Comments on: A tablet demo too far

By: Notebooki

Notebooki — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:28:07 +0000

Amazing demo. Absolutly stunning.

By: Alex Vance

Alex Vance — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:51:41 +0000

I think there’s a key difference between the web as we know it and emerging platforms like the iPad. The distinction is that iPad is an explicitly single-tasking experience.
The web as we know it is accessed via browsers on devices with multi-tasking OSes and multi-window interfaces. Users constantly and rapidly switch and progress through a deluge of information, valuing clarity and succinctness over beauty and engagement.
The single-tasking experience on the iPad creates an explicit opportunity for immersion and reciprocal desire for it from the user.
The iPad and the class of devices that will emerge around it (as a class of smartphones has evolved around iPhone’s parameters) provide opportunities the web can’t match: fixed screen size and resolution, consistent touch interface, and most likely an emerging tradition of attentive full-screen UI design, as we’ve seen on the iPhone.
When users view a webpage they want to imbibe its content and move on quickly, as they’re likely doing a few other things simultaneously. When an iPad user opens a reading app, they’re resigned to that activity as their solitary focus until they close the app and open another.
This mandatory full-screen, full-attention experience creates different user desires and, I believe, a greater appreciation for a richer experience of the content in a way that can be compared to the distinction between newspapers and scientific or lifestyle periodicals and magazines.
Newspapers must be informative first, offering concise information on topics of interest as succinctly as possible, permitting the reader to consume and move on — as we do on the web.
Magazine-style periodicals must also present compelling content, but unlike newspapers they benefit from graphical embellishments. The old story of the January 1905 National Geographic issue which transformed it from a popular science and culture periodical to a pre-eminent vestibule of modern photojournalism is a good example: without photos, without eloquent and graceful page design (all of which interrupts and interferes with the straight-up reading experience) National Geographic would not be what it is.
This particular demo of high-production content embellishment may be over the top, and it certainly doesn’t seem like the content is really worth-while enough to justify such a spectacle, but the argument could be made that the time, technology, expert manpower and money required to produce it aren’t necessarily higher than the investments magazines made in photography and design in previous decades.
Just as Gilbert Grosvenor couldn’t have foreseen that his desperate decision to supplement the Jan 1905 NatGeo’s shortage of articles with several full pages of photography would send sales skyrocketing, we may be surprised that under the conditions provided and defined by the iPad, readers value and even crave a rich experience of the content they’re reading.
[Interesting perspective, Alex--thanks. --J.]

By: Chris Melby

Chris Melby — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:17:03 +0000

A couple of weeks to write the content, months to create the transitions…
OK, I don’t know, but what I do know is that this is not practical. I don’t mind transitions when they make sense and aren’t annoying, but when they go to this extreme, for a “magazine” concept, I have to wonder what people are thinking?
This has moved beyond the WOW factor into just being ridiculous. This might work in a choose your own adventure book though, well, not the angled text — not on a 1024 x 768 screen.
The only good thing I see coming of this, is more work for some of us until the returns don’t justify the effort.

By: Marcelo Coelho

Marcelo Coelho — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:06:23 +0000

I would hate that. When I’m reading a magazine, I want to read, not to watch that stuff. We’re oversaturated with videos being played everywhere. It’s too much visual pollution, in my opinion.

By: Magnus Andrén

Magnus Andrén — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:05:14 +0000

Says it all, doesn’t it? Très 1993.

By: Joey Baker

Joey Baker — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:10:39 +0000

The point about needing to design for the iPad taking a lot of time is well taken. But the obvious question comes to mind: isn’t that why people have been doing for years with print?
These flashy iPad demos show that publishers are finally waking up to realize that the web isn’t just shovelware – online deserved to be designed just the same as print did – and it helps that design can be more powerful online.

By: Phil Brown

Phil Brown — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:13:03 +0000

Perhaps the blog of the Photoshop PM is not the best place to be asking for help with, or complaining about some aspects of, AI, or is this an expression of the “acceptable levels of disdain” that you’re apparently noted for demonstrating?

By: Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:58:12 +0000

How about fixing the deluge of bugs and performance issues in Adobe Illustrator before dipping into yet another “new media” foray with your beloved Flash?
Or is my $40,000 CS4 site license not worth the time?

By: Goran Peuc

Goran Peuc — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:46:45 +0000

Hey John. Have you seen the desktop application for “New York Times” running in Air?
If not, you absolutely must see it.
THAT is the future of newspapers, both on desktops and on portable tablets.
[Yep, I think that's much more in the realm of the useful/possible. --J.]

By: Adam Pratt

Adam Pratt — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:39:58 +0000

Hah, this demo reminds me of the mid-90s CD-ROM game called Bad Mojo. Anybody remember that cockroach game? Sorry, but not everything needs a metaphor. ;-)

By: Rick McCleary

Rick McCleary — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:12:09 +0000

Where were the grown-ups during the process of creating this piece? Technically impressive, creatively unbearable. It reminds me of the first stereo records in the 60′s – they were recordings of a ping-ping game (left-right-left-right, get it?), trains roaring through a station (comes in from the right, goes out to the left). Ughh. Same thing – technically impressive, creatively brain-dead.
Listen to the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s on headphones. Even the great Sir George Martin hadn’t quite figured out how to exploit the new medium of stereo sound recording. But it always takes time (…sometimes an entire generation…) for the novelty of a new medium to wear off so that good art can be conveyed.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Somewhere, taste and proportion have to enter into the equation. I have no doubt that very smart people with a great sense of taste and proportion will step forward and show us how to use this new thing.

By: James Sinks

James Sinks — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:11:06 +0000

I don’t think the transitions would be nearly so annoying if they were between, say, video segments. After all, that’s basically how television shows are edited together to begin with. But between print segments? Unbelievably jarring and obnoxious.

By: Mylenium

Mylenium — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:34:51 +0000

I don’t think it’s about “written content”, it’s just about “content”… Anyway, I’m with the ones who find this most annoying. It’s just conceptually wrong on all accounts.

By: Ian Shook

Ian Shook — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:15:57 +0000

I liked it a lot. Reminded me of MYST. Considering the time WIRED spends on their infographics, I don’t see this as that big of a leap. Maybe top stories get this treatment, and maybe it’s necessary to keep viewership.

By: Raph

Raph — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:04:19 +0000

Great design starts in our heads – the idea is everything. But such tools helps us to get the work better and faster done.