The Web gets Real
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The
New Media Emerges
New Media Prototype (3 mo.)
In late 1981 leading market research firm Booz-Allen Hamilton decided to test the waters for consumer acceptance of interactive electronic services. But who knew what that meant?
Anticipating the coming electronic revolution, we modeled a full range of integrated consumer services:
- Home Energy Management
- Banking
- Investment Portfolio Management
- Travel Reservations
- Home Finances
- Entertainment
- Education
- Online Shopping
- News Retrieval
We prototyped a potential future integrated dynamic electronic consumer service by bringing together video, computer graphic images, and a touch-sensitive screen - all delivered through a personal computer. That was cutting edge stuff in 1981.
We were able to emulate dynamically integrated services (For example, a consumer purchase in the "Shopping" section would be reflected by an account debit in the "Banking" section). All the software - for graphics generation, database management, site navigation and applications subroutines - were developed by the team.
As the graphics expert, I designed individual pages for this project, mapped the navigational structure within the site and provided videodisc integration. We overlaid graphics on the videodisc images (not shown here) for various applications, like Home Shopping. The graphics themselves were based on simple character-based images and were built with rudimentary homebrew code.
In spite of numerous obstacles and substantial ignorance, we still managed to capture an early vision of what was to become The Web.
This was a real "chewing gum & rubber bands" exercise. No one had ever pulled together anything like this - or asked "the Big Questions" about customer acceptance and adoption of interactive new media technology. Truly cutting edge.
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