Case Studies: Blockbuster.com
My role in developing this ajax-enhanced, rich user experience with frogdesign; a team effort to put Blockbuster back on the online map.
Overview
Blockbuster was losing the online movie rental mindspace in a one-way war against Netflix. A re-launch of the Blockbuster online service needed a sexy and smart new website design. I lead the front-end implementation of this ambitious effort.
Roles
- Lead front-end prototyping and development
- Ajax architect / lead javascript developer
- Technical liason with design team and customer
Note: this project went on to be completed after I left frogdesign - my roles spanned early proof-of-concept explorations through prototyping and initial deliverables.
Highlights
- Designed and implemented deferred content loading and other ajax features using the Prototype javascript library
- Designed UI composition to maximise use of edge-caching, by loading user-specific data in a seperate request from the raw and rendered content
- Use of clean semantic html and early definition of Presentation and Behavior layers allowed concurrent and iterative design/development
- Co-authored several novel CSS treatments for interative features including in-page popups/"tooltips" and the carousel component.
- Used publish/subscribe event model to manage complexity in javascript/UI component state.
Technologies
- Ajax via Prototype, Scriptaculous libraries (javascript)
- Cross-browser, backwards-compatible templates (HTML, CSS)
- CSS "sprites" and other optimization techniques
- JSP (templating, prototyping)
