The Fi Challenge: CNN Air App

My design for the CNN Air Application.

Fantasy Interactive is a self-proclaimed ‘pixel perfect’ interactive firm based in New York City and Stockholm Sweden.  They have a few students from RIT currently working there and every year they return with the chance that another student might get in.  This year they gave us a challenge:

The purpose of this project is to design or develop an AIR widget for CNN.com. Users will download and install this widget so that they can have access to all of the breaking news, headlines, and statistics that they access frequently from CNN.com, but have it in the convenience of a desktop widget. This should be a widget that people can (and want to!) use. It shouldn’t be super experimental; it needs to be practical for day-to‐day use.  The catch? It must be designed in 2 days.

The general requirements of the application were that it needs to allow instant access to all of the news: videos, articles, weather, and stocks, should feel live, with up‐to‐the‐minute data, should allow some customization and configuration based on the news tastes of the user, can employ a liquid layout, so someone can use it as a small, and have it be a widget or allow it to take up the whole screen (1024 by 768).

The design above was my solution to the problem.  I have an obsession with creating grids on my computer screen – especially with IM windows.  I don’t like to use Adium because I actually prefer lining up every window I have open in a checkboard pattern… I’m weird, I know.  So when going about creating the app, I wanted something that would fit perfectly into a slot created by an AIM window or could go right next to my AIM Buddy List.  I wanted it to feel light and small, so you could have it up at all times.  You can rearrange the bars of information to your liking and you can open up more news by clicking on the big “+” sign.  Now there are some problems with this design that I’m currently working on and will be fixed in version 2.  The main ones being that I have too many “+”s and they mean too many things, so I need to change them to “edit”, “launch”, and “read” buttons – one of which could be a “+”.  The other problems include having some rounded edges and some angular and a transparent glass doesn’t lend itself well to light backgrounds.  Hopefully I will have it done soon and up for your comments & critque.