Media Experiences in a Distraction-Saturated Reality

2015 Digit

Media experiences in a distraction-saturated reality

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Guy Haviv Design Director, Partner Tel Aviv

About Designit

2015

We grow businesses by designing new experiences for humans, enabled by technology.

We are a global strategic design firm making innovation happen for the world’s most ambitious companies.

We design brands, products, services, digital & mobile experiences and fuse them with technology.

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Overview

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Tokyo

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Saturated Lives

Modern life is becoming increasingly saturated, overloaded with information.

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Information overload is not ‘new’

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Saturated Lives

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For short period of time, it seemed that the iPhone and iPad can help with this with their full screen apps.

iOS facilitated a single immersive experience at a time.

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Saturated Lives

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But since then, social media mobileapps + increasing prominence of notifications made it increasingly harder to concentrate.

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Saturated Lives

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FOMO

“FOMO is a form of social anxiety, whereby one is compulsively concerned that one might miss an opportunity for social interaction, a novel experience, profitable investment or other satisfying event.”Wikipedia

Saturated Lives

Fear Of Missing Out

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We struggle to concentrate,even when watching TV, or a film at the cinema.

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Saturated Lives

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Saturated Lives

For many people, time and attention are now scarce resources.

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More and more people have a hard time dealing with

Distraction

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How do we create digital user experiences that are increasingly relevant in this reality?

Question:

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A

By designing for helping users ‘making sense of the world’ By making discovery & consumption of content more familiar and simpler By designing for digestion

By editing, curating & organizing fragmented media to bemore linear

Possible answers:

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I’d like to walk you through a few inspiration points.

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Inspiration: 1. News on the web (Haaretz)

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Inspiration: News on the Web

haaretz.co.il was re-designed several times in the past decade.

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Online, Haaretz mostly imitates the competition, the result is yet another news portal.

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Haaretz NRG Ynet

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The tendency on these sites is to publish stories by categories, into ready-made templates.

This includes web-only news and some stories from the printed edition

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This means that the dominating organization method is the site’s categories, tags and web page templates.

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Index pages are mostly the same template, with stories of the same category in the same place, with only text / images changing.

Hierarchy is almost always determined by the template.

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The content is often infinite: there’s always more content. I’m always looking at a subset of all content available through some list page.

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Content from today and earlier this week is mixed

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The print edition, however, is a finite object.It has a beginning, a middle and an end.

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The print edition is edited, curated, organized, made hierarchical by experts - this results in a finite object.

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When a person reads or skims this printed edition, and goes through it all the way to the end, there’s a feeling of accomplishment, even if she only skimmed her way through.

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Because she can get the sense of being ‘briefed’ and going ‘through everything’ - largely because the object is finite.

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So much of this output, which is highly valuable and done by the most senior talents in the org. and is barely utilized on the Web.

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Redesign Haaretz’ digital presence around it’s strengths: strong, thoughtful, critical, inspiring content, often with a long ‘durability’

Idea:

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Design it’s web presence around 2 main pillars:

1. Editions 2. Online news

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Online NewsToday’s Edition

Use this as a basis of the website layout:


On the mobile view of the site


Online News

Today’s Edition

Today’s Edition

An on a tablet


Online NewsToday’s Edition

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The ‘edition’ part includes the same content as the printed edition, in layouts and structure that are designed to work well digitally.

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These editions are finite objects, even in digital.They have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It’s an ‘object’ a user can understand, skim, read, start & finish. Pay for.

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The ‘online news’ content will be stronger as a result of the dichotomy between it and the ‘edition’ content.

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How can we leverage existing content that has the potential for a long lifespan?

Question:

Use this slide when displaying a bright image that can benefit from a dark background.

Section name

I assume you’re familiar with Kindle Singles

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I would enjoy reading a compilation of ‘election news’ content from one of the paper’s political commentators.

Or a compilation of design articles from the last 6 months.

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Those could be sold as ‘small digital books’ within a future Haaretz app, as in app purchases, and accumulated in a digital library

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~4 months after I originally talked about this, the New York Times released a refresh of their website.

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Including many refinements, one of which is a new section called ‘Today’s Paper’

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And a new feature inside ‘NYT Premier’ is called TBooks

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The redesign was extensive and includes many other features and enhancements.

So we can’t attribute the impact on a specific feature or two, but in any case:

Digital subscriptions grew by 18%

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Inspiration: 2. Voice

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Inspiration: Voice

For quite a few people, consuming audio content is becoming increasingly important as our lives become busier.

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Inspiration: Voice

This content comes in the form of podcasts, audiobooks, online radio and a mixture of the above.

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Inspiration: Voice


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Inspiration: Voice


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Inspiration: Voice

The BBC is doing very good use of this trend, serving content in it’s dedicated iPlayer Radio apps as well as propagating it as podcasts to the iTunes store.

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Inspiration: Voice

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The BBC is doing very good use of this trend, serving content in it’s dedicated iPlayer Radio apps as well as propagating it as podcasts to the iTunes store.

Inspiration: Voice

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Inspiration: Voice

For some people, this channel complements many daily activities: Commuting, walking the dog, exercising, washing dishes, etc.

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Inspiration: Voice

I use podcasts and the BBC radio app as a learning tool: you can look up content on ‘color theory’ and get a list of things to listen to.

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which brings us to the next point.

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Inspiration: 3. Learning

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How can we be ‘linearize media’ for learning?

Question:

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“Inject knowledge”

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Inspiration: Learning

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Can we build ‘learning machines’?

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Is there a way to do this with voice?

Build a learning-machine that is simple, speaks ‘directly’ to my brain and makes me learn new things?

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So of course there’s iTunes U

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Some new services are very good at this:

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Code Academy

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- Success is within reach - Series of small achievements - Learning is interactive - Easy to pick up

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Code Academy

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Hour of Code app

I can imagine myself completing this interactive thing, and gaining new skills.

It won’t be about reading, it will be active.

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But the real treat is a new tool called Gibbon.

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Gibbon: playlists for learning (video on next slide)

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Think of what’s possible for new learning experiences inspired by this?

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Inspiration: 4. Products that generate linear experiences

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Flipboard, of course.

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Inspiration: products that generate linear experiences

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You would think that the kind of layouts Flipboard generates are only relevant on tablets, right?

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Wrong.

Flipboard on the iPhone is focused & wonderful.

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Section name

Would people pay for a new, re-imagined edition of their favorite magazine that is intimate and close them me on their phone?

(I would.)

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SundaySky

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Generates ‘smart video’ out of various data sources

AT&T Bill smart video

http://www.sundaysky.com/gallery/att/

http://www.sundaysky.com/gallery/att/

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SundaySky

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Generates ‘smart video’ out of various data sources

Smart Video for Travel

http://www.sundaysky.com/solutions/#travel

http://www.sundaysky.com/solutions/#travel

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Facebook Paper

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Redux (closed)

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Summary

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Summary

What happens when we apply this thinking to other types of media?

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Summary

Perhaps by taking fragmented, distributed pieces of information and linearizing them into a finite experience, we can make them resonate in today’s world?

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Leumi Card2015

Idea vs. Innovation

Often times, in many organizations, it’s hard to tackle the need to innovate in the digital space.

Common causes are operational complexity, tech feasibility, or the long time frames it takes to validate ideas.

Surprisingly, it’s often the case that it’s best to engage these challenges head on.

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Thank you.Digit

Guy Haviv Design Director, Partner Tel Aviv

designit.com [email protected]