Placement prototypes

Lately we've been working on some placement prototypes. These are programmed without a lot of graphics and are made to see how placing elements in different locations works. We have 4 elements - the GNG logo, a search box, a box for search results and a box for the video player. We've tried placing them in different places to see what works the best. The prototypes can be seen here.

At first we liked prototype 1 the most. It seemed like a good way to sort the results in 3 columns but it also wasted a lot of space for the search function. The second problem was that we've decided to limit the size of the window to 720x550 pixels in order to enable users with a 800x600 screen resolution to use the player. The search window then becomes very small and hard to find your way in. Since there won't be a lot of background reading and purchase links we decided to let this prototype go. It simply wasted too much space that could be used a lot more efficiently.

Prototypes 2 and 3 are much like each other. The biggest problem is that they give the impression of being a mess. All controls are scattered too much and the search function takes up too much space at the top of the window. Of course the search function is important but we want the video box to be the most dominating.

Right now we are working more with prototype 4. It is a bit ordinary but also the most effective way to use the space we have in the window. Actually we are working on prototype 5 right now which is a slightly different version of prototype 4.

These prototypes have been made to find the right locations for the elements. Prototype 5 will be a more extensive graphical prototype and will be posted soon.