LANT Distribution

LANT will not have any physical presence, and so would never be found in shops on CDs, etc. This will make distribution of LANT harder at the start, however it should be noted that LANT remains open-source and free, so the only drawbacks to it having a slow start would be profit-related, but rather not getting the feedback on the program's early stages, and the skinning/plugin community not expanding much.

However, because LANT is free, there will be more users interested in just trying it, and LANT is non invasive, meant to aid the user, and so they will likely keep it installed on their system.

Because of the nature of LAN Parties and how so many files are shared, LANT is likely to be shared or recommended at any party by someone who has encountered it. Therefore, the small-scale LAN Parties are seeming to be the starting ground for LANT.

After LANT has achieved some presence and made a name for itself, there is likeley to be a substantial online community of designers and developers for it, who will keep LANT continuously developing in between LANT's official releases or updates. Once LANT has been perfected enough, organisers of the larger LAN events would feel comfortable enough to integrate it into their scheme.

Eventually LANT's online presense will dominate what initially set out to be a local program, a single-user piece of software, and the small online presense would have heavily multiplied by the integration into big events where thousands of users could potentially hear about LANT. LANT would have enough of a developer community at this stage to keep it going for a long time, with plugins that could make LANT have extra modes/desktops, docks and other ways of interacting, and more. It is even possible the source code for LANT could be used to make other programs not focused at LAN Party goers, but instead, for example, at businesses or schools.

However, that is only a possible future that would happen from LANT's scalability and open-source architecture. But to start with, LANT would have a small online presense in the form of just one small distribution website, where users would be able to upload their skins/plugins and discuss LANT's initial development on the forums.

The initial website is designed to look like:



The layout and content is inspired by current software distribution/information websites such as:

Teamspeak....


... and Ventrilo


These websites offer summaries of their very successful products and easy access to help, social, and download sections, and so are an excellent source to use in the context of LANT. However, LANT doesn't have as much information to display at the start and so wouldn't have to be made to the scale these examples are.

LANT Style and Genre

LANT is open-source, so to allow developers to use the LANT style in their applications or development of LANT, a style guide would be a useful resource for them...



On inspection of this style the theme is certainly a very minimalistic colour palette with only 5 colours being used most of the time, of which the majority are different shades of grey. This style of colours on a white background is very similar to popular websites Wikipedia and Apple, where the major 'blocks' or backgrounds follow an almost grey-scale theme like LANT...



The logos on these web pages are also similar in that they are all grey, with even less colour on display then the LANT logo.

It would be highly beneficial to LANT to see if its target audience would appreciate the functions on offer and how they are displayed, and from the "LANners" that I have talked to, they are all very interested in the functions. They also mentioned how the accessibility and 'standards' conveyed across LANT made it easy to use and very easy to learn.

Here is a "persona" of the type of user that would use LANT...

Name: Colin
Occupation: Student
Gamertag: Uberman
Computer: Custom built Windows XP machine
Uses Computer For: Coursework, Internet Browsing, Instant Messaging, Gaming, LAN Partying
Would Use LANT Regularly For: Keeping Gaming and work separate by dedicating LAN Mode to Gaming
Would Use LANT At A LAN Party For: Logging stats to an Intranet and try and beat last year's

LANT Skinning Example

To effectively show how the 'Skinning' or 'Themeing' function of LANT works, I will continue to use the fictional LAN Party "Big LAN 2008" as the theme. This is beneficial because it shows how LAN event organisers can create their own skins and make them available on their Intranet for LANT users to apply, this is very much an electronic metaphor of going to a festival or gig and buying the official T-shirt or apparel.

Here is a mockup of how the computer would look when a theme is applied to one of the modes ("LAN Mode")...



In this screenshot, as stated above, the user has changed the theme on "LAN Mode" to the 'official' theme of "Big LAN 2008", and so is shown exactly how it is in that mode on the Option Screen's thumbnail preview. The user has also customised the overlay to fit in with the theme's colours, and has also customised which stats they want to display on the overlay.

As is visible in the overlay, there are many features shown that are already available on Windows and infact come with any modern Windows Vista machines. On Windows Vista, the tool for displaying these statistics or data is called the "Sidebar"...


Image of Windows Sidebar from: about.com

... and the Overlay in LANT uses many of the same features and functions as it. However, it does have added bonuses that there is potentially more accessibility, as being open-source, for more third-party statistic addons to be created, and that it can display real-time data from the LAN Party or event Intranet/Community.

LANT 'Community'

It would be appropriate to show the data that LANT can upload in the context of how it will be used and shown.

Here is a mock-up Intranet homepage of a fictional annual LAN Party called "Big LAN"...



There is some example data shown in the image that is uploaded by LANT, and collected by the Intranet server. There are two examples of how this data can be visualised to users, one being a traditional bar graph that shows hardware data from the user's systems, and the other a more abstract visualisation of how many miles mice have travelled at the LAN so far. This data is put into Google Maps' API and plotted as a random journey, showing how far users could get on the distance their mice have traveled, in this case, Brunel University to Acton.

Because the Intranet aspect of LANT is designed to create a 'community' at LAN Parties, various communication methods have been added to the example Intranet page, for example the news section where admins of the LAN can put news up, and also the comment function, a tool found on many 'Web 2.0' implementations (Facebook, Youtube, etc.). The comment function will allow users at the LAN to comment on news stories, data visualisations, files, servers, etc. on the Intranet, prompting everything that is put on the Intranet to be an area of discussion.

The example shown above is only a basic version of what can be uploaded through LANT. Some other community functions that would be appropriate include forums, a live 'Battlecast' style video-feed from game servers, screenshot uploading, character 'loadouts' or configuration display, etc.

This kind of visualisation and data collection on Intranet software is not a new tool, and is even implemented already specifically for LAN Parties (Autonomous LAN Party, ALP, view online demonstration here). However, this kind of software is Intranet only, and so the user has to connect and view the Intranet webpage in order to submit any data (probably through a form). LANT will work around this by offering an automation to this process, making the data submission local and real-time. It is possible to socialise, log and visualise so many aspects of a LAN Party already, LANT will simply automate the 'community' aspect, offer the customisation, and allow more accessibility previously unreachable on LAN Intranets.

LANT Help

Not every user would be able to use or understand LANT straight away. To aid new users when setting up a 'tip' bubble will display from the system tray icon when first run.

Here is an annotated diagram of how the help screen will appear to the user...



The help screen will also be accessible by pressing the question mark button on the options screen. This help screen will be similar to the standard Windows balloon messages, in colour, layout and position on screen...


Image of standard Windows XP Balloon message from: www.nichols.edu

... however it will keep a slightly altered LANT theme, to keep the "printed" LANT look.

LANT Options Screen

The options screen in LANT will have to look like a standard options screen in Windows, as users are likely to be used to that layout. The options screen will, however, be branded with the LANT theme so it is distinguishable between the two modes and will stand out from any themes that might be applied.

It will not be necessary to give the option to skin or customize the option screen itself as it is designed to be hidden away almost all of the time, will only be visible when in use and will not be needed to be open all the time in order for LANT to operate.

Below are annotated mockups of how the LANT options screen will look...

LANT System Tray Menu

The menu the icon in the system tray will provide shall have to be simple, so as to not make the user have to pause to see what option they want.

Below is the typical look the drop-menu will have...



The menu is simple, and only has three options. The options are self-explanatory and there is no room for the user to become confused, and so this way of operating will be as quick as possible.

As noted in the annotations on the screenshot, when the system tray icon is double clicked, the 'mode switch' option is performed from the right click menu. This is a vital option the user should have, as it is one of the quickest ways a user could perform the switch mode action.

Accessing LANT

LANT will need to be accessible from anywhere the user may want it. And so it will be necessary to give the user the option to place Windows shortcuts (.ink files) anywhere they wish to by giving the user a single shortcut on the desktop. The user will then be able to move this shortcut like any other file in windows, to any place they wish (for exmaple the start menu, quick launch bar etc.).

Here is a mock screenshot of how the icon will look on the desktop...

The System Tray Icon

Because LANT will be a background process and be minimised most of the time, the way the user can access LANT's vital tasks and options has to be obvious and quick.

Below is an annotated mock-up of where the user would find the default 'access point' to use LANT's features...



As is shown in this shot, the icon used for the system tray icon will heavily depend on any themes the user has applied, which is why it is important to let the user be able to customise which icon they use. For example if a user has a grey background or task-bar, the icons with many grey parts or transparent backgrounds would be hard to notice on a task bar, and so would not be easy to use.