2stations

If you’re not a hard core fan it can often be intimidating to join a discussion about the team. You just don’t know enough. After I moved to Oslo I started supporting the local team Vålerenga. Steeped in proud history and with a lot of classic moments you absolutely should know about. Not me. The same it true for Manchester United, I’ve grown more attached to them over the years but feel I lack a lot of the history. Here’s where the web really helps and I hope over time all this information will also be on the mobile platform.

First you look up the club’s own site. Then you look at the Wikipedia for a great overview. The fan club’s own site is often a maze - hard core fans deep in discussion topics that I have no meaning or insight into. But here you can learn the words to all the songs if you don’t want to look like a prawn sandwich type of supporter.

What is interesting from a user experience perspective is the development in the presentation of content. Take the team listing for Vålerenga. Vital information you should know something about. It’s a static layout, does the job, I can match names and numbers to faces but it’s not very exciting.

Uefa build on this with a richer presentation of the team gallery in euro2008. Nicer, more user interaction with some options to change the layout. A big step up, Uefa do this very well as I’ve written before.

Piclens - A giant leap forward

The guys behind this app must have been inspired by the Matrix and Minority Report. When I first saw Piclens it was a real Wow! moment. Holy Moly Batman this is good! The video below doesn’t really do it credit. You should install Piclens yourself for the full screen effect and to feel the control you have over the motion graphics. In terms of user experience Piclens represents a very interesting solution to navigating and browsing complex data spaces. I’ll write more on that in future posts.

Piclens wall view of YouTube search for Rosenborg. from Pearse on Vimeo.

I searched YouTube with Piclens for Rosenborg and ended up using far more time than I had planned. It’s a really nice interface to their archive - I’m staying clear of the obvious rights issues here, this is just an article about user experience. I watched recent videos but also stumbled upon classics from the past such as a young looking Iversen and their famous manager Nils Arne Eggen.

There is a commercial aspect to this as well as the dwell time in the interface is probably quite long and opens for a lot of brand exposure for advertisers.

Piclens is simply stunning. I really hope clubs can integrate it into their video archives and their image galleries. It’ll make learning about your favourite team pleasurable not just an intimidating chore.

I use Piclens on a MacBook Pro that also has the touchpad enabled so there’s a haptic element to the experience too. I guess we’ll be seeing something like Jeff Han’s multitouch wizzardry in the consumer space in a couple of years. I wonder how you could use the Perceptive Pixel screen for footie?