CaseHunter

Origin Story

Inspired by the success of my phone concept renders a few years earlier, I wanted to continue to use creative apps to build new things.
So after building some websites using Adobe Muse - form my own projects, and one for one client - I had an idea for something a little more involved.

Technical Opportunity

I recognised that stacking some of the built-in interactive components that Muse offered on top of one-another, it would be possible to create immersive and interactive smart-phone mockups.
In Photoshop, designing using layers is a core paradigm: some are on top, while others are further down - you can make copies, play around and make changes to alternative versions - and by putting the ones that work together at the and: you get your finished image.
The opportunity now was to stack layers outside of Photoshop instead, and by using interactive components form Muse - namely different types of carousels and paralax effects tied to smartphone accelerometer inputs - i could create something that was interactive:

• to users touch inputs: selecting between different assets, and
• to device movements, as a proxy to reproducing environmental factors on-screen.

CaseHunter Concept

I had been an enthusiast early on - selling smartphone cases via facebook groups and at school during the iPhone 4/4s era - before they became widely sold in stores. To be more exact, I was selling the silicone ones that looked like casette tapes - which sold very well for that novelty factor.
So the idea logically became to use my design and technical skills to create a website where I could sell phone cases. This made a lot of sense to me, as the features that the stacking of components in Adobe Muse were perfect for creating an interactive showroom for phone cases.
The core idea was that you could select the exact model and colour of your phone, and see what different translucent cases would look like on the back of that specific handset.
Was it a gimmick? Yes.
Did the cases sell well? No.
Was it a great project regardless? Yes.

Demo

Unfortunately Adobe Muse was discontinued in 2018. The many hours I spent tuning the animations and parallax effects to be just right to give an immersive feel - it’s work that is largely lost.
However, using some of my older assets, I was able to put together a demo inside of my portfolio here. Yappie!
If you want to try it, I recommend doing it on a phone, and enabling the sensor inputs. After yous fist swipe, a button appears that lets you enable this.

Hope you had fun reading this, and trying it out. The real one was much better - or at least it is in my memory. It was definitely a great stepping stone and I am glad i could bring it back to life here - at least a little bit.