Panasonic Everything Matters – It Really Does

Panasonic Everything Matters

This is a site launched a little while ago by my old agency de-construct. It is a marketing site for Panasonic that highlights the attention to detail and quality that goes into designing their products. Everything down to the foam used in a remote control battery slot to stop the batteries moving around. I find myself looking at it quite often, because I think it is very good interactive design, and it possesses many key features which I think should be considered in every project.

I wanted to highlight these features briefly:

Interactive concept
A rich experience should have an overall interactive concept. Can the content/theme/brand somehow be represented not just in the graphic design, but in the way you interact with those elements? Can they behave in a way that reinforces what it is you are looking at? The answer is yes. This site handles this very well, the very tag-line of the site is blown apart to enable the user to explore the fragments that make up its meaning. The site has a constant spacial theme, content is floating around, moving in and out of focus.

Functionality
The site has rich immersive interactions, they are engaging and varied. It is not only how slick these interactions are, but the fact that there are many interesting ways to interact with the content. This variation is coupled with consistent behaviors in buttons and rollovers. There is also a shortcut way to filter the content allowing users to navigate more quickly.

Attention to Detail
The pre-loader on this site is a work of art. Instead of the usual percentage bar the colored concentric circles spin with a measured timing, there is some time and thought here. With a site as slick as this, adding that extra level of detail to elements like the loading bar helps to solidify the overall quality of the experience.

The interface elements are slick and inventive, a true example of designer and flash developer working in harmony.

Transitions
Transitions should be simple, clean and consistent. The user doesn’t want to wait for complicated animations to view content, but also adding smooth and interesting transitions makes the content feel that much more important ;) On this site, the overall dimensionality is echoed in the transitions by pushing content in layers backwards and forwards, a subtle blur helps to mimic a camera lens.

Sound
Sound is something that rarely is considered in a project until the end, if at all. I think even very sparse sound helps to give the site a personality, and a tactile quality to the interactive elements. This site goes all out with atmospheric noises helping to craft the virtual 3D space the user is exploring.

Use of ‘now’ technology
The site uses 3D Flash technology, although not entirely new, it is still new enough that designers are exploring different ways to engage the user in this space. Flash 10 now has this technology built into it, instead of third party libraries like Papervision 3D being required.

Modular update-ability
Each piece of content in the site is a module, and extra pieces can be added and then also filtered. This means the site even though appearing complex, can have updates added relatively easily.

Varied Styles
Each piece of content has varying graphic styles, but rather than visual clutter the site works because the overall framework look and feel is neutral and helps create a blank canvas for the different content.

As I always say, there is a lot of overlap between the lines of interactive design, development and art direction. Even with a strong advertising idea, and the many features and details of a project alone are not enough to make it astounding, but when combined with a strong interactive concept you have it in the bag.