The Modern Journalist

Touch: The New Face of News Navigation

I often hear people who defend print say that computers can’t replace the feel of paper.

It’s easy to dismiss such talk as the ramblings of Luddites who staunchly refuse to enter the digital age. I’ve done it. I’m a child of the computer revolution. I’ve been reading and participating online since 1984. I had a Palm i705 with a portable keyboard in 2002, which let me get online wherever I was — even though the screen resembled my Commodore 64 from my childhood.

I never quite saw the problem with reading — and interacting — with text on a screen.

No matter my arguments, though, the reality is that some people are uncomfortable with the lack of digital reader portability, the “impersonal” nature of the technology and the barrier to entry for use. After all, we already know how a newspaper — or a book — works: pick it up. open it. read. repeat.

Three emerging technologies, though, will change how we interact with information and — if its developed correctly — will ease the concerns that people have.

3D Design: The most esoteric of the technologies is three-dimensional interface design. The biggest mistake (and I say mistake in the kindest of ways because the technology wasn’t available to make this viable) in the expansion of the Web was thinking of this new technology more like a page and less like a web.

A quick scan of almost any news site will reveal fatal flaws in distribution:

1. most sites (mine included) force readers to scroll through long pages
2. guess which tabs hides which content
3. navigate through an editor-selected filing systems

This is a very page-like way of thinking. Some “innovative” companies — think Apple’s iTunes — have tried to make flip displays using flash that allow people to scroll horizontally through information; however, the same fundamental problem exists.

3D navigation allows for — and some wicked cool company will do this — every story to be placed on one screen, above the fold, so that people can choose the story they want to read without searching for it. To do this, editors will have to realize that creating a multi-level, tabbed silo strategy for storing news is bad. They will need to simply their architecture up on the front end (you can still meta-tag in the background), but it can be done.

Here is a rough example of that a 3D interface could look like. It’s a Windows Vista desktop. Imagine if stories were placed not in cube format, but across 8 rows — similar to a locking mechanism on a brief case. You could easily scroll through every story — along with decks and even thumbnails — and make it easier to find your content.

Touchscreen Display: The mouse has always been an awful input device. It’s kludgy and imprecise. We know this because the only place you see it is on your home computer. Cell phones, kiosks (ATMs, airports, movie theaters, retail displays) and even Nintendo’s game system all use a different input: your finger.

Microsoft unveiled its Surface, its touch screen technology that will be used with Windows 7. Clearly this technology isn’t new; however, Microsoft is the most used operating system — and if the company throws its weight behind touch screen capabilities, I’d expect to see a new generation of home PCs that will incorporate the technology.

What does this mean? I’m not sure exactly. I would expect that the set up I am typing on — and you are reading on — will no longer be a flip top screen with a keypad. Already we’ve seen several demonstrations of table-top computing.

Imagine the power of a 3D interface tied to a touch screen table-top (or flat-top) screen. You could much more easily navigate through large amounts of information with the use of clunky input devices like the stylus and mouse.

We’re already seeing this touch screen technology pop up with DJs, who are eschewing the cutting-and-scratching on vinyl records for touch screen, finger driven creation in clubs. And a new generation of gamers have bough the Wii specifically because its motion-driven controllers drastically reduce the learning curve for playing games. If you want to play Wii Tennis, all you need to do is swing your arm like your hitting a tennis ball. No buttons. No weird joysticks. Just…tennis.

Haptics: The last technology is force-feedback. This is the technology that uses digital signals to replicate the feeling people have when they interact in an analog world. If you push on a heavy object in the real world, that object has mass and “pushes” back. We have a sense of reality.

Haptics uses digital signals to create a similar type of “reality” in a digital world. It’s very Matrix-like in its philosophy: let’s make this efficient, digital world a bit more clunky like the analog world so people will believe its real.

This has always confused me a bit, I’ll be honest. But as I’ve talked with engineers, it makes sense. One company has experimented with car steering using joystick like controls instead of a wheel. To be successful, the company needed to give drivers the sense that something was happening. If the experience was too smooth, people became confused.

Using this same philosophy, I would expect to see hardware readers like the Kindle — and maybe even the touch screens — come with technologies that let you “feel” that something is happening. Turning a page: you hear a sound and “feel” the page turning. Pushing a button: you feel force feedback and see the button depress.

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When we talk about modern journalism, these are the discussions we should be having. Too often I listen to people discuss restructuring or training — as if that is innovative alone. Surely these things need to happen, but as the technology becomes both more complex to architect and more easy for mainstream users, that won’t solve the issues facing companies.

They need to transform into modern, digital-based companies that understand what is coming down the pike in the very near future because when the tipping point happens, it will happen quickly.

There won’t be time to suddenly restructure because the architecture of this takes time. You need to prepare for the digital world now. Does that mean paper is going away? I would guess not immediately. But I do think it means how we expect people to interact with our data will change quite soon.

Using Flash and SlideShow technologies won’t help. They will ultimately hinder the transition, giving truly digital companies (Google, Microsoft, ect) that chance to usurp large portions of the business.