2. THE MULTIGENRE APPROACH

THE TAKEAWAY

A good news app offers plenty to read but also enhances storytelling with audio, video, animated graphics and other interactive elements.

If one were to create a catalog of genres that belong in a news tablet edition, it would include narratives, photo galleries, video, audio, animated illustrations and graphics. In my view, none of these should dominate. For obvious reasons, we are more likely to see an emphasis on “reading” than any other activity in a tablet edition, which is fine as long as the editor does not see reading as the only mode.

A word of warning is also appropriate: Now that we have seen dozens of newspaper and magazine titles as tablet editions, we are aware that too much interactivity may overwhelm the user. Therefore, it is the responsibility of those designing tablet editions to strike the proper balance. I usually find the best examples of multigenre storytelling in non-newspaper tablet apps, such as The Red Bulletin, the tablet edition for Red Bull, the energy drink. The creators of this app use the print magazine model as a starting point, but they soon take us into all sorts of genres that not only surprise but mesmerize.

True, The Red Bulletin is a monthly, and it is not limited by the constraints of news content. But it is here that editors and designers of news tablet apps can get inspiration for what could be. There is no reason why newspaper editors could not begin using some of the same multigenre strategies. A weekend or special edition would be a great beginning, with plenty of time before publication to work on how to enhance the lead story. Start small: Work with your developers on how to implement a swipeable slideshow of additional photos, for instance. Once these are part of your workflow, you can then set your sights on the advanced pop-ups requiring animation, serious video editing and significant custom app development.

THE APP AS DOCUMENTARY

This brings us to what I call “documentary apps.” These allow us to see the tremendous opportunities for storytelling on the tablet and to get ideas for how these elements could be adapted for news tablet apps.

I imagine that in the future, news apps will go the way of the documentary on a daily basis. It is easy to imagine the content of a news app as a documentary rendition of a set of unrelated parts that coalesce into a whole: from politics to crime to science, fashion, technology, opinion and entertainment. We in the news business “document” these items by combining them in a daily package. I can see a news app of the future in which each daily edition is a mini documentary—recounting the highs and lows, the achievements, the travails and the excitement of the human condition, and doing so in a way that transcends the traditional divisions of the newsroom. Imagine a news app with content separated according to “What’s news?,” “Who’s in the news?,” “News you can use,” “Viewpoints” and “Interaction.”

In that sense, we can learn from apps already in existence that I have labeled documentary. The best example is The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, a marvelous model of how to tell a story well.

INTERVIEW: JOE ZEFF, JOE ZEFF DESIGN

Joe Zeff, of Joe Zeff Design, and his team created the app The Final Hours of Portal 2 and its sequel, on Mass Effect 3, with video game journalist Geoff Keighley. In our interview, Joe explains the making of the app.

MARIO: So when you and your team are commissioned to create a documentary app such as The Final Hours, what is your first consideration as you take the first creative steps?

JOE ZEFF: The first order of business is to define the opportunity. Simply put, what are we trying to do? We review the content and imagine an environment built around it.

In the case of The Final Hours, we had a fascinating story to tell, and that became the priority. One way to enhance that story was to tap into the energies of the video game on which the story was based and create a visual architecture that leveraged game assets and experiences. All of the pop-up moments were intended to help tell that story, not to distract from it. The cumulative effect of those pop-ups is to tell the story even better than words alone can do.

How do you decide the pacing that will set the mood for the app—how much reading, how much viewing, how many pop-up moments?

The Final Hours is a multimedia-enhanced reading experience. The analogy I used when designing the app was that of a highway. One proceeds down a road, from paragraph to paragraph, from start to finish. Along the highway there are things to see and do, placed just beside the road so that one can look to the side or briefly pull over, enjoy the scenery and get right back onto the road. They are roadside attractions, not destinations unto themselves.

As such, the hierarchy for the app emerges: Headlines, text, imagery and pop-ups interspersed to avoid long stretches of empty highway. Many of those pop-ups leveraged dynamic content: polls and message boards that allowed the user to become part of the experience, rather than passively encounter content. It was our expectation that gamers would want to interact.

How do you see the role of illustration and animation?

Illustration and animation add personality, as they do in print, but also provide opportunities for interaction, the ability for the user to control an animation with their finger or trigger an event by tapping on a picture. The magic of the tablet is its interactive potential, the sense of control that it offers, even in a linear experience such as The Final Hours. It is important to see pictures as these opportunities, not just ways to break up text.

Likewise, designers tend to overplay the use of video. Better at times to decompose a QuickTime movie into a series of frames that the user can manipulate. The goal, at all times, is to make information active, not passive, and invite the user to participate in the content experience.