National Geographic
Talk about hard core – they have three no-so-simple steps to iPad development at National Geographic. 1. Know your readers. 2. Hone your process. 3. Get great content.
#1 Readers: “If I had asked people what they want, they would have said ‘faster horses.’” – Henry Ford. They thought that the tablet would be the standard for homes by 2015. You either stay true to your publication or do something completely new. This includes replicating or redesigning your original content. “This should be easy.” Wrong. He has a chart to prove it. There are at least 5 different devices that all requires something somewhat different. He says to worry about the iPad/iPhone first because all the others are somewhere in between.
#2 Hone: “We were designing a train without knowing the size of the track.” One-off apps versus a monthly magazine. “The cool thing about the iPad is that it doesn’t have the limitation of paper.” Photography is not the center of the iPad, because photographs are already important for their print publication. Breaking up the graphics allows you to show more pieces of the information. The cave graphic gives you the “flying” version on the iPad. Will the readers get fatigued from all the information?
#3 Content: It’s reader/user controlled, and that’s the different from anything that there is out there. We have to think digitally and give them the opportunity to do whatever they wish. Some of the examples he gave us was NOT video, so the users have the control of going forward and backward within the content. Tiger has a conversation with the robot, Steve says “don’t lick the lense!”
ESPN
Even coming from me, one who's not exactly a sport fanatic -- ESPN's vision for the iPad has got me motivated. There mission is "to serve the sports fan wherever sports are watched, listened to, discussed, debated, read about or played" -- and they have no plans to stop short when it comes to their iPad app consumers. What the iPad is doing is to provide the most dynamic media channel: you. You can make your own world and they have learned how to "sell you, you."
#2 Hone: “We were designing a train without knowing the size of the track.” One-off apps versus a monthly magazine. “The cool thing about the iPad is that it doesn’t have the limitation of paper.” Photography is not the center of the iPad, because photographs are already important for their print publication. Breaking up the graphics allows you to show more pieces of the information. The cave graphic gives you the “flying” version on the iPad. Will the readers get fatigued from all the information?
#3 Content: It’s reader/user controlled, and that’s the different from anything that there is out there. We have to think digitally and give them the opportunity to do whatever they wish. Some of the examples he gave us was NOT video, so the users have the control of going forward and backward within the content. Tiger has a conversation with the robot, Steve says “don’t lick the lense!”
ESPN
Even coming from me, one who's not exactly a sport fanatic -- ESPN's vision for the iPad has got me motivated. There mission is "to serve the sports fan wherever sports are watched, listened to, discussed, debated, read about or played" -- and they have no plans to stop short when it comes to their iPad app consumers. What the iPad is doing is to provide the most dynamic media channel: you. You can make your own world and they have learned how to "sell you, you."
One of the biggest thing that they mentioned was that "you can't transfer the old model to this new model" -- meaning that even though the print magazine has been successful, this new product being developed with the multitudes of tablets.
It's all about the consumer, though, that's the biggest push in journalism right now. "Angry Birds is your competition until the next thing comes along." But when it works -- it sky rockets and it becomes a trending feature in everyone's life, one way or another. The panel gave a great example from this summer and the World Cup games. We all remember when Donovan scored, but even listening to the game on the car radio you can find a connection with the person driving next to you when the reaction to the score is a loud horn that you both hit in reaction.
It takes a special type of atmosphere to make a room full of journalism students, professors and professionals feel like they're making a difference in the industry -- and it takes even more to motivate them to keep at it. Rob told us that "it is all going to work out, we just don't know how." And I suppose that's true. I will say though, my friends are pretty awesome -- so I plan to be working throughout this industry and look back on this conference in 10 years with some of those same people.
Better Homes
Over the course of this conference we have heard a lot of the same things -- and Better Homes & Gardens did little to let that effect our expectations of their presentation.
Digital Editions: 1. Quick to market, 2. Pixel Perfect, 3. Time Intensive
With their "Celebrate" app they were building a native app. How did they do that?: 1. Longer lead time, higher initial investment; 2. Only works on target device platform; 3. CMS-driven, rapid content creation.
They have an extensive media library because they bought all the rights to their photographs. You download the shell of an app and they create chapters -- they are collections of beautiful parties (both decorating and recipes). It looks really simple, but they had to find a way to integrate multiple things in one space.
The hardest part about creating this iPad app is to design something that provides a relaxing experience for the users. But they had a short amount of time and a strict budget in planning the final cuts for the apps. Right now it is still a learning curve, because they want to figure out where to go with the next round of digital products.
Attending the iPad conference was quite the experience. I think we learned a lot of valuable information in terms of design and content creation. This can only help us in our future careers.
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