A beautiful journey unfolds with WWF Together - The Times-Tribune

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Don't forget rhinos and bison and whales - or leopards and turtles and sharks.

No, this isn't a list of the creatures that inhabit the wonderful land of OZ. These are just some of the endangered animals featured in WWF Together, an app created by the World Wildlife Fund to raise environmental awareness. It's available on Apple's App Store for free.

This elegant app was the 2013 winner of the Apple Design Award. From the moment you launch WWF Together, you can see why it won.

It starts with a stop-motion animation of the creation of an origami panda. As soothing music plays, the image pans across a background that looks like creased paper to a group of several more origami pandas standing around the opening credits.

When you press the "Start" button a series of beautifully photographed portraits of endangered animals slides across the screen. The images stop on the full-framed face of a giant panda staring earnestly at you. This is where the educational journey into the lives of dozens of threatened species begins to unfold.

Follow the signs

There are several routes you can take on your virtual safari. The starting point for each route is marked with a simple icon or label.

The most obvious route starts by pressing the "Enter" button under the panda label. That causes the image to zoom in and pan out of the frame to reveal a brief description of how the iconic creature became a symbol of conservation. Instructions on how to navigate the app are superimposed over the screen. You can choose to close the instructions until you select another animal, or you can elect to stop showing them all together.

The information on the animals is displayed on a series of frames arranged in a grid. There are usually six or nine frames, only one of which you can see at a time. Swiping a finger up, down, left or right takes you to the other frames.

In one frame, information on population, habitat and size is displayed. There's also an interactive globe that looks like it's made of folded paper. You can spin it with your finger to see where on Earth the animal lives. Other frames have photo galleries, videos, interesting facts or list threats to the species.

Different animals have different interactive activities on some of their frames. For instance, you can grow and cut bamboo for the panda, or look at the bottom of an elephant's foot. You can also compare your night vision to a tiger's, or move icebergs for a polar bear.

Create your own animals

One of the most fun interactive activities is accessed by clicking the plus sign in the bottom right corner of the screen. This launches a stop-motion animation of the animal being created with origami. After the animation runs, you can share a video about the featured animal and the app via Facebook, Twitter or email. You also can view instructions on how to make your own origami version of the animal.

The second most obvious route for exploration starts by pressing or swiping an arrow on the right side of the frame. This will take you to a portrait of the next animal. After the first one, you can go either right or left to see the next animal or the previous one. All of the portraits also have a downward-facing arrow in the upper right corner. Pressing this allows you to save the image as wallpaper for your mobile device.

Travel the world

A third route for exploring is by clicking on the icon of an origami panda on the left side of the screen. This causes a grid of animal icons to unfold across the screen. Clicking on any of the images takes you to the section devoted to that animal.

There's also a globe icon on the left side that takes you to a fourth route to explore. Pressing this reveals a large "paper" globe with blue dots scattered across it. You can spin the globe to the location you're interested in and press on a dot. Information on an animal that lives there is revealed. You can also view a list of all of the animals represented by dots. Click on a name in the list and the globe will spin to its location as the information is displayed.

Below the globe icon is a link to a section on sharing and supporting the World Wildlife Fund. There's information on animal adoption, making donations, sharing the app and more.

WWF Together is a beautiful app that is a pleasure to use. It would be ideal for sitting down with your school-age child and exploring the wonderful world of animals together.

KEVIN O'NEILL is a graphic artist for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at koneill@timesshamrock.com with links to your favorite websites.

Source: http://thetimes-tribune.com/lifestyles/a-beautiful-journey-unfolds-with-wwf-together-1.1523135

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