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Toyota Why Not? Innovation Experience incorporates user input into interactive contest

First Chevron, then Shell, and now Toyota. The transportation industry has continually impressed me with their interactives focusing on renewable energy. By allowing users to contribute, vote and rate other users’ inputs, these sites add a great level of interactivity into these high-caliber multimedia sites.

Toyota’s Why Not? Innovation Experience is a contest aimed at raising awareness about renewable energy. The interface is an elegant 3D model synched with six navigation buttons below: safety, water, land, air, community and energy. Each sub-sector contains an interactive playground where users read previous users’ ideas, rate them, share with friends, and then add their own to enter the contest.

Each subdivision also has a timeline depicting the before and after effects on the area. Look how the animations change as you scrub through time. Also notice how they layered the animation so that the clouds move at one speed in the background, as the windmills and other graphics move independently. This creates a great visual effect which adds to the user experience.

Notice how each section is deep-linked – another nice touch for larger packages, which I wrote a tutorial for in a previous post.

Make sure to click “Toyota Innovations” in each section to see what their company is doing to help, showcasing videos, ads, commercials and information pamphlets. I appreciate how they incorporated these tidbits within the larger interactive experience.

I wish there were more journalism packages that incorporated this level of user input to engage their audience. Use this site as inspiration the next time you need to combine 3D, interactivity and user-input. I strongly believe Toyota coined the site correctly as an “innovation experience.”

Other posts that might interest you:

• Toyota launches user-submitted multimedia interface “Beyond Cars”
• Multimedia must see: Cisco Systems’ “You are the boss”
• Two interactive energy maps, one main difference: usability

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