Team Intros, Part II: Introducing "Alegna", web designer & usability consultant

Posted by JLI Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:51:00 GMT

Continuing our series of team profiles with a new Q&A…

Q: So, madam, what do you do here?
“Alegna”: Ask a million questions, make things pretty, harass developers about typography, and learn something new everyday. They call me “Web “Designer.”

Worst usability examples: three bullet points, ascending importance.

  • • bullet points (kidding!)
  • • devices that don’t work when charging
  • • having to drill down a million levels to get a single piece of punctuation
       (see my cell phone)

Facebook: will it change the world?
Hasn’t it already? Where else can you find your Egyptian pen-pal from your preteens and all your ex-boyfriends in the same place?

Give us some examples of great web design.
Here we go (like everything, they’re open to debate…)

Describe your fashion sense in a few words.
Depends on the day: somewhere between “lazy street sense” and “pretending to be a grown-up”

If you weren’t working here, why would you join Just Leap In?
So I can throw blocks at my friends’ heads without legal intervention (and I get to keep my friends). [Beta testers: this will make sense… soon. –ed.]

Three blogs you can’t live without?
I’m not really a blogger… but:

Favorite world city?
Seeing as “world travel” is on top of my list of life goals, (right after trying every sushi place in Vancouver and saving enough money to go somewhere cool) I can’t speak to this question just yet but will report back soon… I do have a distant affection for New York…

Favourite beverage?
Anything with Rum… Vodka… Red Wine.. Beer… but not at the same time… on the lighter side I seem to need at least a liter of Sun-Rype juice a day (no endorsements here)

“Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.” —Edith Wharton. Discuss in your own words.

I’m going to paraphrase Aristotle here.. and say that every new idea is found in the unique combination of things already discovered… do I believe this completely? No. only about 98.7%...
       Good design rarely occurs in a bubble, but is inspired by the people, objects, and experiences we encounter everyday. Meeting someone new on the street, a shiny bicycle, a rusty bicycle, a disturbing story on the news…or just the way the light shines through your blinds in the morning
      Moral of story: doing something completely new is courageous… but improving on the past is probably a more practical way to change the world. I don’t think I said anything new there.

Team Intros, Part I: Introducing the Director of Visual Development

Posted by Nereus Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:56:00 GMT

So who am I and why am I here?

Not the aspect of being a speck of dust in an infinite universe, pondering my existential relevance, but from the perspective of some personal contextual perspective of why Leap In Entertainment, and how I came to be here…

I’ve been an artist in Computer Graphics ever since it started to gain momentum in the early 80’s. I used computers and electronic graphic tools, first as a designer at a National Television Network, then at a premier Vancouver post production studio creating 3D Animation, Effects and Compositing. That was all great; I learned a lot, was engaged and enthused, but I felt that the future needed to go beyond the linearity and passive nature of those mediums.

I lept to the next phase in the mid 90s by joining the 900lb gorilla of the gaming world as they made the transition from 2D to 3D games and spent the next 12 years involved in a variety of art related roles from aesthetic to technical. I was always looking ahead to where I imagined the interactive and non linear nature of the medium would engage, connect and entertain broad mainstream demographics. Some would say it’s there, but there were some interesting embryonic trends rolling over the horizon…

I was seeing 2D social networks that connected and re-connected millions, but really, now that you’re connected what can you do online? Poking and Vampire bites seem rather lame…

There are multiplayer online worlds, with massive participation, where willing participants spend hours on meaningless tasks, status is based primarily on hours spent, where social interaction feels like a bolt-on, and graphic quality is a generation behind console games, yet the focused group activities are keeping people engaged.

Media sharing sites attract millions, with some modest social participation features, but the context is not immersive and feels rather traditional in it’s presentation, despite a shiny new web 2.0 skin.

These trends feel like they are the (somewhat overlapping) pieces of an evolving way in which people want to interact.

So, 6 months ago I joined Leap In Entertainment to embark on a quest to create a new genre, where an integrated immersive 3D context is delivered over the web, engaging people in a full social context, allowing them to share interactive experiences as well as their creations, while building value via contribution to their community, not mindless repetition.

We are starting to open the door a crack to give our early beta group the first hint of how we intend to integrate the threads in a way that will bring together people across the spectrum from reforming MMORPG addict to casual online socialite.

-Nereus

Artist, diver, auto enthusiast, media consumer

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