In the Youth in Lilliput piece, I liked that the images were all simple landscapes to start with. It was the editing (with Photoshop and Flash?) that made it interesting. I also liked that I was in charge of getting myself to the next page. (In contrast, I found myself watching The Flat multiple times to make sure I read everything.) I thought it was interesting how the image was always on the page, but while the bars of the same image were moving, it was difficult to see what exactly the picture was of. The distorting, of course, didn't help either. But I had a split second to attempt to make out the picture and then came the flying bars again.
I also liked that the text seemed to come out of the end of the picture. Text was both on the image and to the right of it, in black solid space. While the bright yellow font stood out on most of the images, I found it a little difficult to read on the 6/8/06 page. Personally, I don't think this was done on purpose and I think the text could have been placed more strategically on the photo.
The Flat
While it took me a few attempts to figure out exactly what to do to actually read this, I did like that I was in charge of guiding myself through it. It reminded me of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" children books. However, I found myself often drifting away from the text, and being unable to ready it before it disappeared. If the text is important enough to read, I think the designer should make sure readers get a chance to and if it's not, why even incorporate it into the design?
While the "Choose Your Own Adventure" idea was kind of cool, as I'm watching others go through it now, I see that I missed some rooms/places. I watched this a couple of times (in attempt to read all of it) but apparently I missed some of the places I could go. If you're going to go through the trouble of designing this whole interactive flat, its probably best that every where in flat can be easily seen. Every once in a while, I found accidentally drift into a black space and had trouble finding my way out of it. Overall, it was a neat design concept but to a user who had no idea what she was getting herself into, I found myself a bit confused at times.