The practice of making a Pre-viz (lookup definition) to map out and think thru a complex sequence of events prior to executing them, has been around in Hollywood for awhile. Emerging RIA technologies like Adobe Flex and Silverlight are finally bridging Design and Development pipelines to blend 3D, Interaction, Animation and Applications into a rich seamless user experience.

This example is my creative thoughts on how the user experience for a Chat Application could be when a user is alerted to take an action and logs in to receive new messages. The bouncing icon indicates user action is required. Potentially, I believe the user would already be logged in. The background should really be the user desktop. I removed all the traditional chrome of the browser and application window (which I think may become a standard practice in the future for entertainment/social networking type apps. Video players already do this.). Just in doing this short pre-viz I had many realizations of what could and probably could not be done. Also, I had many more new ideas to wow and lull the user into interacting more with an interface.

With the help of Maya and After Effects, I’m finally able to get these thoughts down on screen. I did try to execute this concept with keyframed SWC’s embedded in Flex components, thru timeline animation in Photoshop and Flash. In the end, the Maya/After Effects combination seemed to offer the most direct route to executing my concept.

I believe the future of User Experience Design, Interactivity, RIA’s, User Interface Design and other interactive mediums will have the Designer move into pre-vizing the interactivity after or parallel to Photoshop mock-up stage. In my experience the static Photoshop mock-up doesn’t reflect the life or UX of the application and pre-viz can fill that void. Currently, many teams already do a pre-viz prior to development usually in Powerpoint or After Effects. The addition of Autodesk Maya will come into play when more user experiences are built Papervision 3D. Now that Flash Player 10 supports more 3D and Photoshop and After Effects support more 3D and Maya supports Photoshop files the pipeline seems to be linking up nicely.

As a Designer, I visit Adobe’s website for video training, tutorials, download photoshop brushes, illustrator patterns, and Flash and Flex info pretty much everyday. I am so stoked that the places I go, are already there organized by program, and by resource type, basically how “I” need them. No need to keep going to the bookmarks. Saves me a couple steps anyway. I think this integration is one more step towards seamlessness and I’m sure we are going to be seeing more.

Check out the vid – Flash Video (compressed)

Noted Flex Components used (correct me if I’m wrong on these):

Top level nav (TabMenu component with 2nd Level Flash Nav)

Content Box (Canvas Component with Image Slider/Text Area)
Interesting adoption of the iPhone paging dots.

Minimized Slider Navigation (Flash with Custom component)

Full Screen View (Photoshop)