Botany U, an interactive CD to accompany the College Textbook, Botany

Prototype 1996

Botany U was my first paid prototype. A textbook company was exploring the use of CDROMs in the back of their major college textbooks. I suggested a theme or paradigm of a University that explored the relationship of Botany to each discipline in a University. It was to be a virtual tour that a student would take, entering the Unversity, registering, going down the hallway, and clicking on the appropriate department door. Within the department there were doors that would take the student to a Lab (for interactive experiments), a Lecture hall (for major text or slide shows about the subject, or audio lectures), a Library (containing links and references to relevant material), and the chairman of the departments office (tests). Each screen had a little blue light at the bottom. If you clicked on it, a menu bar expanded to allow navigation, access to common items, etc.

I did a fairly thorough prototype, using Chemistry as the first discipline to explore. The University was modeled in a Virtual 3D program and screen images transfered to Director. I used movies, interactive models, images of plants, etc, sound to simulate a real university environment. I was pretty proud of it. It was understood that the final CD-ROM would have better graphics. The company decided not to continue funding it pass the prototype stage because of internal problems and their uncertainly of the acceptance and profitablity of using CD-ROMS. Shame! I'd still like to do that one!

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