TAKEAWAY: A new study by Time Inc. validates what we suspected: digital natives move between platforms subconsciously. The challenge for editors and designers: exploiting and promoting stories across the four platforms PLUS: Pages we like: Gulf News remembers the Titanic
Update #1: Leon, Mexico, 07:26
Consuming information through the media quartet
It is all about storytelling through a media quartet: mobile, online, print and tablet
How the media quartet looks at our project with New Straits Times of Malaysia
The Mobilista workshop at Austria’s WirtshaftsBlatt aims at a media quartet
It’s become an integral part of all my workshops and presentations, and readers of this blog must be getting a little tired of hearing me say it—-three basic principles of editing and designing for media today:
1. It is not about print first or digital first, it is about the story first.
2. We live in a multi platform world and it is the four platforms of what I call the “media
quartet” that should guide how we process storytelling: mobile, online, print and
tablet.
3. Each platform offers its own characteristics and smart editors and designers will
adapt stories, or aspects of it, to suit each platform and its uniqueness and/or potential.
So it does not come as a surprise at all to come across this new
%0A20120409005536/en/Time-Study-Reveals-%20%E2%80%9CDigital-Natives%E2%80%9D-Switch-%20Devices
%0A" title="Time Inc. study">Time Inc. study which is fascinating in how it validates what we have suspected for a while, and, especially since the iPad came into the world two years ago:
Consumers who grew up with mobile technology subconsciously move between devices and platforms 27 times per hour and experience fewer emotional highs and lows with media content than previous generations
Must understand the user’s lifestyle
This is at the core of two things that are intrinsically connected and worthy of attention by those of us editing and designing in today’s media environment.
We must pay attention to the lifestyle and habits of our audience. Not that we ever ignored this, but it becomes more crucial now.
For years, we have paid close attention at how habitual newspaper readers consume their daily newspaper. In the 1970s, for example, we knew that the average US reader spent about 23.3 minutes consuming his/her newspaper (more or less in other countries), and would do so in one sitting, normally in the mornings.
By the 1990s, focus groups and other studies revealed that people were becoming busier, and consuming the printed newspaper in more than one sitting during the day; some with coffee in the morning, then some during the lunch hour, and even leaving some for later in the day.
It’s lean forward, lean back, switch platforms
Today, there is much talk about the “lean forward” and “lean back” modes of media consumption. During the day we tend to concentrate on the smaller screen platforms; in the evening, it is more print and tablet as kick back and relax.
We have also begun to read about users who begin a story on one platform, then continue on another, and finish the story yet on a third platform.
Information when we want it, where we want it. How true!
This Time Inc. study validates this idea, separating those who participated in the study into two groups—-”digital natives,” those who don’t remember life without digital platforms, and “digital immigrants,” those who discovered it as adults.
Just as you can imagine,digital natives are more impatient, get bored more easily and do not engage as fully, while digital immigrants are more linear in their thinking, seek a certain order in the material they read, and do not switch platforms as quickly as those younger digital natives.
And the good news is…
For anyone who needs a dose of optimism, today’s media consumers are not just sitting down to 23.3 minutes of news in their printed newspaper.
In fact, focus groups that we participate in worldwide reveal an interesting and positive observation: especially the digital natives, but also others, admit that they consume news anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes a day, with some citing two hours. Never before, in my experience, have we seen such rates of media consumption.
So, I look at this Time Inc. as validating that
information as well. Those 60-90 minutes are not spent on one specific platform, but across several.
How will this study change what I do tomorrow?
I am now a stronger believer that, more than ever, we must concentrate on the story, explore all its possibilities across platforms, knowing that users will consume it on their own terms.
We still must seduce with our offerings. If a digital native is going to start in one platform (the mobile telephone, for example) reading text, we must make sure that he knows there are good videos or photo galleries available to see on the iPad.
The concept of teasing and promoting assumes a new and more important role.
We will need editors and designers who can design for one platform, extend invitations to the others and seduce every step of the way.
In fact, it brings to mind that Ringling Circus master of ceremonies urging children of all ages to come and join a spectacle with something for everyone—-to which we may add “in whichever platform you prefer.”
Tall order, and not one for the lazy, disinterested or non creative.
Pages we like
Here is a very special double page from Dubai’s Gulf News, remembering the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
Miguel Gomez, Gulf News’ design director, sends us this pdf that I share with you. I like the look and feel, and how the “retro” look has been achieved, to take readers back to that fateful day 100 years ago.
Design is by Talib Jariwala and story by Mick O’Relly. Abdul Hamid Ahmad is editor in chief of the Gulf News
Of related interest
The Way We Read Now
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/sunday-review/the-way-we-read-now.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=Readers%20consuming%20news%20across%20platforms&st=cse
First paragraph:
THE case against electronic books has been made, and elegantly, by many people, including Nicholson Baker in The New Yorker a few years ago. Mr. Baker called Amazon’s Kindle, in a memorable put-down, “the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of.”