Overview

The website Where You Are brings together human stories around everyday reflections in the form of a digital concept. Initially a book, the idea for the digital version came from Bibliotheque, the creator of the printed book. The website was designed to promote the print version of the book. Thus, where-you-are.com was created—made up of 17 microsites, featuring 16 different contributors—with the concept of showing what a map can be. It combines geographical maps with life maps, giving an insight to literature, technology, and history.

The Contributors

The website is comprised of the work by 16 writers, artists, and thinkers. The contributors are:

1. Chloe Aridjis—a Mexican writer and novelist, based in London.
2. Lila Azam Zanganeh—a writer living and working in New York.
3. Alain de Botton—a Swiss-born British author, and co-founder of The School of Life.
4. James Bridle—a writer, artist, and publisher based in London.
5. Joe Dunthorne—a Welsh novelist, journalist, and poet.
6. Geoff Dyer—an English writer of both fiction and non-fiction.
7. Olafur Eliasson—a Danish-Icelandic artist.
8. Sheila Heti & Ted Mineo—the former is a Canadian writer; the latter is a New York City-based American artist.
9. Tao Lin—an American novelist, essayist, poet, artist, and short-story writer.
10. Valeria Luiselli—a Mexican author, based in the United States.
11. Leanne Shapton—a Canadian artist and graphic novelist, living in New York.
12. John Simpson—an English journalist.
13. Adam Thirlwell—a British novelist.
14. Peter Turchi—a writer, editor, and professor at the University of Houston.
15. Will Wiles—a writer and blogger
16. Denis Wood—an artist, cartographer, author, and former professor.

The Designers

The website was designed by The Workers, a client-focused studio that has made websites, apps, VR experiences, and more. Their work revolves around technology ideation workshops, interactive prototypes, software, web development, and full-scale digital productions. The Workers goal is to connect each client to their audience. For Where You Are, they worked to create a digital interpretation of the printed book, in order for users to interact with the content in a new and intriguing way. They did this by designing each of the 17 microsites in a unique way that captured each contributor’s idea of what a map can be. Their ideas for were pitched to Bibliotheqeu, the designer of the print book. After a successful pitch, the design was brought to Visual Editions and Google Creative Lab to begin creating the graphic design of the website.

The Creators and Publishers

Visual Editions, along with Google Creative Lab, brought the website to life. Visual Editions is a creative studio and reading lab that helps partners create narrative driven story experiences in the form of books, apps, urls, events, installations, and more. They are known for creating digital literary landscapes, and have worked on a variety of different projects

Google Creative Lab is an obscure group that is basically a think tank for brand development, design, and the creation of new things. They have worked with Visual Editions on other projects creating online books, one of them being Editions at Play, an online bookstore containing only digital works, termed “unprintable fiction.”

Together, Google Creative Lab and Visual Editions made Where You Are, bringing the design of The Workers to life, with a lot of interaction for the collection of writing.

How it Works

The website is highly interactive and engaging, and all of the microsites are connected by real-time visual feedback and responses to the users’ behavior. To move around on the site, the user must click and drag; to read an article, the user simply clicks on the heading with the contributor’s name. Once on a particular contributor’s microsite, the user can interact with the content by scrolling through written content, toggling around maps, and zooming in and out. Each microsite contains a link back to the main site, and external links to buy the physical version of the book, and to go to Visual Editions website. Some of them also have a link that goes to the contributor’s own website if users want to learn more about that specific contributor’s other works.

Another feature of Where You Are is the “story streamer.” The “story streamer” was developed using an algorithm to track people’s activity on the website. It gives each of the contributions on the site an interestingness rating, and occasionally broadcasts one of the contributions to other users on the website. The “story streamers” are found on each contributor’s microsite. They are indicated by a number next to the website’s title; by hovering over the number, text appears, telling the user how many people are also viewing the website. Another number next to the contributor’s name displays how many people are viewing that particular story at the time.

On the main microsite, there are numerous “story streamers,” displaying how users came to the site. Each stream can be clicked on, leading to the indicated external link. There are also external links to Visual Editions, The Workers, Bibliotheque, and Google Creative Lab’s respective websites.

My Reaction

Overall, the website is visually engaging and appealing for users. The interactive abilities of the digital version seem to be a better option for users, compared to the printed book, and connects all of the contributions in a unique way. The website was fun to explore and showed a different side to literature that is not usually seen.

http://where-you-are.com/