Alina wrote:
I'm curious what everyone has to say about last night event at
Bloomberg with Andrew DeVigal. Was everyone aware of this stories on
the The New York Times?
Do you think newspapers readers understand how and what to click in
order to view and comprehend the stories as they are told?
I was at the event, and I thought it was great to see how interaction
designers are, at the Times at least, considered to be "journalists"
through and through.
I wondered how it came to pass that the culture at the company managed
to embrace design professionals in the journalism world, rather than
seeing them as simply technicians who deliver content.
I had a great conversation afterwards with friends where we all
concluded that such thinking may not be so radical at all for some of
the best news and publishing organizations. We thought of the old
stories of delivery boys and printing press operators becoming editors
and publishers of newspapers. We thought about the tradition of
photojournalism. In light of this history of considering everyone on
the team a part of the storytelling mission, it's not so surprising
after all that the Times would view interactive experiences as great
ways to not just present stories, but to actually construct stories in
the first place the way journalists and writers of all sorts have
always done.
In fact, the surprising part to me was when I later thought about it
in reverse: how we in the interactive space rarely talk about
storytelling at all. In the IA and IxD worlds there is precious little
talk of the nuts and bolts methods and tools for telling stories,
about narrative and emotional arcs, about the who-what-when-where-why-
how of news, about the structures and methods of journalism. These are
usually relegated either to "content people" or to "marketing people",
and then they fall through the cracks of the core skills of our
professional practice. Even IxDs who work at interactive agencies are
too often the *recipients* of interactive narrative concepts initially
developed by ad executives several steps removed from the hands-on
interaction design world.
I wonder why this has been -- is it because the body of knowledge of
IxD is still haplessly rooted in HCI, and thus in technology, and thus
in a universe where we are indeed simply "technicians who deliver
content"?
Also, Alina: I have to say that your question ("Do you think
newspapers readers understand how and what to click...") may be a
little given that the vast majority of the readers of most news web
sites are not "newspaper" readers at all.
Cheers,
-Cf
Christopher Fahey
____________________________
Behavior
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com
me: http://www.graphpaper.com
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