the link and each link is arranged in a grid like layout which makes it very easy for people to skim through and get an overview of what is there very easily. more]

**We Feel Fine**
Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved. more]

**[|Virb]**
Virb is a community and a place for you to contribute the stuff that interests you. Virb is your social network, your photography portfolio and your band’s website. Virb is the collection of all that you share online, from what you find to what you create. What you do with Virb is completely up to you, so come on in and show the world what makes you, you. more]

Stubs
Here are some available ideas that you might consider expanding upon:
 * [|Video Data Bank]
 * [|AGO]
 * [|ROM]
 * [|Masterfile Stock Photography]
 * [|Gettyimages]
 * [|Imagery]
 * [|TinEye]
 * [|The Getty Museum]
 * [|LinkedIn]
 * [|ArtNet]
 * [|Havaria Information Service Alert Map]
 * [|DiggArc>]
 * [|TwitterBlocks> >]
 * [|Etsy Virtual Lab] This one you need to hav e an Etsy account to access, I think.
 * [|ElasticLists] - It's like filters, but more advanced/entertaining.
 * [|MACE Projectsearch] similar practice as ElasticLists
 * [|Relation browser]
 * [|Theyrule.net]
 * [|TED] (filters and spatial relevance) [|image link]
 * [|Digg Labs]
 * [|San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]