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I can’t exactly account for how “pretty” or not each version may have been for you, but I’m basically grabbing screen shots of one of the first programs I ever wrote back in 1997 in Basic. You can see an actual “moving” demonstration at the end of this blog post. This simple program has a certain significance to me as it was one of several major “aha” moments in my younger days, informing me that programming computers is basically “my jam”.
What really impressed me with programming is that someone without the “visual” artistic capabilities (I’m more of a wordy kinda guy if you couldn’t already tell) could create something visually striking with numbers, formulas, and a general know-how in math. The program basically draws a matching circle in each corner of the display area of a random radius, color, and border thickness – and it does this every tenth of a second. The result is what you see. I could seriously watch that kaleidoscope-esque effect for embarrassing amounts of time.
I’ve been thinking about this program a lot in the fast few weeks, so much so that I wanted to dust it off and give it a more modern home (a web page.) I’m currently chewing on how to bring this design philosophy to life, how to inject more personality into my clients (and my own) web properties. What you are seeing here in this blog post is my very first attempt. The image you see at the top of the screen is a new image, one that no one else has seen or will ever see again once you move off this page. And yet, its not SO random that everyone gets a different experience altogether. Everyone is going to see 4 * 1000 circles, with their centers anchored in the corners of the screen.
My thoughts on improving this over time (progressive enhancement) is to dial back on the randomness somewhat – making more palatable color combinations a virtual guarantee versus blind luck. I also think that adding in subtle responses to user input (mouse movements, etc.) would help increase engagement and time on the page in question. Finally, there seems to be a real opportunity here to utilize this method when both constructing and testing page variants. Humans are limited in the number of versions they can feasibly generate and test; computers are not. The pages that could come out of this kind of approach are … well, limitless really.
Anyway, enjoy one of the first programs ever written by yours truly!