Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
My wife and I were in the bookstore the other day and we were discussing the difference between shopping online versus shopping in the real world. We were not focused on ability to easily compare prices or instantly get to different stores, which makes online shopping superior. Instead, we focused on the basic qualitative experience - e.g. holding a book and flipping through its pages. We both felt that there is something special about this physical experience, that cannot be replaced with Ajax or PDF.
At least not for us people who first learned physics and then went digital. But we also agreed that with the race to squeeze everything into a computer, it won't be too long before we get a generation of people who might not crave the physical experience of buying a book as we do. In the meantime, today we see a lot of taking things and concepts familiar to us in our physical world -- and bringing them online. So in this fun Friday post, we look at some of these attempts and try to decipher what works and what does not.
[Disclaimer: The latest edition of Nine Online magazine briefly mentions Adaptive Blue and socialmeter, web properties of Alex Iskold.]
Our first stop is recently the launched Nine Online magazine from Novologic. This small publication focuses on helping PR professionals understand the new social media. The site is implemented in Flash and combines traditional magazine elements with innovative digital solutions that make it stand out. It actually looks like a magazine, due to its shape and the ability to flip through the pages. Typically, I would dismiss this kind of thing as fluff, but the way its implemented here makes it appealing and clickable.
Nine online offers an interesting blend of static and interactive content. The articles look like what you'd find in a typical magazine, but in addition they are spliced with interactive videos and online quizzes. The fact that the implementation uses elements of the physical world was nice, but what was mostly impressive is the natural and intuitive embedding of the interactive elements - only possible in the digital world.
[Editor's Note: in a similar vein, check out Avantoure. We profiled this interactive magazine back in December]
Way before Nine Online added a real-world feel to its digital magazine, researchers explored doing the opposite - bringing the digital feel to one of our most beloved objects, paper. Electronic Paper or e-paper was developed way back in 1970 at Xerox-Parc.
According to Wikipedia, the predicted future applications include e-paper books - capable of storing digital versions of many books, with only one book displayed on the pages at any one time. When this happens, we will flip through a digital book and also interact with it as we interact with web pages today, using gestures. That brings us to another contender in the race to blend physics and digital - the iPhone.
By now there are very few
skeptics left who do not believe that Apple can reinvent the wheel. They have done it
with iPod and it seems like they are doing it again with iPhone. Most of us have not yet
had the chance to try their patent-pending multi-touch technology on iPhone, but if the
click-wheel on iPod any indication, Apple has invented a truly new way of interacting
with digital information.
Apple promises to redefine our digital experience, by making digital objects look, feel and behave like their physical cousins. This is not just a promise of a slick UI and a fun toy, it is a promise of a phone and digital companion that saves time - because it will be as intuitive as things are in the real world.
Attempting to merge and reconcile our experiences in the physical and digital worlds is no trivial matter. Many technologies are aiming to create a blend that delivers a consistent, simple, yet rich, user experience. Since objects in the real world obey the laws of physics and objects in the digital world obey, well, at best the laws of good design, the laws for hybrids are not yet settled.
The key to success is to ensure that the mix of physical and digital does not confuse the user. When playing with Nine Online, I was never surprised by what happened when I clicked on things. Surely many of you experienced the same with iPod - it behaves as you expect it. Inventing new ways of remixing, while keeping users happy, is what these new technologies are all about.
What are your favorite digital and physical remixes?
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Comments
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I don't think Apple reinvented the wheel with iPod, maybe iPod is the MP3 player of the generation but it's far from convenient and intuitive. First of all it was designed to take music from iTunes whereas its competitors allowed music to be transferred via drag and drop. Which one is easier?
I've also seem Steve Jobs unveil the iPhone and yes it is an impressive device, but will it reinvent the phone? I don't think so. Does its interface make it so overly more convenient over other smartphones or cellphones? no. the cell phone reinvented the phone mainly because they took out all the wires. iPhone is nothing more than a 2.5G cellphone. IMHO.
Posted by: max | February 9, 2007 1:47 PM
One of the most significant digital and physical remixes ever, has got to be video games. No?
Especially now that the Wii is out, it is more apparent than ever.
Posted by: Michael Vu | February 9, 2007 3:50 PM
I've actually always thought the click wheel was a step backward and preferred the earlier iPods with the control buttons separate from the wheel. Including the control buttons in the wheel makes it too easy to accidentally click on things you are trying to just scroll past... and it adds an extra component to the learning curve that wasn't there before (i.e., you now have to learn how hard to press when scrolling--it makes the device harder to learn). I always thought Creative's up-down, separated control button interface was better, anyway.
Also, on the iPhone, Apple won't be the first touch screen phone to market. There is already the Prada, and there was a sweet Samsung (with slide out keyboard! better, in my opinion) on engadget yesterday. That's why they (Apple) announced so early. I'm not sure you can say they're reinventing the wheel on this one either...
I said on my blog a few weeks ago, and still believe... Apple is genius at marketing. They are able to take relatively small steps and sell them as quantum leaps.
I know that wasn't really the point of your post, though, so I'll shut up now. :D
Posted by: Josh | February 9, 2007 6:48 PM
One thing that does bother me about digital paper is that it will be just a flexible and lighter version of a PDF reader.
How will it replicate the real world experience and behaviour of people needing to look at two pages side by side.
Behaviour and usability understanding is always the most difficult.
As for the iPhone, the one thing missing is tactile feedback which some of the other phone companies almost have out the door already. I think Apple will have a good fight on their hands with the iPhone and the brand name may be the only saving grace.
Posted by: Don Vaillancourt | February 9, 2007 10:55 PM
For a natural UI have you checked out the "Minority Report becomes reality" YouTube vid - very nice, I want one ;-)
Posted by: Mike Riversdale | February 10, 2007 11:43 PM
Mike,
I was thinking about that when writing the post too!
It just sort of did not fit in, but yeah, right up this alley.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | February 11, 2007 5:55 AM
Hi Alex,
Great post and I loved both issues you posted - good examples of the blending of media.
That being said, an often over-looked aspect of these Flash-style books is the difficulty in providing good analytic metrics.. not saying these solutions don't have them, but it's an often overlooked component of digital magazines. In addition, without page-specific permalinks, many of these solutions are unable to tap into social media very well.
We work with more than 150 publishers to provide digital editions similar to what you've shown here, but also give our publishers detailed metrics and allow readers to easily share and save content on the Web. It's important for digital editions to embrace the most important aspects of the Web world.
Posted by: Marcus | February 12, 2007 5:22 AM
Hey Alex,
Just wanted to make a correction about nine online. It was actually a joint effort between Novologic and us here at three squared. Thanks for the post and we appreciate you generating dialogue about the eMagazine
Posted by: BarbaraV | February 12, 2007 8:52 AM
Metrics Matter
Alex ,
you are dead on about most companies missing the mark with providing functionality for capturing audience metrics, performance metrics, as well as the ability to personalize the expereince for the user.
while this sample does little around this, outside of participation metrics, the design of the technology has the ability and underpinnings to do all the above.
we can measure interactivity with elements on the page, between elments on the page, time spent viewing each element, etc. We can also provide personalization of content based on any known information about the viewing participant, or their ecosystem.
This truly is marketing 2.0, to use play on a widely and wildly overused term
It is going to be a lof of fun seeing where this type creativity and technology is used going forward. Some areas i can think of range from corporate communications, marketing, consumer focused education, employee training, to application "wizards", to entertainment.
Posted by: Burke Allen | February 12, 2007 11:35 AM
Hey Alex,
Marcus makes some valid comments on most content (whether delivered in a magazine format or any other similar modality) thrown onto the Internet. Most companies never penetrate the surface of what needs to be considered when delivery rich-media to end users either for marketing or education. The first error is not validating or understanding if the end user will even be able to view the content. Remember, ‚Äúif content is King, infrastructure is god‚Ä?. Second, they do not develop the content to match the expected playback requirements, which stems from the first error. Most companies think that ‚Äúsince it is in Flash it will work ‚Äú and this is really due to the fact that most developers that create such unique user interfaces are compromised by: 1: Not being true programmers 2: Do not have a deep understanding of technologies inhibitors found on the end user machine, bandwidth, and server. All of which dictate how you create the content, host it, update it, deliver it, and of course track it.
At NovoLogic we provide a variety of solutions similar to the e-magazine we developed for Nine Online. The e-magazine is just a simple user interface that content can be exposed to an end user. That same content may in fact be found in other content packages being served by a CMS or LCMS. Tracking should include at minimum book-marking, completion stats on pages and rich-media elements found on pages, latency on pages, system information for all accessed pages, and number of unique entries into magazine.
While tracking is the first step to make true business changes, the real differentiator is what you do with the data. You could track content all day long, but if there are not quantitative or predictive models using the data on the back-end to trigger and drive changes to content and future content, then why track at all?
Posted by: Jeff Gray | February 12, 2007 11:38 AM
Hey Alex,
Just one more thing...the link that you provided to the eMagazine is incorrect it should be:
http://www.novologic.com/clients/threesquared/index.html
Thanks!
Posted by: BarbaraV | February 12, 2007 12:18 PM
HI Alex-
Thank you for starting a dialogue about the nine online eMagazine. I appreicate your comment on how the magazine looks likes a 'typical' magazine. It was important to us (three squared) to add elements of a typical magazine in order to keep it realistic and to keep it social. I find that no matter what the vehicle you are pushing the content through, you need that 'familiar' element to better engage your end user.
For our Q2 issue we dive into Word-of-Mouth Marketing. Again, thanks for writing about nine online.
Posted by: Donna Twohig | February 12, 2007 3:24 PM