BellAtlantic2  BellAtlantic3  BellAtlantic4

vivid designed and built this online service for Bell Atlantic as a locally-relevant directory of the Internet for customers of its Internet service. Bell Atlantic needed a dynamic, flexible set of Web management tools to build a customer-savvy product that would attract new users and yield heavy traffic. We explored cognitive models in the interface that outlined several different directions and meanings and settled on one that organized content into categories related to personal distance (that is, a spectrum of relevance to each customer). We developed visual treatments and interaction models that supported this direction and engineered the entire back-end to service it. On the back-end, there were several different users (administrators, managers, editors, and writers). Each had a slightly different interface that supported their work. The back-end supported automatic dredging of URLs, written reviews, and content approval within a large database.

1996

Participants:

AnnD Canavan: Project Management, Executive Producer
Andy Hasse: Producer
Munir Rashid: Producer
Sarah Berg: Producer
Nathan Shedroff: Creative Direction, Information and Interaction Design
Zachary Smith: Technical Director
Susanne Goldstein: Information and Interaction Design
Raoul Rickenberg: Interface Design
Maurice Tani: Visual Design and Production
Jeff Davis: Visual Design
Pam Gauci: Production Assistance
Drue Miller: Documentation
Maggie Powers: Documentation
Ty Shipman: Database Design
Robert Kohlhase: Database Design
Christen Mogensen: Engineering
Chuck Gathard: Engineering
Eric Reed: Engineering
Jake Donham: Engineering
Ken Fromm: Engineering
Sunah Cherwin: Engineering
Topher LaFata: Engineering
Bondy Bondurant: Quality Assurance Manager
Eric Franklin: Quality Assurance
Cormac Foster: Quality Assurance

Initially, vivid consulted extensively with Bell Atlantic to identify their goals and needs. After designing the architecture for the system, vivid developed specifications for each of the sub-systems and incorporated Bell Atlantic feedback into the design. The system was then implemented by vivid.

vivid created tools which enable Bell Atlantic to identify and track sites on the Internet that are useful and relevant to its customers. vivid developed a complete database and comprehensive structure which allows Bell Atlantic to build and maintain deep, localized directories and content assets by using state-of-the-art, interactive features. The architecture is built on top of an Oracle7® database integrated with Excalibur Technologies’ RetrievalWare(TM) full text solution, creating a data repository which effectively organizes a large amount of information. This information and the tools provided facilitate building and managing extensive, Internet-based local and regional resource listings for both residential and business access to the Net. The system is capable of automatically generating Bell Atlantic’s web pages, incorporating this information, and providing access to these sites.

vivid worked closely with Bell Atlantic to design the web pages and create a human-centered interface to allow users to perform sophisticated information navigation with natural and intuitive ease. This system is now available to Bell Atlantic’s subscribers.