This week, the Portland Art Museum launched a redesigned web site. A new logo perches proudly atop pages with attractive palettes, clean typography, and soft lines. Beneath the colors, between the lines, behind the typeface lies the unseen but ever-present work of Exprima Media.
Exprima was brought in to design the Interaction Design of [...]

Magazines are a prime candidate for successful portage to digital means.  The very first magazine, The Gentleman’s Magazine (launched in 1731), was an innovative type of publication presenting monthly installments of “news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in” with unique layout and design elements.   Fresh content and compelling [...]

The Books in Browsers Conference occurred last week and it already feels like a year ago.  Unfortunately, it will take me an actual year to fully integrate everything I learned there.
In the meantime, I present you with 1) a video of my presentation and 2) a list of immediate observations.
1) A video of my presentation:

2) [...]

Recently, Jen Webb of the the O’Reilly Radar asked me the following intriguing question:
What are the issues with ownership versus access that need to be overcome on the consumer side, and how can publishers and browser developers best address these issues?
I’m reposting my response (as edited by the Radar) here:
Ownership is very important [...]

Fact Company: RITS Ed makes iPad “the gadget that’s preserving agricultural traditions.”
USAID: Exprima and Sustainable’s iPad App “the most anthropologically astute ag app on the market today.”

Exprima Media has partnered with Sustainable Harvest, a coffee importing business based in Portland, Oregon. Sustainable Harvest brings together all the members of the coffee supply chain – [...]

We were heads-down and sleeves up for all of 2011, engaged in a number of exciting projects.  As we near completion on a few, I thought it would be nice to (finally) talk about them.
Museum
We spent a chunk of the summer working with the excellent minds at the Portland Art Museum to rework the interaction [...]

I’m writing today to share my delight in finding the 2009 Fast Company article by Adam Penenberg entitled Forget E-Books: The Future of the Book Is Far More Interesting. Nearly two years old, Penenberg’s article predicts an interactive reading experience beyond the ebook.  As you may know, I’ve extolled at many a conference and on [...]

I’m really excited about my Fall line up of talks. They represent the two main foci of Exprima’s endeavors: 1) mobilizing publisher content and 2) information technology for developing nations.
First, I’ll be in Washington DC participating in my first ’Technology Salon’. Sponsored by the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation, the Technology [...]

Earlier this month, The Tribune Co. announced they are developing their own Android-based tablet device. The tablet is to be distribute free or very cheap to folks who subscribe to their daily newspapers, including the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune.
Seeing that the company is up to its sleeve garters in Chapter 11 [...]

We are very excited.  At last, someone has entered the app market with a shining beacon of hope; an app that represents the next stretch in that not-so-straight line between papyrus, manuscripts, Guttenberg, and computer input.
That app is Writer by iA.
With its curated typography, focus mode, and groovy custom keyboard, Writer is a clear example [...]

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the statements made by Bill Gates earlier this year regarding technology and education.  His comments regarding the eclipse of “place-based” universities are compelling, broad-minded, and long-sighted for sure.

However, we found his comments regarding a more specific topic – one particularly close to our hearts – [...]

It is easy to be sympathetic to students who because of the greed, vanity, and corruption of the people who make and assign textbooks must spend inordinate amounts for worthless tomes stuffed full of unnecessary graphics and obeisances to political correctness of one sort or another… but they are not so oppressed that this is [...]

Exprima Media and its textbook publisher partners have begun their tentative (but inevitable) portage of pedagogy onto mobile platforms. As our products become more robust and more useful, the implications for the US college student are easy to imagine. However, there is a wider set of possibilities worth considering – those surrounding the [...]

In his excellent book New Physical Ideas Are Here Needed, Art Bardige posits a view of textbooks and pedagogical media that deeply resonates with our mission at Exprima Media.

This seems like the very definition of the one place where we often find we must “continue in our pursuit” despite the presence of invisible, real, and threatening monsters: the public restroom. So what magic have we prepared to protect us in this place? Some of our most cutting-edge technologies arose in the public restroom: interactive gesture. Where was the fist place you encountered a technological interface that responded to physical movement without direct touch? The bathroom.

The transition from hand-scribed manuscripts to printed books was marked by a quarter-century interaction design lag. This stretch of the 15th century is known for the production of incunabula – printed books lacking the interface design advancements that have since become standard navigational features of book user experience such as page numbering, the table of contents, punctuation, and footnotes.

In an effort to learn more about the nascent impact of the internet on various aspects of daily life, I’ve been looking into early predictions of the web.

While designing software is our bread and butter, ultimately we are in the interface trade. More specifically, we produce computer-human interfaces. At first, the computer hardware that housed our software creations was solely the personal computer. Now, we (and our interface-designing colleagues) are now designing computer-human interfaces for new hardwares – for [...]

I see some real potential for textbooks and students. It’s hard to tell at this point, but it looks like the actual iBook app on the just-announced iPad is not particularly geared toward research-type reading – annotation, notes, integrated multimedia – but then again, maybe it is. Either way, a well-made eTextbook app [...]

Quizr: Now You Know is an iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad app for study and self-quizzing. Want to study and test yourself on any topic anytime, anywhere? Exprima’s Quizr is a handheld tutor and test bank. The app will be available soon featuring content from the nation’s largest textbook publishers and [...]

Our latest apps augment traditional textbook content delivery by transforming publisher assets into educational experiences.  We believe that students learn better when they have the ability to explore and experience educational content, not just ingest, memorize and cram.  Our user-oriented apps are customizable to any academic level and for any platform (web, iPhone, iPad, Android, [...]

We were heads-down and sleeves up for all of 2011, engaged in a number of exciting projects.  As we near completion on a few, I thought it would be nice to (finally) talk about them.
We spent a chunk of the summer working with the excellent minds at the Portland Art Museum to rework the interaction [...]