Yesterday I discovered, Lost and Found. Developed and produced my NPR’s Picture Show, it’s a cool interactive documentary/photo story about the amateur photographer, Charles W. Cushman. I don’t want to do a complete analysis in this post. Instead, I’d like to highlight a few aspects of this documentary that I find compelling, engaging and useful.
1. I really like the overall layout of this site: the fullscreen slideshow at the top, featuring Cushman’s beautiful color photographs; the easy slide down to a text description and a big “play” button which starts the brief and compelling story (a slideshow with voiceover); and finally, the “a little bit more” section that includes information about the photos and the archive of Cushman’s photos at Indiana University.
2. I especially appreciate how the story has a navigation bar at the top with four different sections. When you click on the one of the sections, the story (almost) immediately scrolls you to it. This feature is great for two reasons. First, it allows the reader to flip through the sections without having to watch the entire story repeatedly. Second, the quick scrolling between sections allows you to move around the story without having to wait too long for pages to load.
3. I think this interactive documentary does an excellent job of getting user’s excited about Cushman’s photography and of inspiring them to visit the online archive at Indiana University.