Rji-pivot-resources

RJI Pivot Point-Chicago

Draft of resource links

Email additions to densmorew@rjionline.org or use this wiki to add them yourself to the page.

'Assigned' readings/resources (to come)

• A summary of related Pew research (Densmore will do)
• The community balance wheel
• Link to http://www.papertopersona.org
• What else?

Links (miscellaneous)

• http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/business/media/san-diego-union-tribune-open-about-its-pro-business-motives.html / June 10, 2012 (Picht/Densmore)

New York Times media report David Carr examines the new relationship of the San Diego daily to its community, now that its publisher is a real-estate developer who actively, publicly and without apologies, is championing issues of personal interest. How is this different from Bill Loeb and the Manchester Union Leader a generation ago? Is this the new "engagement" with the public? Or is it something different?

• USABILITY: "Skeuomorphic" -- Mobile/tablet/online services should not try to recreate old forms June 10, 2012 (Langeveld)

This post is specifically aimed at some of Apple's faux reality UI designs such as realistic-looking book pages, bookshelves as indexes to reading content, etc. (something Amazon does as well on the Kindle Fire). But there is a larger message here which is that attempting to translate traditional forms into digital spaces (or to replicate rather than recreate any design convention from an old medium to a new one) is a mistake from the get go. So, touch-tone phones don't look like dial phones, digital watches are not made with analog hands, etc. We know that the newspaper business made this mistake big time in replicating printed news reading  on the web. Newspaper paywalls, as currently structured, are attempts to translate physical home delivery to the web. Magazines are still trying to sell "issues" rather than news streams. Etc. The challenge at PivotPoint is to develop ideas that are not skeuomorphic (as defined in the post), not just in terms of UI design, but in terms of complete content delivery concepts. Things like Tapin Bay Area fit this bill. I think it's a constraint we need to put into the process for PivotPoint: let's not fall into the trap of translating stuff from one medium to another. Let's invent stuff that's native to the digital technology of the 21st C, just as physical newspapers were native to the mechanical technologies of the 19th C. Chuck Peters comments: "I liked this article, and particularly liked the last line - 'At the end of the day, there's always a temptation to go with the familiar, but the real value is going to be found elsewhere.' "

• USABILITY: HTML5, other open technologies doom "issue" approach to tablet services? / June 6, 2012 (Densmore)

Digiday writer Rahul Patel lists four things that publishers can do to deliver tablet apps that combine the elegance of print with the immediacy of Twitter-speed content -- and which do not rely on recreating a large-file, PDF-like packaged download.

• ECONOMICS: The dilemma of the Washington Post -- as resources shrink, charge or not to charge? / June 10, 2012 (Wurzer-Densmore)

Peter Preston, writing in the Sunday Observer of London (on The Guardian website) reviews the decline in print and digital ad revenue at the Washington Post, the multiple quarters of losses and poses the qeustion of whether The Post has made the right decision in have its content on line free. Buzz Wurzer describes this as a key indicator of the challenge newspapers are facing.

• PERSONA: Balancing trust vs. 'creep factor' in user relationships / June 10, 2012 (Densmore)

Former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, now an op-end columnist, asserts that the public is becoming concerned about Facebook's extensive collection of user "persona" information -- usage patterns -- raising privacy issues. "The challenge for Facebook is how to retain the trust of its wised-up users even as he commoditizes us -- that is, how to sell us on without creeping us out," he concludes.
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• USABILITY: Microsoft/Harvard researcher Danah Boyd on why news organizations fail to reach young people / April 13, 2012 (Poynter via Holman)

Says Boyd: “General news is not relevant to young people because they don’t have context. It’s a lot of abstract storytelling and arguing among adults that makes no sense. So most young people end up consuming celebrity news . . . When I hear news agencies talk about wanting to get young people, they don’t want to figure out how to actually inform them — they want to hear how to monetize them. And that pisses me off.”