What is Team Awesome you ask?  ThisIsTeamAwesome.com

I’m excited to announce that the Disneyland Next Gen site is now live.
English: http://www.disneyland.com
Spanish: http://www.disneylandespanol.com

The new site is essentially a complete, top-to-bottom redesign of the Disneyland content site. Leveraging the NextGen technology platform, the project operated on an aggressive budget and timeline by reusing code where possible, and innovating to deliver new tools and content relevant to the Disneyland audience.  The team relied heavily on Guest insights to influence and validate the designs; input from site comments, Guest Communications teams, several qualitative research sessions and quantitative surveys enabled this 360-degree feedback design process.

Scope includes new site architecture and CMS, intuitive site navigation, immersive media, and a complete copy re-write to inform, motivate and entertain Guests.  New Disneyland.com highlights:

• Full content sites launching simultaneously in English and Spanish
• Rich, immersive media, including new videos, slideshows and 360s
• Home page media “chapter” design, allowing flexible marketing as Resort priorities change
• Custom-designed, printable calendar tools for monthly, daily and multi-day planning
• Faceted listing pages that deliver powerful browse and search tools
• Interactive map tools
• Improved Resort Hotel content, highlighting Disney differences, easy comparison tools and quick entry to booking
• Robust, faceted Good Neighbor Hotel section, making it easier to sort through all offerings to find the best fit for their family
• New focus on “Lands” in both Parks, including immersive storytelling and Land-level navigation
• Robust Downtown Disney content, marketing it as not only part of the Resort experience, but also a destination for locals
• Expanded “At A Glance” and Guest Services content, including accessibility information
• Landing pages for Character Experiences, So Calif. Destinations and other common Guest questions
• Recommender feature for attraction, dining and entertainment experiences, also serving as a cross-park promotion tool
• New Profile services, aligned with WDW in the spirit of One Disney and consistent Guest experience
• New global navigation treatment for Commerce, AP and My Disneyland pages
• First WDPRO site that has 2 languages fully searchable and indexed by FAST

I supported on the redesign with visual design and flash development for the immersive media.  With every redesign our sites become more data driven and with more and more content for our users.  With the expansion of the Disneyland site we needed it to be lightweight and easily customizable.  It great to see it come together with latest addition of our flash media player that boasts video, slides, 360s, interactive maps and section specific flash media.  Already we’re getting excellent feedback.  Special thanks to everyone I was able to work with that made this a great project to work on and congratulations to the many people who contributed.

AKT Brings Night Shark to CA Studio Division Kickball from Jacob DuBois on Vimeo.

The Dandy Lions vs. Team Awesome!

It might be time for the gloves to come off!  It’s a Lion and Unicorn battling in the Star League playoffs.  Let’s go Team Awesome! It will be a tough game from two very evenly matched opponents.  In our inter-league game we tied 1 - 1 with several very close plays.  This is the first season for the Dandy Lions so hopefully our playoff experience with aid us to victory.

Update: Team Awesome! eliminated, we’ll see you next time Lions.  I’m hoping they join the ultra competitive STUDIO division and we face off there with AKT

final words from Captain Awesome:

After having a few days to decompress following being eliminated by the Dandy Lions in the Quarter-Final Round, I think I’m finally able to write about it–but I will keep my comments about the game very brief.  When we jumped ahead 2-0 in the 1st inning, I thought for sure we were gonna win this game, especially since we were able to muster only one run in our first meeting.  Unfortunately, that would be our only lead of the game, as the ball just didn’t bounce our way on a number of plays.  In addition, we didn’t play our best game, which is something we couldn’t afford against a team like the Dandy Lions who pounced on every opportunity.  Even though I still believe that we are the better team and wanted the win more, they just played better.

Final Score: Team Awesome! 3, Dandy Lions 6

• Best Rookie - Adam Beckenstein
• Female MVP - Kristie Kelly
• Male MVP - Charlie White

In addition to these individual awards, we also won the Flip Cup Rock Stars and Best Bar Attendance awards as voted by the entire division.  Personally, as last season’s reigning Rock Band Champs, I think we were robbed.  The Chancellor can’t be too happy about this either!  And in what I personally feel was the biggest upset (if not outright rigged), Max who is 10 pounds of living, breathing unconditional love lost the Best Mascot award to Fifi, a lifeless, inanimate plastic sheep.  Seriously, WTF?!!!? Despite that, it was still a fun night and there are plenty of pics which are viewable at the WAKA CA Star fan page on Facebook.

I think this graph from Google I/O says it all: With all the FUD around Flash and the iPad its easy to forget that we are living in a golden age of web development. The web is fulfilling all but the most outlandish predictions of its success from back in the 90s. Things are just starting to get interesting.

A lot of HTML5 is basically HTML playing catchup with Flash. Many of the coolest new features have been available in Flash for years. And there is no way to accomplish Flash sites like the new Disney World of Color minisite or any of the sites on the FWA in HTML5.  This means all the skills you honed as a Flash developer are directly applicable to the newly emerging platforms of HTML5, Unity, Android and even iApps:

• Creating animations and transitions that enhance static content.
• Optimizing for performance and fast page loads (including preloading).
• Handling rich media: video, audio and images.
• Custom text layouts and font handling.
• Asynchronously querying the backend.
  

Only the syntax has changed – the end result remains the same.

Another viewpoint: The Death of Flash - by Gabe Rubin (the FWA)

_________________________________________________

Charlie White |  Interactive Designer