Yesterday it was my work Christmas party - a joyous time of year where you enjoy fine food, whilst also placing bets on which co-workers will fall over first! Its always quite surprising who actually is the first to fall over - its usually the person whom you least expect! Anyway, we were out in Brighton and after many beers the group began to break up. I found myself with a co-worker in a different bar admiring the projector display on the wall.Shiney things are great for attracting drunk people, I’d bet that many an alcoholic can be found in the early hours of the morning, staring contently at the glow of show window dispays. In this case we were looking at a photo slideshow of a previous event at the venue.Its nice to look at photo’s, especially when filling in memory gaps of the night before, but I couldn’t help thinking to myself what is the point? I’m staring at photo’s of people I don’t even know, and aside from admiring the ladies (actually there seemed to be the same 3 or 4 in all the photo’s), there was nothing particularly special about the photography. No cool visuals, just people… dressed in funny costumes… with beer…Obviously if I were the person in the photographs it might be quite a compelling experience, which is personal to me, but otherwise I’m just going to be looking at strangers whom I have no personal connection with.Wouldn’t it be cool to go into a bar and have a unique experience which is somehow personalized to you and everyone in the room at that moment?From Flash on the Beach, as I mentioned in a previous post, many speakers had used Flash in conjunction with its Webcam and Microphone support to create interactive art installations, which would respond to the observer - why not take this into the social space? We already have Music visualizers which can generate funky visuals to a given sountrack, adding a second layer of interaction on top of his could create an even more unique experience.I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’m going to be doing some Flash Webcam coding over the holidays, but also to designers out there - next time you are designing something, be it a web application or any other piece of interactive technology ask yourself, how are people going to interact with this experience? What value can be gained by adding the personal touch? In many cases it is something which may require minimal effort, but add a great deal to how users percieve your product. Looking at the video game industry, we see this a lot, wether it be Nintendo’s Mii’s - customisable avatars which the user can model upon themselves - or games that let you map your face onto the main character’s head. Its often a nice touch, leaving user’s with a warm fuzzy feeling inside.Happy Holidays! (more…)