Design Challenge

The problem was to design a novel navigation method for a high-end seed catalog. The prototype would allow the user to sort the information according to several different categories and be scaleable to allow for additional information.

Design Solution & Interaction

My team’s design intended to convey a sense of space and provide an entertaining method of navigation, rather than a strictly functional one. By extending the plant metaphor, we arranged the categories as vines hanging from a branch at the top. Each branch contained all the items in the catalog but organized by the category’s criteria, such as alphabetical or how much light they need.

The user could move up and down a vine to view the items sorted by that category, or swing across to another category vine while still “holding onto” a particular item.

A further extension of this idea was to include leaves on the vines which would provide a menu of criteria on that vine and serve as a navigational shortcut.

Download the Director executable: burpee-exe.zip (5 MB)