NEWS PUBLISHING FOR THE MOBILE MARKET

Ian Reeves

Mobile devices

The Poynter Institute has published statistics showing that 25 per cent of Americans already consume news on a mobile device. And for regular consumers of news, the figures show an even more striking take-up rate; the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than half of Americans who regularly read news do so on handheld digital devices

Tablet statistics iPad Launched 2010 Approx iPad sales to date: 28.7million Total tablet PC sales 2010: 19.5million Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, Dell,

Motorola, RIM, Toshiba all have new tablet products

Tablet sales in first Quarter of 2013: 49million

Predicted tablet sales by 2015: 400million

Sources: Wall Street Journal, Gartner Research, CNET

iPad sales

Tablets versus PCs

App sales figures

Total app sales 2011: $15bn Predicted 2012 value of iPad app market:

$5bn New Yorker: 100,000 downloads of its app Future Publishing in UK: app sales top £2m Top-selling magazine apps: The New Yorker,

National Geographic, Cosmopolitan Time magazine published free app the day

after the Boston Marathon bomb

iPad app growth

App development costs

News Corp’s ‘The Daily’: $30m Angry Birds: $140,000 Magazine apps: $75,000 - $300,000 Centre for Journalism app: £0 - but

100+ hours of learning to use xcode

Designing news for mobile devices “Since journalists don’t make tangible objects,

the product is defined by the user’s experience. It’s whatever the user interaction with the news is. It’s picking up the paper at breakfast, or watching CNN in bed, or waiting for your mobile app to update the headlines on the bus. And yes, the product includes the stories delivered by the medium, but those stories alone are not the product; they never were. The stories were packaged into a newspaper or a television show, and that was the product. Or more precisely, the newspaper and the television show as the user chose to use it was the product.” Jonathan Stray

A touching relationship

The tablet is neither a ‘lean-forward’ device like a desktop PC, nor does it quite offer the ‘lean-back’ experience of television news consumption. The tactility of the user's relationship adds an entirely new dimension.

Eyetrack tablet study 2012 20 news stories were arranged in

three different prototype app formats: a traditional browser style format; a 'carousel' format and a 'clipboard' style format. And each story contained narrative text, with at least one additional media element from a range including still photographs, photo galleries, video clips and 'pop ups'.

Eyetrack tablet study 2012 Two broad groups emerged: 'intimate' readers - in more or less

constant contact with the device, using finger movements to continually keep text elements within a very narrow field of vision on the screen

‘detached’ readers - carefully arrange elements on the screen first, and then lean back to read or watch

Eyetrack tablet study 2012 Study showed 61% of readers were

in the ‘intimate’ group. Also that readers tend to have

particular preference for either landscape or portrait – and like to stick to it throughout their reading session

The horizontal ‘swipe’ gesture was instinctive for many tablet users

Eyetrack 2012: Consumption of news through the day Smartphones, laptops and desktop

PCs are ‘lean forward’ devices – good for breaking news and snippets of information

Tablets are ‘lean back’ devices – better for more engaging content such as video and picture galleries that are wasted on small screens

Tablet usage peaks between 7pm and 11pm for news content

Consumption of news through the day

Tablet design options pros and cons Mobile browser design: Use html elements to design

web pages specifically for tablets Xcode: only for iPads, iPods and iPhones. Great

complexity, but great flexibility Appcelerator: multi-device coding system. Not very

stable, and requires fairly advanced coding. Mag+ : inDesign plugin is familiar to design with. But

license required before app is published. Aquafadas: inDesign plugin is familiar to design with.

But license required before app is published Adobe Digital Publishing System: inDesign plugin is

familiar to design with. But license required before app is designed

Additional reading

Jonathan Stray: Designing journalism to be used (http://jonathanstray.com/designing-journalism-to-be-used)

Tablet owners consume more news http://rjionline.org/news/q2-what-are-owners-doing-their-mobile-media-devices

Eyetrack tablet study (http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/visual-voice/191875/new-poynter-eyetrack-research-reveals-how-people-read-news-on-tablets/)

http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/visual-voice/192252/follow-poynters-eyetrack-conference-online/

See also Mario Garcia’s iPad book, The iPad Design Lab