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DAHN Launch Experience Design Specification

Status and authority

Draft normative specification for the bounded application-shell launch experience. It owns narrative, imagery/provenance, readiness/handoff, and accessibility. The MAP Application Launcher owns startup and home-Dancer selection; this presentation does not select the Dancer or make Space Navigator a Launcher dependency. References to Space Navigator describe the initial handoff experience.

Purpose

Before the initial Space Navigator becomes visible, DAHN SHOULD present a brief, evocative launch experience. It is an entry ritual into DAHN, not a splash screen, cinematic sequence, or substitute for the Navigator. The sequence frames the person as a locally situated participant in nested wholes and frames this first Navigator as an early visual expression that future Visualizer Commons contributors may deepen.

Narrative and scenes

The MVP scene order is:

  1. Cosmos — observational imagery of NGC 346 begins somewhat unresolved and comes into focus.
  2. Stellar transition — the view moves toward a luminous point in the nebula; increasing brightness may bridge the scene into Earth's solar context without representing that star as literally the Sun.
  3. Living Earth — a whole-Earth NASA DSCOVR / EPIC observation becomes the visual center.
  4. Living place — Earth yields to observational imagery of the Okavango Delta, selected for its visibly nested relationships among water, land, vegetation, species, and changing conditions.
  5. I-Space — the terrestrial scene recedes as the initialized Space Navigator emerges, so the handoff reads as arrival rather than screen replacement.

The sequence MUST suggest semantic continuity across scales rather than simulate astrophysically literal travel. It SHOULD use restrained full-screen still-image treatment—zoom, focal translation, blur/focus, opacity, brightness, crossfade, and easing—rather than video, 3D simulation, or text that competes with the imagery. Any textual framing is optional, sparse, and provisional.

Application-shell boundary

The MVP launch experience is an application-shell concern. It is not a MAP Visualizer, MAP media ValueType, media Holon, or Visualizer Commons feature. Its imagery may be bundled as ordinary application assets. It MUST NOT put MAP media infrastructure, dynamic visualizer acquisition, generalized animation grammar, WebGL/Three.js, GIS, geolocation, personalized locality, or external media streaming on the critical path.

A future experience may descend from Earth into the user's actual locality or bioregion. That possibility makes local-first participation visually literal, but it is explicitly deferred and creates no MVP requirement for location services, map tiles, or geospatial data.

Readiness, handoff, and control

DAHN initialization and the narrative sequence are independent timelines. Initialization begins immediately beneath the launch experience. If readiness arrives early, the sequence completes normally. If it arrives late, the final terrestrial scene enters a subtle holding state until the initial Space Navigator can render; the experience MUST NOT expose incomplete UI.

A Skip control MUST become available after a short initial interval. Skipping before readiness advances to that holding state; skipping after readiness hands off promptly. The final handoff SHOULD retain subtle local movement while the Navigator canvas emerges through or beneath the terrestrial scene.

The launch MUST provide a reduced-motion treatment that substantially removes travel motion while preserving the semantic progression where practical, or transitions directly to the final state. It MUST avoid flashing or rapid luminosity changes, keep controls keyboard-accessible, fail gracefully when an asset cannot load, and never prevent eventual access to the application.

Observational imagery and provenance

The launch uses authentic observational imagery of the actual universe and Earth, not AI-generated or invented artwork. “Observational” deliberately includes instrumentally captured and scientifically processed imagery, including assigned-color processing; it does not imply ordinary visible-light photography.

Provenance is part of the experience, not legal boilerplate. An unobtrusive, keyboard-accessible Image credits affordance MUST expose each incorporated asset's title/subject, mission or instrument, complete supplied credit line, authoritative source URL, applicable usage information, and optional short explanation that it derives from scientific observation rather than AI artwork. The full source credit MUST NOT be reduced to merely “NASA.”

The preferred starting set is JWST NGC 346 imagery (NASA / ESA / CSA, retaining the complete supplied credit), NASA DSCOVR / EPIC whole-Earth imagery, and NASA Earth Observatory or other verified NASA observational imagery of the Okavango Delta. Exact asset, crop, and source-provided attribution remain implementation-time selections.

Bundled derivatives MUST be appropriately sized and efficiently encoded for startup, require no network connection, and avoid expensive runtime image processing. Original source references and provenance metadata remain retained alongside the optimized derivatives.