THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS?Printed electronics meets hyperlocal and community co-design

John Mills@_johnmills

Essentials

Interactive Newsprint is seeking to develop and test a new platform for community news and information

Using innovating printed electronics technology, Interactive Newsprint can create printed matter that has ‘capacitive touch’ qualities

Working with communities throughout Preston, Interactive Newsprint hopes to carve out a relevant, useful and usable platform

Developing a commercial model, focussing on paper-based analytic data, that would add value to printed materials

Background: The Bespoke Project EPSRC funded project as part of Digital Britain

programme

Running between April 2009 and April 2011

Interdisciplinary project partners from University of Sussex, Dundee, Falmouth, Newcastle and Central Lancashire

Bespoke: combining digital storytelling and innovate collaborative design methodology

Developed ‘Insight Journalism’ methodology: where journalistic ‘insights’ are used to inspire design ‘action responses’

Bespoke record

Recruited voluntary, semi-professional and professional journalists

Newspaper distributed every month Co-designed by community Distributed through every letterbox Offers an open platform for community to submit

to

Developmental news-website Based around map interface and carries all digital

content Used by designers during insight and analysis

stage of design interaction methodology

Delivered a range of digital designs into the community Viewpoint and Wayfinder key outputs from the

project

Beyond Bespoke and the current news environment Newspaper was found to be unsustainable

(time, resource and economics)

Local communities found newspaper a valuable resource

Bespoke’s legacy was a team of community contributors and establishing partnerships between university and a range of groups throughout the city

Wider industry issues: Newspapers are dead…

e

Philip Meyer – The Vanishing Newspaper Philip Meyer – The Vanishing Newspaper

Wider ecosystems: Falling circulations among regional

press Johnson Press’s (owner of 250

regional titles Pre-tax loss of £144m for 2011 Revenues fall by 6% Daily circulation declines by

7.9% year-on-year Last year, cut 670 jobs

Newsroom job cuts

Digital transference: offline to online

Some hyperlocal experiments struggling to make sufficient revenue

Some have posited that ongoing digital development and technological advancement, such as those predicted by George E. Moore would save journalism. The rise of the tablet fuelled app store

Interactive Newsprint 18-month project combining

interdisciplinary academic and commercial team spanning technologists, human-computer interaction specialists, journalists and product designers

Developing ‘interactive paper’ with capaciinternet connectivity

Investigating the affordances of digital paper, community news requirements and commercial opportunities

But what is ‘interactive newsprint’, really………?

Conductive ink that creates capacitive touch functionsChip allows audio to be embedded and log interactions

Developing internet connectivity to allow both upload and download: enabling the paper to become part of the 'internet of things'

Demonstration time!0

Premise: can interactive and digitally-enabled paper save the news industry ?

Seeking to utilise advantages of the affordances of digitally-enabled paper

Working with communities to articulate a new and useful ‘news platform’ that moves beyond the traditional form and purpose

Applying some of the online advantages to paper materials

use new technological advantages to create a sustainable, relevant and populated community news platformWork with communities within Callon and Fishwick, but also from across the city Preston to establish useful and relevant community content

Current partners spanCommunity radio station Housing associationYouth groupsPreston's 20 year Guild festival celebrations

Method: Developing a community co-design process Autumn 2011: Designers prototype concepts

November 2011: Community members feedback and explore technology in creatively facilitated workshop

Winter and Spring 2012Designers, journalists and HCI specialists develop themes and produce ‘responses’

February 2012: Second workshop with ‘stakeholders’ and content creators

Prototypes are iterated over summer Community editors will each develop their own platform

Examples of editors include Community radio station Housing association Youth groups Local business community Local press

Internal decision making: Kitemarks

c

Multifaceted methodology: eco-system Community codesign

series of workshops inviting members of the community to suggest ways they could utilise the technology (but this doesn't mean they ask for something and we build it)

Designers, technologists and journalists take this inspiration and run with it

Community content generation

working with trained volunteers, established community-focussed publishers and broadcaster and professional media, we aim to produce a vibrant editorial ecosystem from which to draw

Researching the affordances of digitally-enabled paper

At its very core, digital paper is a emerging technology. As part of the research, the project will aim to distil basic affordances of paper. For instance: How do you turn a piece of paper on?

Paper data

Developing a sustainable business model for hyperlocal news via interactive newsprint Internet connectivity is key Digital back-channel and creation of

paper data. Opens up a whole new world:

provides advantages of digital, but with paper Analytic information based on

interactions Pay-per-click Pay-per-mill

Location data Individual user accounts Targeted advertising and advertising

campaigns on a local, hyperlocal and national level

and many other things

  What is key here is that specific

information could be ascertained through paper data

Commercial imperatives

You can see what was popular and wasn't, you can see what people were reading and what they are engaging with. You've also got comments and [user] ratings under articles, so you can genuinely get a feel for right now for what's going on at a story- by-story level."

Data and editorial construction d

“You can see what was popular and wasn't, you can see what people were reading and what they are engaging with. You've also got comments and [user] ratings under articles, so you can genuinely get a feel for right now for what's going on at a story- by-story level."

Interactive Newsprint: future workBetween now and Christmas,

the Interactive Newsprint team will:

prototype 3 to 5 codesigned platforms and roll them out throughout the community

develop a commercial model through internal development, but through organised and creatively facilitated workshops

continue to partner with local, national and international publishers to develop Interactive Newsprint as a commercial offering.

Monitor how editorial production, and more specifically output, will alter in response to the platform's affordances