Mind-map

I have created this mind-map to show how I developed my ideas for this project. I also took into account important factors such as usability and ways of attracting more users.

Beta Testing

Tom

Was it easy to understand how to use the banner?
Yes it is simple to understand

Did you find the banner enticing?
yes because of the start button animation

Did you want to play it again?
yes

Was the banner an appropriate size?
yes



Jake

Was it easy to understand how to use the banner?
indeed

Did you find the banner enticing?
yes

Did you want to play it again?
no

Was the banner an appropriate size?
could of done with being a little taller

George

Was it easy to understand how to use the banner?
Yes, the banner gave instructions on how to interact within it.

Did you find the banner enticing?
I’ve seen the game style before many times, but the graphics were attractive.

Did you want to play it again?
Not really

Was the banner an appropriate size?
The banner’s size was appropriate for the game that was made within it.

Banner Ad concepts

This is the final design that I came up with is based on a rockets collecting boulders, and once 10 have been collected the web page is opened and the animation goes to an end page where the user can restart if they wish.

To attract people to play with the banner, the start button increases and decreases in size in a pulsing effect.  

This concept involves the user to shoot down the screens, and at random, when a screen is shot the PCA website will open up. Because there is no branding on the banner I hope that the user will be more intrigued to see what it is about.

Creating a link to a website via flash.

box.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,fl_ClickToGoToWebPage);


function fl_ClickToGoToWebPage(event:MouseEvent):void
{
navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://www.adobe.com"), "_blank");
}

This code will enable the user to click on the banner and then be re-directed to a website.

Effective website banners

Above is a good example of how a web banner can be very effective. This banner for thetrainline.com has bright attracting colours which draw in the users eye. The best feature about having this ad on the front page of YouTube is that if the user dose not wish to view the ad they can simply click the cross to hide it, therefore preventing the user for becoming frustrated by moving animations.

The Pringle interactive ad is by far the most amusing in its content. The user clicks on  the banner repeatedly and in response messages pop up. The good thing about this ad is that it takes an extremely long time for the user to cycle through all of the messages, which for a web site banner is a very good achievement.

Once again this is effective as it keeps the user on the ad for much longer than the average viewing time. A bad point that I would pick up would be the clarity of the branding in the left hand corner. Although the user will be on the ad longer than usual, it would be easy for them to disregard the branding and click off the web page. 

This ad by Mini is effective at conveying the information about the car, however I find it frustrating how once you have cycled through the Mini's mods you cannot scrub back to see the previous version. From an interactive point of view I think that if the feature was enabled then viewing it would be a much more enjoyable experience. 

Creating a Motion Guide in Flash

There are many advantage to creating a path for an object to follow, the main is that you can determine the position and speed of an object at any point on the time line.
The method to creating a motion path is to create a path with either the pen tool or brush. Then in the layers panel right click on the new path layer and "add classic motion guide" this will allow another movieclip to move along the path when tweened.

Score counter in Flash

The idea of this experiment was to create a function, witch when the object was clicked, would add 1 to the score.

The ActionScript used was as follows:

//Tell the counter to start from 0

var score:Number =0

//Shows "Score 0" on stage prior to the object being clicked
scoreText.text="Score  "+String(score)

square.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, fl_MouseClickHandler);
function fl_MouseClickHandler(event:MouseEvent):void
{

//adds +1 to the variable 
score+=1

//To the text box on the stage increases to value without changing the the word "Score"
scoreText.text="Score  "+String(score)

//tested whether the function was working
trace("SCORE");
}

The text box on the stage was set to "Classic text" and "Dynamic text" so that the AS was able to change the value within it.