Interactive experiences

An interactive experience can be as simple as clicking a search button or as sophisticated as placing you in the cockpit of a virtual helicopter for training purposes.

An interactive experience on the web could be a game; a shopping application that lets you choose the color and style of a product you want to buy (and view it at different angles); or it could be a presentation that allows you to view and manipulate data to help you forecast and better understand financial information.

Adobe Flash is the leading solution for developing interactive experiences on the web. Many creative professionals use the Adobe Creative Suite 5 product line, which includes Adobe Flash, to author high-impact, interactive content that is rich with video, graphics, and animation.

To learn more about interactive experiences, explore the resources below.

Interactive experiences tell a story or have a discernable concept. They are interesting to look at, engage users with the content, and put the users in control.

Creating your own interactive experience means learning one or more of the following—or forming a team that combines these talents:

• Storytelling: to help establish the purpose of the site or its concept
• Film editing and montage: to understand scene transitions, flow of action, and audience expectations
• Information design: to structure the site for best user experience and navigation
• Design: to give your site visual panache
• Music: to set a mood or enhance the site's "wow" factor
• Flash authoring: to create interactive websites, rich media advertisements, instructional media, engaging presentations, and really fun games—even on mobile devices (which are great for interactive experiences)
• ActionScript: to program Flash applications for everything from simple animations to complex, interactive application interfaces
• Website development: to put everything in one place on the web

Start with the story or concept. What do you want to convey? What do you want your visitors to come away with? What tone do you want to set? Consider the six elements of good digital storytelling and apply it to the interactive world you want to create. The Digital Storytelling Cookbook from the Center for Digital Storytelling is an excellent resource to get you thinking about your own storytelling experience. If the concept does not really involve a story, put it down on paper anyway so that someone reading it can sketch the concept for you—and get it right.

Learn about creating experiences. Read some lessons about experience design—especially as companies are increasingly marketing experiences. More and more there is interactive technology in public spaces. How will you integrate interactivity into your site? What can you learn from others?

Design your application to attract your audience. Comp your site in Fireworks using the new pages feature or else just comp directly in Flash. If you're new to Flash authoring, learn how to create a simple Flash document. Adding movement to graphics and characters is one of the core features of Flash. If you have some illustration experience, explore the many ways to create and control animation in the Flash animation learning guide—or check out these video tutorials which show you how to create animation using shape tweens and use the Flash drawing tools.

Engage the senses. Successful interactive experiences engage as many of our senses as possible. Will it be visual or aural cues—or both—that makes your audience stay awhile? Audio is an effective sweetener. See how music enhances the UNIQLOCK video clock (it's on Tokyo time). Use Soundbooth to create and edit your audio, and then export it to Flash.

Note: Not everyone has speakers attached, so don't let audio convey any vital information. Keep accessibility in mind when designing your site.

Program your interactivity in Flash. You need to start somewhere, so try out these short tutorials to see what's involved from the get-go:

• Create a simple interactive application: Use events with the new ActionScript 3.0 List and Button components in Flash to add items to a list using a DataProvider. The list responds when you click items and removes selected items when you click a button.
• Use Script Assist to add interactivity: Apply some core ActionScript concepts—such as events, functions, properties, and listeners—while you add code for a button that plays a movie clip.