This is the main page of the encyclopedic section of the ECHO history site. It's called "Greater than Ten Thousand Years" (i.e. ten thousand year of Canadian History), or as it came to be known in the team, "The Least You Need to Know." Luckily, the content written for this section has been recycled in a new NFB kids site illustrated with hundreds of movie clips (an option that many of us in the ECHO team argued for at the time but which was not received favorable until more recently). For the prototype we were only mandated to design pages for the first section, A Native Continent, before the project was abandoned.

    In design terms, this is a transition page. Users made their selection on the Home Page and are getting into a main content area. The buildings seen here are also featured on the main navigation island on the Home Page. However, the perspective has radically changed. On the Home Page we look down from a birds-eye view on a kind of symbolic chronological geography: closest to the edge is Ancient Canada and closest to the centre is Contemporary Canada. Users are positioned to get a sense of an overview of the whole.

    Once users click into the >10,000 Years Main Page they find key building from the Home Page geography placed along a horizon line presenting navigation to the main subsections: the longhouse for A Native Continent, a classical arch for the Age of Empires, a modern factory for the Industrial Age and a skyscraper for Contemporary Canada. Users have now been brought down to the ground. From flying to walking, they can now approach one of the content areas. We kept this page dark and quoted certain graphic elements from the Home Page to ensure a nice transition.