Ecademy 3D Flash application
November 8th, 2006
I joined Ecademy back in January 2004 and have been reasonably active in making connections and meeting a few people here and there.
Although it is a great idea, and is working well, it is very data driven, with no real visual representation of any of its information available. With a passion for Flash and a spare few hours on my hands I decided to have a bit of fun with some of the data available.
Click here to view the application in action
The data
There is a feature on the Ecademy website which shows the most recent 100 users to have logged in.
The table of data which is displayed includes the following fields:
NAME | LINK TO PROFILE | SUBSCRIPTION STATUS | ORGANIZATION | LOCATION | COUNTRY
It is possible using a PHP script to “scrape” tabular data such as this from a website, and then use this data in any way you wish. Since Flash makes it nice and easy to import and use data from an XML file, we decided to scrape all the above fields into an XML file.
Note: This is not the ideal way of dealing with website data. The best way would be to connect the the database directly, but at this stage, this was not an option.
The Flash Interface
My initial idea (kind of inspired by the original Deft Flash website) involved turning each member into an animated walking character. This was done as a silhouette in a 3D rendering program which was then imported into Flash.
The main interface and controls were designed to be pretty simple.
- Coloured icons allow you to show/hide members at different membership levels (of which there are 4)
- A list of all 100 members allow you to select a specific member
- Hovering over any of the walking characters displays a popup box with some of the contact data scraped from the original site.
- Clicking any character opens up their Ecademy profile in a new window
Taking it further
Since making this simple application available to Ecademy users it has received some great feedback. I decided to write a blog post about it as I had been asked a few times how it works, how I came up with the idea etc, but also to hopefully spark some discussion for a possible phase 2, to see what other ideas people may want to see in a Flash app. like this, in order to make Ecademy a more visual experience.
Some ideas so far:
- Showing an indication of a members network size, possibly as a “footprint” or shadowed area around them
- The ability to show connections between members and to be able to toggle this on and off
- A live chat feature to start an instant discussion
So, if you have any ideas of your own I’d love to hear them. Please use the comments box below to add your thoughts.
Entry Filed under: Experiments, Flash stuff
8 Comments Add your own
1. Julian Bond | November 9th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
You know we’ve got a lot of that data freely available as FOAF? You shouldn’t need to scrape it.
2. Julian Bond | November 9th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Neat app, btw.
3. Steve Reed - Deft Creative | November 10th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Thanks Julian, I’ll have to look into FOAF as an alternative method now, I’m not sure if it was available when I first started this thing.
4. David Petherick | November 10th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Steve, as you know, I am a big fan of this concept, and we’ve talked about it at length. Thanks for the opportunity to share the views with a wide audience.
1) I would love to be able to add such an application to my ‘inbox’ area or as a widget on my Mac so that I can see who’s new, who’s on the network and shares my interests - in Ecademy or other online networks.
2) I can see that Black Star Members could draw people to their profiles with their own versions of such an application, as they are currently the only ones who can embed flash in their profile pages. If my profile had a tool that let visitors get more from the network, they’d be visiting my profile every day - sticky content!
3) The idea of a dynamic “tag cloud” might also be useful, so that I can see at a glance how “big” a keyword is (or mash in a thesaurus function to think laterally).
4) I also think a way of getting alerts when, say, someone joins Ecademy who has a 50-word match with me, or meets one or more pre-defined criteria would be a useful ‘ticker’ item to add to the interface.
5) I have seen an application in an online network which allows me to define the “Degree of closeness” of people in my network. Thus, when I swing my mouse over my ‘card’, those people who I am closest to in the network are closer to me - those not so close are further away.
6) I think it would be a product that could add real value to Ecademy, and I am certain members would find value in such a tool - especially the “footprint” and with an ability to say “zoom in” on, for example, Ecademy members who are in Manchester and have an interest in hillwalking to join my Club.
7) I am developing a mindmap for this which I will share with you - produced in the Open Source FreeMind format.
Regards, David Petherick
5. Steve Reed - Deft Creative | November 10th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Some great ideas David, thanks for those.
6. Susan Popoola | November 10th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
As you know, I really liked this concept when I saw it. It has a specific appeal to me as a visual thinker. I think this will have a special appeal to the numerous other visual thinkers in the Ecademy community.
Thinking of your thoughts on taking this forward, I’d like to be able to see (an indication of) people’s wider network in a similar way to which it is shown through Linkedin.
It would also be nice if had difference search capabilities e.g.
People with a specific skills
People within a specified location
Better still would be the ability to use multiply search criterion.
I am very much looking forward to seeing how this develops and having the opportunity to use it.
All the best
Susan
7. Ricky | November 14th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Steve,
Fantastic - looking forward to discussing this further over a beer. It’s very “big picture” ;0)
Rick
8. Leon Benjamin | November 14th, 2006 at 11:46 am
This application is completely awesome and with some extra features would catapult Ecademy to the top of the business network league. My number one feature would be Geographic. Overlay the ‘walking members’ on a Google Map and provide slider controls for within xx miles of me
Also sldier cntrols for most recent blog/comment on Ecademy, Network size, reputation, etc etc
Over the years Ecademy has conducted several studies/surveys of its members and the overwhelming feedback it receives calls for step changes in its UI. Inthose days there wasn’t enough cash to do this. Today there is cash and I continue to be puzzled why it does not make this investment.
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