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
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