Rji-pivot-resources

RJI Pivot Point-Chicago

Draft of resource links

Email additions to densmorew@rjionline.org or use this wiki to add them yourself to the page.

'Assigned' readings/resources (to come)

• A summary of related Pew research (Densmore will do)
• The community balance wheel
• Link to http://www.papertopersona.org
• What else?

Links (miscellaneous)

• http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669879/can-we-please-move-past-apples-silly-faux-real-uis June 10, 2012 (Langeveld)

This post is specifically aimed at some of Apple's faux reality UI designs such as realistic-looking book pages, bookshelves as indexes to reading content, etc. (something Amazon does as well on the Kindle Fire). But there is a larger message here which is that attempting to translate traditional forms into digital spaces (or to replicate rather than recreate any design convention from an old medium to a new one) is a mistake from the getgo. So, touch-tone phones don't look like dial phones, digital watches are not made with analog hands, etc. We know that the newspaper business made this mistake big time in replicating printed news reading  on the web. Newspaper paywalls, as currently structured, are attempts to translate physical home delivery to the web. Magazines are still trying to sell "issues" rather than news streams. Etc.  The challenge at PivotPoint is to develop ideas that are not skeuomorphic (as defined in the post), not just in terms of UI design, but in terms of complete content delivery concepts. Things like Tapin Bay Area fit this bill. I think it's a constraint we need to put into the process for PivotPoint: let's not fall into the trap of translating stuff from one medium to another. Let's invent stuff that's native to the digital technology of the 21st C, just as physical newspapers were native to the mechanical technologies of the 19th C.

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/10/washington-post-paid-price-not-having-paywall / June 10, 2012 (Wurzer-Densmore)

Peter Preston, writing in the Sunday Observer of London (on The Guardian website) reviews the decline in print and digital ad revenue at the Washington Post, the multiple quarters of losses and poses the qeustion of whether The Post has made the right decision in have its content on line free. Buzz Wurzer describes this as a key indicator of the challenge newspapers are facing.

• http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/opinion/wising-up-to-facebook.html / June 10, 2012 (Densmore)

Former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, now an op-end columnist, asserts that the public is becoming concerned about Facebook's extensive collection of user "persona" information -- usage patterns -- raising privacy issues. "The challenge for Facebook is how to retain the trust of its wised-up users even as he commoditizes us -- that is, how to sell us on without creeping us out," he concludes.
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