FX

Schematic

www.schematic.com

"Schematic is an interactive agency. We help our client's businesses by envisioning and deploying content, community, and commerce solutions that people love, across digital platforms. We look for tools that enable great experiences, and development products that have enterprise appeal to our clients. JavaFX is a very promising platform and Schematic's team is excited about what JavaFX is going to help us to deliver."

—Eric Breitbard, SVP and Group Director, Schematic

Schematic - Partner Profile

Spanning Platforms with JavaFX
To showcase the key features of JavaFX software and demonstrate its ability to easily deliver a consistent user experience from the desktop to the mobile phone, Sun partnered with Schematic, an award-winning digital solutions company, to develop an innovative concept application for a range of devices. The result was Vibe, a unique application that uses visual tags to quickly convey user's ratings within a social network. In the first instance of Vibe, the application rates local restaurants, but it is easy to envision how this concept could be applied to any number of things like rating music or movies—just about anything that social groups share and discuss.

Engaging with Many Applications
The Vibe application uses visual tags to quickly convey users' ratings within a social network. But what is most noticeable about Vibe—whether on the phone or on the desktop—is its visual appeal.

Colorful shapes ("blobbules") representing restaurants appear to vibrate over a street map of the surrounding area. Colors correspond to specific ruling attributes for each establishment; blobbule size indicates numbers of user votes for each. The desktop version also has a horizontal bar along the bottom of the window where popular tags and friend avatars are ready to be selected. As other users assign attributes, Vibe conveys that information in real-time with pop-up text or icons. Click on a blobbule, and more detailed information (top attributes, address/phone of restaurant) about that establishment appears.

In developing this user interface, Schematic leveraged the expressive qualities of JavaFX to present multiple layers of information in an innovative way. The intuitive user interface makes it easy to get the level of information desired.

The JavaFX Experience
Vibe was Schematic's first experience using JavaFX technology. Because JavaFX was architected on top of the Java runtime, Schematic was able to leverage its existing in-house Java expertise. The firm's Java development team was eager for the chance to work on the user interface, something they don't typically do.

According to Eric Breitbard, SVP and Group Director at Schematic, "We were able to develop this application in a few weeks from concept to working application, without prior exposure to JavaFX. The intuitive, declarative language made it easy for our designers and developers to move from concept drawings to designs to working code for mobile and desktop."

The Vibe application is also a great example of how easy it is to provide a consistent cross-platform user interface using JavaFX. The application enables developers to easily create applications for both mobile phone and desktop devices. Although the user interfaces are not identical—with inherent screen size limitations of the phone, it would be ill-advised to try to replicate the UI from the desktop—the overall look and feel of the application is unmistakably one and the same. In fact, the Vibe development team was able to reuse more than 80% of the source code and graphic assets when developing the mobile phone version.

And finally, all the features that make the desktop application compelling are also on the phone: animated, colorful graphics, real-time updates from the social network, and ease of navigation around the rich user interface. JavaFX makes it easy to extend the reach of applications beyond the desktop to all screens.

About Schematic
Schematic, a WPP company, creates powerful, multi-platform interactive experiences for the world's largest brands. Servicing Fortune 1000 firms including Target, Nokia, Comcast, Turner, Microsoft, NBC, and Dell, Schematic helps companies connect with customers by delivering strategic solutions for the Web, mobile devices, television, interactive-out-of-home environments, and emerging platforms.

Recognized by both Advertising Age and AdWeek as one of the industry's most innovative firms, Schematic is a leader in user-interface design, new technology development, and interactive marketing. Deep expertise across digital channels allows Schematic to advise clients with confidence how to leverage available technologies to support business objectives. In 2008, the firm was also named to Microsoft's elite Global 20 list of preferred partners. For more information, see schematic.com.