Now that I have considered and researched a lot of options for my immersive prototype, I need to start sketching my ideas so I can start to make design decisions on the layout and structure of my design. I also need to finalise how my design will flow from the beginning of the narrative to the end and how I will take users on this journey.
The first thing I wanted to sketch was a user flow, this will not be a traditional user flow as I am not using different screens, simply one screen/page. In this user flow I want to map out the stages of my narrative and what will go where. I can then look at how this will be laid out on the page itself.
I looked at three potential user flows, the first two looked at the Apollo 11 story in chronological order starting with the story of the space race and working through the mission to the legacy of the mission. The third flow looked at the possibility of flipping the narrative and opening with the legacy of the Apollo 11 mission and then going into the story of the mission itself. While I think this could work and put an interesting spin on the narrative by looking at the impact of the mission before looking at the mission itself, I’m not sure it will work for the plan for the animations and interactivity I am planning as a lot of this is based on the Apollo 11 mission so I would like to put this upfront and get users engaged with my content.
After completing my user flow sketches I moved on to brainstorming content ideas for each of the steps in my narrative flow. I may not use all of these ideas but they give me something to work with in terms of deciding the content I may need to create or source.
For my first layout sketch, I tried to look at the website as a whole, however, it quickly became apparent that I would need to make a very long sketch to get everything in. So I decided to change how I went about doing my sketches for this project. I decided to first look at how I could lay out my website following my narrative flow, followed by sketching potential layout options for each of the individual sections. This will allow me to sketch out more possibilities and explore more opportunities for the project.
I completed two flow sketches one for the chronological flow and the other for the flow that starts with the narrative. I still feel the chronological approach works best so this will be the one that I continue with for my section sketches.
As mentioned above I decided to sketch each section and possible layouts for each. I started looking at the Intro section which would be the first section visitors would see when entering the site.
I want this section to grab my user's attention and bring them into the story, so I need it to visually stand out. I feel by taking up the full viewport I can achieve this as this section will be all my users see. For this reason, I would like to use a video of key moments in the Apollo 11 mission with audio to capture the excitement of the mission and motivate people to learn more.
The next section would be a section looking at the background to the mission from the space race, President Kennedy’s speech, and the fact that before the moon landing the USSR had beaten the USA to every major space milestone. To give this section an interest and cover a good bit of information I want to include an interactive timeline, which lays out the key moments leading up to the Apollo 11 flight, where users can hover over an image or title to see more information.
For the next section, I want to look at the lead-up to the launch of Apollo 11 specifically the development of the Saturn V rocket and the mission crew. An infographic of the Saturn V and images of the crew will provide visual interest in this section.