DoodleBuzz

I’ve always liked the simplicity of opening up a sketchbook and drawing ideas out. I’ve tried many “digital” idea capturing applications, but I’ve always returned to the good old paper and pencil (or in my case my trusty Space Pen). So I wanted to create an interface based on the idea of simply scribbling a line. Is that idea useful? Would it be chaotic, messy? Maybe it would just be fun?

So the end result that I call DoodleBuzz came about because of a chanced upon piece of code, a little experimentation and the constraints of a deadline. Constraints are always good within design.

The code I found on senocular.com allowed Flash coders to place objects on a line. That was it. Not an idea in itself but it allowed me to think about using a scribbled line as an interface, without having to worry about the maths behind such a thing.

Then along came the wonderful DayLife. They have a wonderful API for gathering news sources and searching the news for topics and such like. I’d already been doing some experimentation with the DayPi so it was then just a case of fusing DayLife with my doodled line experiments - which incidentally came from a previous super simple line drawing application I’d made.

But I also had the constraint of a deadline - the Daylife Developer Challenge gave me a deadline I had to work to.

So while DoodleBuzz is on one hand simple - there’s no other on screen controls apart from your doodled lines, it quickly becomes quite complex and chaotic. This is purely a bit of fun. An experiment beyond “click here” type interfaces that will hopefully add something new to thinking about playful interfaces.

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