Creating Interactive Features
At the start of my project, I decided that I wanted to implement interactive features within my e-book in order to create an experience for the user, different from a traditionally static one.
However, the interactive features I wanted to include, needed to be relevant for an e-newspaper. So using my research about existing e-newspaper apps, I started to create some features.
Photo Slideshows
However, the interactive features I wanted to include, needed to be relevant for an e-newspaper. So using my research about existing e-newspaper apps, I started to create some features.
Photo Slideshows
In order to create a button-based interactive photo gallery, I grouped my 3 images together and made them a multi-state object. With these objects placed ontop of one another, I was then allowed me to make each button either move the photo object to a 'previous state' (previous photo) or a 'next state' (next photo).
In order to keep my photos relevant to the fictional world told in the story, I had to alter a protest sign using photoshop. The original photo included a sign reading 'I hate Mubarak and Israel' which ofcourse was not relevant to the story being told in my article. Therefore, using Photoshop, I made the sign read 'Al Rashid: we need reform now!''. Although this is a small alteration within the large scale of my e-newspaper, I wanted to make sure every aspect felt genuine.
Video Library
I was curious as to whether the 'mulit-state object' feature would also work using video files. Fortunately it did, so I used the same method to create a 'featured video' gallery. Instead of using 'previous' and 'next' buttons to alternate between the two videos, I created two buttons in the style of video thumbnails to act as the buttons. So the two video thumbnails on the left of the screen are in fact just two buttons that control the 'next state' and 'previous state' functionality.
Reader Poll
As it is very common for newspapers to show public responses, I felt it would be suitable to have a 'reader poll' included in the e-newspaper. In order to create this poll, I simply used InDesign's built-in animation features. In order not to bombard the reader with too much information on the page, I decided the hide the poll results until the user touched a button prompt. Therefore, I created a button which was linked to the result bars/figures, so that when the button was clicked, the bars would rise up and the figures would fade in one by one.
Twitter Feed (changing from scrollable to automated scroll)
In order to cement the idea that my newspaper was parodying modern news media, I felt that including a mock twitter feed would be effective. Almost every modern media source references twitter, whether it is showing audience's reactions or sources of information.
Therefore, I created a feed replicating that of a mobile view of Twitter. Originally, my idea was to allow the user to scroll through the feed at their own speed. I attempted this many times, using InDesign's 'scrollable frame' functionality. However, no matter what I attempted with this feature, it would not successfully work in the final preview. I was disappointed as this would have looked very impressive and felt genuine.
In response to this, I decided to use InDesign's regular animation features. I made my feed (which consisted one of long image created on illustrator) move up within the box boundaries automatically. I played with the speed of this for a while and ended up making it scroll at a speed that was slow enough to read but also not too slow so that the viewer wasn't impatient. I also decided to give it a delay so that it didn't start its animation straight away, so that the reader could have a look at the page in general prior to the movement.
Therefore, I created a feed replicating that of a mobile view of Twitter. Originally, my idea was to allow the user to scroll through the feed at their own speed. I attempted this many times, using InDesign's 'scrollable frame' functionality. However, no matter what I attempted with this feature, it would not successfully work in the final preview. I was disappointed as this would have looked very impressive and felt genuine.
In response to this, I decided to use InDesign's regular animation features. I made my feed (which consisted one of long image created on illustrator) move up within the box boundaries automatically. I played with the speed of this for a while and ended up making it scroll at a speed that was slow enough to read but also not too slow so that the viewer wasn't impatient. I also decided to give it a delay so that it didn't start its animation straight away, so that the reader could have a look at the page in general prior to the movement.
