Exprima was brought in to design the Interaction Design of the new site. Our work started with a series of Discovery meetings and ended with a detailed site map and detailed wire-frame drawings (think blueprints) of the site’s various interfaces. Our final wireframes provide the basis of the user’s experience of the site – the way the information is zoned, how the navigation works, where the buttons are, how the pages are organized.

In Discovery, we reviewed other museum sites to find examples of successful zoning.

Good Zone, Bad Zone

We also worked to map the content, navigation, and page structure of the Portland Art Museum site.

Portland Art Museum site map

We also worked to identify the goals of the site’s typical users as well as Museum’s goals for those users.

Portland Art Museum discovery document excerpt

After generating our wireframes, we created an interactive prototype and tested it with potential site visitors. This allowed us to tweak and optimize our interaction design.

Portland Art Museum wireframes

Our activities contributed to a new Portland Art Museum site that is at once intuitive and informative. All our site maps, user studies, our wireframes, are all invisible. But without these, the site would be less than it is. Without an explicitly designed user experience, software can quickly be difficult to use. A site or app with neglected interaction design may be pretty, but it won’t be easy. You can browse the Showcase Of Beautiful But Unusable Websites to see some more egregious examples. Nasty.

Glue this to your iPad

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 design have been the modus operandi of magazines for the last 280 years.

‘Fresh content and compelling design’ are also terms one could use to define much of the endeavor that is the world wide web and, by extension, content-delivery apps.  Our digital world is indeed very magazine-y.  Yet somehow, magazines have not made a very satisfactory portage to digital means.  This has been especially true for magazine apps.  Every time I open a magazine app, I hear the design ball drop.  I swear, there should be a satisfying ball-bouncing sound effect whenever you open Zinio.

First employed by the creator of the 1731 The Gentleman’s Magazine, the word ‘magazine’ is derived from the Arabic word makhazin meaning “storehouses”.  However, centuries of encrusted business models, corporate inertia, and design entropy have transformed this seminal impulse.  Magazine publishers’ failure to digitally launch reveals a possible secondary, previously overlooked meaning of makhazin: “fresh content encrusted in a specific print-centric InDesign layout from which it cannot be unbound for anyone ever no matter what.”  Who knew?

In short, there’s a missed opportunity afoot.  Magazine publishers seem to run out of creative juice (or will) after developing print layouts.   More often than not, we get served PDF incunabulum instead of platform-specific interaction designs delivering magazine content in unique and compelling ways.  Heck, save the bells and whistles for 2014 – I’m not seeking ‘enhanced apps’ with Potteresque moving pictures on every page (although that would be very cool) -  just give me useful platform-specific UI other than replicated print layouts with a dash of the Devil’s own page curl and a sprinkle of share buttons.  I hope magazine publishers find it in their hearts to eventually take digital seriously and partner with some UX professionals to develop post-magazine design solutions.

To be fair there are (and were) some wins out there.  The Economist and Esquire apps are effective.  The Vanity Fair app used to be excellent, with its unique vertical layout UI and printish horizontal interface.  Alas, since then, it seems they’ve opted to fly Woodwing back to the future.  Perhaps it’ll take a new digitally-native magazine start-up to set us right and restore the makhazin; someone to provide a storehouse of original and curated content in a nice app-specific container.  Maybe they would then offer a print version – one that is simply photocopies of the app screens stapled together.

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) Immediate observations:
a. The Revolution may not be televised, but it may well be read in ePub 3.
b. I’m afraid the Small Demons site will ruin my life.
c. New reading artifacts and contexts will spur the evolution of innovative features and reading behaviors.  Many of these will seem strange at first, but will soon become as central to our experience of content as is the paragraph or reading aloud to a child.

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 for experiences or content consumption on platforms that can be personalized and customized. This is especially true if the customization gets baked into the content.

For example, music access versus ownership is very compelling. I could see a possible near future in which “accessible music” (streaming unlimited cloud access) trumps “owned music” (purchased CDs or downloads). In this scenario, customization — creating customized playlists — is external to the media; customization is handled by the conduit, not the content.

This is also true of many types of reading; it certainly is when it comes to news. I am very curious to see how the new Kindle/OverDrive plan to allow library lending via the Kindle and Kindle app plays out. In many reading use cases, free two-week access to ebooks seems quite compelling. This is especially true for existing ebook converts already untethered from the symbolic “social display” function of a book collection.

There is a reading behavior for which ownership is important: annotation. The personalized customization of a text with marginalia requires, ideally, some level of ownership in both paper and electronic contexts. Annotating a borrowed paper text is anathema and moot; annotating a borrowed ebook will probably be impossible and moot.

I suppose there could be some scenario in which one borrows and annotates an etext and somehow keeps the annotations, which will realign with the etext when it is accessed again. Perhaps this is a use case that ereading designers and publishers can work on. Business models will dictate the provider-side benefits of ownership versus access. With the help of user experience experts, providers can help preserve essential reading behaviors as they experiment with content delivery models.

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 – from the farmer to the final consumer – to create a sustainable economic model that serves everyone. Part of the Sustainable Harvest mission is to provide education for coffee farmers; their educational programs aim to improve quality of life as well as the quality (and marketability) of their coffee.

Towards this end, Sustainable Harvest worked with Exprima Media to create an enterprise iPad app that staff can use to deliver educational videos to remote coffee farmers in Mexico, Peru, and Tanzania. The in-house app delivers educational content in three languages: English, Spanish, and Swahili. Currently, the app features videos and information about coffee agronomy, food security, and coffee business. Future plans for the app include health-related content and social media feature for coffee farmers from around the globe.

The RITS Ed app being used to educate farmers in Tanzania

Allied with user-centered design, these technologies represent a new era of global information diffusion. The activities of organizations like Celedu, The Grameen Foundation, Click Diagnostics, and Sustainable Harvest (just to name a few) are clear indications of with what can be accomplished with the powerful alloy of good technology, good business, and good design.

Read about the Sustainable Harvest app in the June issue of Fresh Cup Magazine – pages 21-23!

Museum

We spent a chunk of the summer working with the excellent minds at the Portland Art Museum to rework the interaction design of their website.  To be launched later this Fall, the new site is structured around Exprima Media’s wireframes, layouts, and navigation. We had a particularly useful Discovery session with the Portland Art Museum team and the design prototypes were tested with potential users.  I’ll explain the whole process once their new site is live.

Anatomy

The next project is an iPad app the extends our vision of the ‘armchair app’ –  an app that encourages users to sit back and get lost in a particular topic with non-linear navigation, beautiful design, and compelling content.  We have been encouraging our publisher clientele to seek opportunities to offer their content in specifically designed armchair apps.  McGraw Hill is taking the lead with the  tablet app.  This iPad and Android tablet app allows users to dissect a human cadaver, view anatomy and physiology images videos, and even quiz themselves.

Genesis

We’ve another armchair app in the offing – The Genesis Scroll: An Illustrated Ancient Genealogy.  Featuring the original artwork and academic writings of Carolyne D. Landon, The Genesis Scroll offers unique image-based navigation to content about all 300+ characters in the Book of Genesis.  Look for this in iTunes in early 2012.

Sustainable

The RITS Ed app being used to educate farmers in Tanzania

Exprima Media recently completed work with Sustainable Harvest on an update of their RITS Ed iPad app for coffee farmers.  I will be travelling to El Salvador next week to help launch the updated app and test it with users from Africa and the Americas.  You can read more about this exciting global mobile project here.

Chaos

Another exciting project is an iPad version of the intriguing Chaos Journal.  The paper version is a powerful tool for prompted journaling exercises.  The iPad app will take guided journaling further with multimedia content and social media activities like sharing and posting.  We’ve just completed a Discovery session for the app and are ramping up for development.

Phew.  Feels good to get that all out in the open.  Check back or subscribe to this RSS feed to learn more as these projects progress!

As Penenberg predicts:

“…the e-book [is] at best, a stopgap measure. Sure, a bevy of companies are releasing e-book readers…But technology marches on through predictable patterns of development, with the initial form of a new technology mirroring what came before, until innovation and consumer demand drive it far beyond initial incremental improvements. We are on the verge of re-imagining the book and transforming it something far beyond mere words.”

Amen brother.  It is starting to happen – The Atavist on the iPad, for example.  Or the rich interactive work of Michelle Rae Anderson on the web (leveraging Apture).  Also etextbooks are more interactive than in 2009 – but these still have a ways to go.

Happily, Exprima will be offering something to the nascent ‘new ereading’ experiences very soon. If you subscribe to our RSS feed you’ll be the first to know when we’ve released our creation into the wild.

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 Salon is

“an intimate, informal, and in person, discussion between information and communication technology experts and international development professionals, with a focus on both 1) technology’s impact on donor-sponsored technical assistance delivery, and 2) private enterprise driven economic development, facilitated by technology.”

I’ll be teaming up with David Griswold of Sustainable Harvest to discuss or RITS Ed app. I’m hoping to find new ways to help organizations like Sustainable Harvest and development organizations leverage mobile tech to distribute educational content in Developing Nations.

Next, I’ll be in El Salvador at Sustainable Harvest’s ‘Lets Talk Coffee‘ conference:

“Let’s Talk Coffee is Sustainable Harvest’s annual training event bringing together hundreds of specialty coffee suppliers, roasters, financiers, and others to learn from one another about the latest innovations in coffee. Stakeholders from all parts of the supply chain will discuss business challenges and market strategies, and calibrate coffee quality standards.”

In addition to introducing folks to our app, I’ll be conducting a cross-cultural discovery session to determine the features of the next stage of our app. Participants will include baristas, coffee farmers, and everyone in between. This should prove to be a educational foray into ethnographic brainstorming. I hope to learn some lessons about conducting cross-cultural user research and developing applications for use in diverse cultural contexts.

In October, I’ll be presenting thoughts on the future of publishing to folks at Google on the Google campus. My talk will focus on the role publishers and interaction designers can play to developing compelling interactive reading experiences.

Next up is the Books in Browsers conference in San Francisco. This invite-only two-day conference is sponsored by The Internet Archive and O’Reilly Media. This year’s focus is ‘beautiful books’. In their own words:

“For the purposes of this summit, we seek to consider future books as networked, distributed sets of interactions — less containers of circumscribed content. Thus the question arises: what does a beautiful book look like?”

I’ll be presenting on progressive ereading design.

Maybe I’ll see you at one of these events! If so, please don’t hesitate to say hi! I’m always game for a discussion about the future of reading or mobile tech in developing nations, or Lord of the Rings for that matter…

Seeing that the company is up to its sleeve garters in Chapter 11 proceedings, you’d think they’d be concentrating on leveraging the digital market rather than using it as a petard for self-hoisting. They already have (uninteresting) iPad and Android apps – why not invest the gazillions of dollars and hours wasted on this hardware solution to design and implement unique and meaningful (and monetizable) experiences on existing platforms? They own several major newspapers and over 20 television stations; with all this quality content, they are perfectly positioned to innovate – to design and develop new ways for users to access, experience, and interact with their copious content. Instead, the Tribune Co. chooses to give away a free toaster. To sell more paper.

According to a CNN story, this crazy initiative involves “various consultants and partner organizations”. Who are these consultants? If their consultants included user-centered software design firms they might have a chance to a) enact a real monetizable digital solution and b) emerge as innovators in the digital asset delivery space. Instead we will get another short-lived device for the landfill and the same blah apps.

In that same CNN story, a person close to the matter says in best: “it’ll be a fantastically interesting failure.”

That app is Writer by iA.

With its curated typography, focus mode, and groovy custom keyboard, Writer is a clear example of an app that evolves the electronic incunabula that current interactive readers and writers represent.