Connecting the Dots
Idea
This week I worked together with Mark Banzhoff and Devva Saunders to explore the world of API’s by creating a mashup concept that attempts to solve a problem. We came up with an idea combining Google Maps and mash it with IMDB API for our concept idea. Our goal was to create something that would highlight Colorado’s scenery, so we found different locations in the state where films were shot.
Process
We started off finding 5 movies each that have been shot in Colorado and added descriptions, locations, and movie posters. Devva Saunders arranged zoom meetings to discuss ideas we could come up with what we had previously collected. We came to a conclusion that it would be cool to highlight the local scenery by allowing Colorado visitors and residents to explore and revisit a the spot of a scene from your favorite movie. For the ideation process, we generated a shared Google Doc to collect 5 favorite movies each shot in Colorado. We then added descriptions, locations and movie posters to each one. We decided to create wireframes for an app that would allow users to search by movie or location. For this project I was responsible for the visuals and I created a prototype that would allow the user to search and give people information where the exact scene of the movie had taken place. We also tried to structure the app so that the closest movie scene would be filtered to be the first one to show up, and it would also give information on the distance and navigation to the destination. Mark Banzhoff was responsible for initial ideas and we all worked together to code a website in VS code with linkable content to the different locations where a movie was filmed.
As we experimented with API’s, we were met with challenges trying different tutorials and we could not figure out how to sort API data recreating the workflow. We tried for hours to sort out how API’s work but even after our attempt we still remained confused on how to create a functional API in a browser.
