PROJECT MOGULInteractive Storytelling

Research - Competition

GAO

General Accounting Office. Most informative site I found. It is only a government report on records relating to Roswell. Not a single image, it is only type. Very boring, but filled with the best information.

Smithsonian

Also only a single column of text. Not too many images. "A flying saucer was easier to admit than Project Mogul." This is where I began shifting from just talking about Roswell's aliens, and shifted to Project Mogul. "Men in black."

UFOFestivalRoswell

Two headers? Big animation, but it is cut off due to being too large and having multiple headers. Not the standard single column layout, NICE. Information only relates to a festival, though they take inspiration from the alien love.

Research - Competition

History.com

Very text heavy. Standard single column layout. Only has three images for the entire website, including the large banner image when you first arrive on the site. Big grey bar with no purpose. Table of contents is located in a very awkward place.

NewMexico.org

More of a database of places to go, which includes Roswell. Massive banner of an alien. "Exhibits are designed not to convince anyone to blieve on way or another about their subjects." Thought that was an interesting idea for portraying the popular story of the area.

RoswellUFOMuseum

Very whacky website. Bright colors, lots of blues from space and a bright green for the aliens. Huge background image which is just space. Spinning image animations. HARDCORE ALIEN.

Content Breakdown

Too many "sightings"

The Roswell Incident spawned a ridiculous amount of UFO sightings being reported, so instead of exploring that, I explored what caused the Roswell story to even start.

Brainstorm

Narrowing Down

From this I was able to continue narrowing down that I wanted to avoid a strictly alien-related story, and drifting toward reading how the Cold War caused UFO conspiracies.

Target Audience

Young Adults

College-aged adults. Curious about US history. Conspiracies are interesting to them. Slight distruct in the government. Podcasts about paranormal stories are their go-to podcast.

Written Statement

Strategy

My strategy is to tell the story of the UFOs and hysteria, while explaining how Project Mogul and the Cold War influenced it

Design

My site design will be inspired by physical prints and half-tone images to bring that nostalgic printing press vibe. I'll use some sort of green/blue color choices to remain close to how alien websites have made their versions.

Goal

Explore popular culture and aliens while presenting the influence of globabl tensions.

Moodboard

Wireframe Sketches

Digital Wireframes

Prototype

User Testing & Revisions

In-Person

Testing on my prototype was a little weird, because I had planned for it to use fullPage but that couldn't be done on the prototype. This caused for some pretty ugly spots in scrolling because it wasn't designed for that. That was my first piece of feedback from roommates. At first the sections didn't line up at all, but that was later solved by figuring out how to do fullPage.

Slack

Some feedback I got over Slack was about the typography and spacing. The spacing on the website is definitely more than the spacing on the prototype, but it still isn't perfect. I wasn't too sure how to get it exactly how I wanted, and that mixed with my Brackets crashing and losing the whole file, I didn't have the ability to achieve me final goal.

Outcomes

Challenges

My biggest challenge was the entirity of coding, but specifically figuring our how to work the first animation for the title page. I didn't exactly accomplish my goals with it, I wouldn't liked some fade away on the redacted

"project." My largest challenge was when my Brackets crashed, and completely deleted everything in my CSS file. That was a massive morale hit, as well as a lot of work lost.

Future Goals

My goal going forward would be to fix my typography on the site, as well as getting the title animation the way I'd like it.

Thank you.Jonathan Odom