Contents page and Contents map

[File under Abandoned ideas]

A useful idea this. It came to me a whilst waiting for the audience to arrive for a talk in a high school earlier today. It's funny how, given a fixed and short amount of time, it's possible to come up with some clear and potentially useful ideas.

I think I should have a dedicated Contents page after all. Here's how it will work in relation to the constellation image on the front cover. Bullet points as again, I've got a fixed amount of time to spend on this just now.

• I think I should have a Contents page, in between the front page Constellation map and the Introduction. I think this would make the thing more user-friendly.
• The contents page would have a representative icon plus the text that appears at the top of each section page outlining what follows.
• The page would be portrait (icon:text) however perhaps I could insert some form of constellation line between them for some kind of consistency with the map. Hmm, not sure that would work.
• What then is the function of the Constellation map? Is there any point in having links to it from different parts of the map. In fact, considering that I'm going for a linear journey through the work, maybe it doesn't sit comfortably with that. Why would someone visit the front page and then jump to the Methodology - that's not how I intend it to be read. 
• I still like the idea of having some form of representative image as the front page, though.
• Maybe what I do then is to have the (approximately same) image and, perhaps on the Mac screen, it says 'Click to enter' or 'View contents' or 'Contents' which then leads to the Contents page combined with the 'navigation' information for the site.
• So the front page would continue as it - with each 'star' representing something, even if it doesn't link or even have a hot point. It would just give the overall impression of 'Image, words and sounds'. I would still though use the circular icons as representative of different sections of the website. 
• This then destroys the idea of the Constellation line on the front page representing some form of route. And in fact, the links between a Constellation aren't supposed to represent that anyway.
• This means that I wouldn't be using Thinglink. I would simply need to make the whole image a link. 
• I probably need to try this out visually to see how it all works.