Also see:
oki-ni presents THE GAME — from oko-ni.com
Excerpt:
At oki-ni we make the everyday extraordinary. That’s why, when it came to creating our latest video, we wanted to do something truly remarkable. What we came up with is this, an interactive and fully-shoppable video.
From DSC:
Speed, personalization, interactivity driving advancements in media today — I would submit that these trends are true for education as well.
See:
Excerpt:
Whether you’re talking about the future of television, news, or advertising, it’s all about speed, personalization, and interactivity. These three things are the driving considerations behind the advancement of all media today.
TV of Tomorrow (TVOT): Connected TVs, mobile devices drive interactive TV— from itvt.com
Also:
[itvt] is pleased to announce the winners of the 8th Annual Awards for Leadership in Interactive and Multiplatform Television:
Most Significant Impact: Cablevision
Most Significant Newcomer: AT&T U-verse
Most Significant Technology, Platform or Product: IntoNow (a Yahoo! company)
Most Significant Content Offering: Current’s “Bar Karma”
Most Innovative Design or User Interface: ZON TV Cabo (NDS)
Individual Leadership I: Dave Alloway, Cablevision
Individual Leadership II: Vibha Rustagi, itaas
ITV All-Star: Jon Dakss, NBC Universal
Stop the presses: Students dive head first into Editorial for the iPad — from blogs.artcenter.edu/dottedline by Mike Winder
Excerpt:
Sensing a shift in the industry, Nik Hafermaas, Chair of Art Center’s Graphic Design Department, sat down with instructor Carla Barr to discuss the possibility of creating an iPad design class. Barr, who has taught Editorial Design extensively, saw an opportunity to bring her area of expertise and this new technology together and suggested creating an iPad Editorial class.
“Students a few years ago had very mixed feelings towards interactive media,” says Nik Hafermaas, who thinks this class, along with classes like MediaTecture and this coming term’s augmented reality studio—sponsored by LAYAR and co-taught by writer Bruce Sterling—fall into the burgeoning arena of transmedia design and are important steps for where Art Center students needs to be headed conceptually. “Now students are aware of the ubiquitous nature of these tools,” he says. “They’re starting to enjoy using them, and see that somebody needs to design the content.”
The experimental class—whose test run took place last term and which is being offered again Summer Term—attracted the attention of two education specialists from Apple, one who visited the class and another, according to Barr, who said there was no other class he knew of focusing on editorial for the iPad.
We recently chatted with iPad Editorial instructor Barr and two students who took the class, Graphic Design majors Megan Potter (who graduated last month) and Jinsub Shin about their experience and digital publications.
Bertelsmann acquires digital media agency Smashing Ideas for Random House, Inc. — from Smashing Ideas (emphasis DSC)
(New York, May 4, 2011)—Bertelsmann AG has acquired cutting-edge digital media agency Smashing Ideas, Inc. for its Random House, Inc. division, the world’s largest English-language trade book publisher. The purchase was announced today by Markus Dohle, Chairman and CEO of Random House and Member of the Executive Board of Bertelsmann AG, and Stephen Jackson, President and CEO of Smashing Ideas, Inc.
The acquisition adds significantly to the set of Random House capabilities and further signals the intention of Random House and its parent company to be leaders in digital content creation, and demonstrates their commitment to expanding revenues from mobile and interactive online products and services.
Mike Matas: A next-generation digital book (filmed March 2011)
About this talk
Software developer Mike Matas demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad — with clever, swipeable video and graphics and some very cool data visualizations to play with. The book is “Our Choice,” Al Gore’s sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth.”
About Mike Matas
While at Apple, Mike Matas helped write the user interface for the iPhone and iPad. Now with Push Pop Press, he’s helping to rewrite the electronic book.
AP Interactive visualizes a future of stories that reach beyond text — from niemanlab.org
Excerpt:
Data visualization is “going through a kind of renaissance in journalism,” said Shazna Nessa, director of Interactive for the AP. What’s really behind the news collective’s uptick in graphics, she told me, is a kind of evolutionary change in journalism — one that’s reflected in the Interactive unit itself. Once a repository of charts and maps, the department is now creating what Nessa described as “comprehensive interactive stories,” and we can expect to see a lot more of them.
Why Angry Birds is so successful and popular: A cognitive teardown of the user experience — from Pulse > UX by Charles L. Mauro
Excerpt:
Simple yet engaging interaction concept: This seems an obvious point, but few realize that a simple interaction model need not be, and rarely is, procedurally simple. Simplification means once users have a relatively brief period of experience with the software, their mental model of how the interface behaves is well formed and fully embedded. This is known technically as schema formation. In truly great user interfaces, this critical bit of skill acquisition takes place during a specific use cycle known as the First User Experience or FUE. When users are able to construct a robust schema quickly, they routinely rate the user interface as “simple”. However, simple does not equal engaging. It is possible to create a user interface solution that is initially perceived by users as simple. However, the challenge is to create a desire by users to continue interaction with a system over time, what we call user “engagement”.
What makes a user interface engaging is adding more detail to the user’s mental model at just the right time. Angry Birds’ simple interaction model is easy to learn because it allows the user to quickly develop a mental model of the game’s interaction methodology, core strategy and scoring processes. It is engaging, in fact addictive, due to the carefully scripted expansion of the user’s mental model of the strategy component and incremental increases in problem/solution methodology. These little birds are packed with clever behaviors that expand the user’s mental model at just the point when game-level complexity is increased. The process of creating simple, engaging interaction models turns out to be exceedingly complex. Most groups developing software today think expansion of the user’s mental model is for the birds. Not necessarily so.
Other key items discussed:
- Simple yet engaging interaction concept
- Cleverly managed response time
- Short-term memory management
- Mystery
- How things sound
- How things look
- Measuring that which some say cannot be measured
From DSC:
What Apple is able to do with many of their hardware and software products, what Charles describes here with Angry Birds, what Steelcase did with their Media:Scape product’s puck — and other examples — point out that creating something that is “easy” is actually quite hard.