michelle_p_project3

Information Graphic
My subject for the semester was Fashion, for the 3rd project I decided to specify this broad subject and concentrate on online shoe shopping. The concept I approached was to take data found on sites such as Zappos, Amazon, Ebay or others, and visualizes them through images that will facilitate and minimize browsing various sites.

media type="file" key="shoes-browse.swf"

Process
I found chronological and quantative information on online shoe shopping.

[|Solemates: Century in Shoes] This site is based on the chronological history of shoes. Each century is put into context with a brief description and quotes from notable personas of that time. The site also has a few examples of shoes that were popular or in style during that century.



[|Browse Goods:] This site is already an info-graphic; by zooming in and out the viewer can browse items of their choice. The closer they zoom in, more items become evident and the search is more specified. When an item is often purchased the word “popular” written under.



[|Zappos] Site to browse items, has a wide variety shoes, among other things. The viewer can specify their search at the beginning, and then browse through the selection. There is also a “popular searches” that they can look through. Or they can look through the collection and browse a specific type of shoe.



[|QVC:] This site is also to brows and purchase goods, similarly to Zappos and Amazon. What differentiates QVC is that items can be browsed through a best sellers category or a more specified best selling type of item.

Most website available for online shopping are very similar in method and style. They are all very linear and items are browsed one page at a time. This isn’t very effective if there are over 100 pages and no way to specify the search to what the viewer is interested in buying. Their choice is either to look at more information, or buy the item. What makes //Browse Goods// more effective for online shopping is how it permits the viewer to interact and see all the items at once, and they have the choice to see more information if one particular item catches their eye. The viewer can save potential purchases, email an item to yourself or a friend, look up more information and buy.

My goal for my info-graphic was to create a space for online shopping that was more interactive than other shopping websites. Where the viewer can navigate through a variety of shoes, specify their search through different categories or types of shoes. If they were to click on one type of show, other shoes of the same type would flock together. But still have the option to change the type selected. Or the viewer can specify the only type of shoe they are looking for, to minimize browsing. The most seen or bought shoes would be bigger in size to show their popularity, as well as hovering over a shoe would tell the viewer what type it is. The entirety of shoes could be navigated by dragging the mouse from side to side, or used with a next page button.

For my info-graphic I would use data found on various online clothing sites. There were no yahoo pipes that would work for my specific idea, all I could find that were relevant where these two:



Story Board
Sketch of a story board...

Story board from Illustrator: Opening page, clicking on the shoe brings you to a page filled with all the categories of shoes available to browse.

From here, the viewer can click on a type of shoe that interests them, the sizes depend on their popularity. They can navigate through the shoes by dragging the screen. Or they can choose to specify the category, for example. if they were only interested in lace-up shoes. Or they can simply pick a shoe from all the categories, hovering the mouse over the shoe shows what category it's in, as well as makes it color so that they know which shoe they will click on. Clicking a shoe groups it with other shoes of that same category...some icons would be seen in more than one category. The lace-up category for example, would group all shoes with laces, wether they are athletic, heels, sandals etc... The viewer also has the option to browse the other categories linearly with arrows. To see what shoe is being sold, the viewer can now click on an icon, and a pop up will appear with the information along with the options to buy it, e-mail it or check it. If they choose to keep looking, but keep one shoe in consideration for purchase, they can check the item, which stores it in the menu in the upper right corner. If they want to buy the shoes than the "buy" button will link to the manufacturer. Or they have the option to e-mail it to themselves for future reference, or send to a friend. At all times through the info-graphic the viewer can click on the "All" option to return to the first frame, or choose a new category which would immediately group that category together.