We sometimes have an unreleased bonus track in our talks about Multiscreen Patterns. All six regular patterns are about relationships between digital devices, but we always loved the idea of combining them with physical objects to create hybrid experiences. So we sometimes show a 7th pattern introducing hybrid interactions.

As much as we were fascinated by Scrabble on iPad, our first thought was: wouldn’t it be even cooler to keep the real board and tiles, but have the game digitally augmented where it makes most sense? Joining the haptical material quality of physical objects with the smart and connected capabilities of digital devices.

I’m writing this post because in addition to the one we sometimes show in our talks, I saw two more great hybrid products popping up this week. Here are three examples (you might already know the first, but I wanted to post it anyway, since I still think it’s quite stunning). And if you have kids (or are a kid), you got some early christmas gift suggestions on top.

PhoneBook
A printed kids book and an iPhone.

Disney Appmates
Toy cars and an iPad.

LEGO® Life of George
Lego plus iPhone.

Appetite for more?
Designing hybrid interaction through an understanding of the affordances of physical and digital technologies.

Yesterday, Apple presented iOS5, the next version of OSX and a new service, iCloud. I have to admit, that I spent the entire night following the live coverage on various tech blogs, then watching the entire keynote and promotional videos on the Apple website and reading what the internet had to say about it. My wife called me a fanboy when I browsed countless discussion boards, and maybe there’s a little truth to it. But first and foremost, I’m interested in it as an interaction designer, because there are so many consequences for our work.

With the announced software products, Apple consolidated their strategy for the next decade. If you paid close attention to what they did in the last years, it wasn’t too much of a surprise. There were already a lot of efforts towards that direction, but now it’s official: Apple is really serious about their bet on a post PC world.

“We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to be just a device”, Steve Jobs said during the keynote. The desktop computer is going to loose its privileged role as the digital hub. It’s not the centre of your device network anymore. And since it’s not necessary to manage your other devices with it, there will be more and more people not owing a desktop PC, but being very active users nevertheless. This is something we’ve been preaching to our clients for the last years – and our multiscreen patterns reflect this notion – but thanks to last night’s keynote, we have another weighty argument for coming discussions: If Apple is really serious about this, you should give it a thought.

Apple is also serious about getting rid of the file system. With iOS you can only access files within an app, but also iTunes, iPhoto and Aperture already hide the file structure of their media libraries. As we have seen in the presentation yesterday, the future of OSX will bring more of this.

And another thing that struck me while watching the keynote: Apple is really serious about gestures. They were constantly talking about swiping and pinching, even during the OSX presentation. Less clicking and tapping, less UI elements; gestures are now at every corner of the OS.

Because we are currently working on a project for tablet devices, we thought about gestures a lot. How much can we rely on them for navigation? Will people be comfortable about using gestures as the main (not only) way to move around within the app? Since this app probably won’t be released for another year, we assumed that people will get used to gestures. Yesterday’s presentation encouraged us to continue that road.

Of course it wasn’t just guess work. Before this presentation, there were already signs that Apple is pushing gestures. One of it was a developer feature hidden in iOS 4.3, that I discovered by chance and quickly became one of my favorites: multitask gestures. With a four or five finger pinch, you can “close” the app and bring up the home screen, and with a four or five finger swipe, you can switch between apps.

This feature will be default in iOS5 and I’m sure it will be a tremendous change in how you use your iPad. At least for me it was. I only use the home button to switch on the device. If you don’t want to wait until fall to use this feature, this instruction shows you how to enable multitask gestures.

This post has originally been published as a guest post on the MobileBehaviour blog.

During the last years, our design studio has been involved in many different projects – from designing mainly websites and desktop software in our early days, to smartphone apps, prototypes for TV interfaces and more recently, applications for tablet devices.

Working for all those devices was interesting and challenging. Not just because of the diverse screen sizes and input methods, but because we learned in our user research how different the contexts are in which these gadgets are used.

Even more interesting, however, is the question how those devices relate to each other. What does it mean for the digital products and services we are designing, when PCs, smartphones, TVs and other electronic devices are connected? What implications does it have on the interfaces, if people are interacting in an ecosystem of screens?

We looked at many projects and studies that involved experiences across multiple screens – from biblical stories laid out on multiple cathedral windows and the first computer-based multiscreen installations, to current examples, which are popping up everywhere. We also closely observed ourselves and others using and shifting between different devices.

To make these scenarios more tangible for ourselves and to communicate them better to our clients, we started documenting patterns we noticed. These patterns and associated examples were the core of many workshops we did in various constellations: with brand managers, advertising professionals and design students.

Today we like to share this part of our research work: patterns for multiscreen strategies. It’s been a handy reference when discussing solutions for digital products and services. We hope you’ll find them useful too.

We would love to get your feedback – please tell us what you think. If you know more examples or spotted additional patterns, we’re very happy to hear from you.

Prototyping: We tested early versions with staff members to find out how the app can support their sales pitch.

If you walk in one of the Görtz17 stores these days, chances are you will be greeted by a salesperson armed with a tablet computer. Until the end of the month, our client is testing the usage of an iPad app as a new digital service in their retail environment.

Since the physical stores can only carry a limited number of items, the salesclerk now has a handy tool to inform her customer about similar products that are available at the online store. Together they can browse through a catalog of all the latest shoes and accessories, and order an item from within the app.

The app was developed in cooperation with Franz von Vacano, Michael Schieben and Johannes Großmann.

Click the image for a full-size screenshot

Our long time client Native Instruments just released a new software synthesizer called RAZOR – a collaboration with Berlin based producer Errorsmith. Together with the inhouse design team, we worked on interaction design and developed the visual language for the user interface.

Check out the impressive promo video that already generated quite some buzz and learn more about the product.

Within the past few months, we have done quite a few workshops around designing for devices (we’ll post a more detailed wrap-up within the next few weeks). In workshops, we think it’s important to not just listen to people talking, but actually make some first steps applying what you learned. So we always do group work on rough concepts for new products or services – researching and discussing needs, problems and behaviour, sketching and presenting ideas to each other …

To support that process and to give a better, more tactile feel for actual device proportions and screen sizes, we developed four print-out paper device templates. We’re now offering them for free and for everybody.

The package contains four different PDFs:

precious paper TV (DIN A2)
precious paper Laptop (DIN A3)
precious paper iPad (DIN A4)
precious paper iPhone (DIN A5)

Some time ago, we wrote an article about observations and trends in the field of media consumption behaviours, innovative news interfaces and fresh approaches to journalistic storytelling for german magazine Weave (also available online, in German).

In this context we had the honor to talk to Mario Garcia (@TweetsByDesign), one of the world’s most renowned newspaper designers. At the time of this email conversation, the iPad was still in the state of speculation. When the article was published, it had been announced by Apple, but was not yet on the market. Contagioned by the hype, designing for touchscreen devices was a key topic in our article.

Since then, a lot of publications have found their way to the iPad, exploration and experimentation around new digital publishing models and formats are in full action. Most of the large publishing houses worldwide have released their own news and magazine apps (or optimized their websites for the device?). Mr. Garcia now has a dedicated section around the iPad on his blog and is a keynote speaker for The WoodWing World Tour, a conference about publishing for the iPad touring the world.

Mario Garcia

Here’s the email conversation we had towards the end of 2009:

There’s a lot of buzz and speculation about “the future of Journalism”. In your opinion, what are the most important tasks and challenges going to be in the next few years?

There is a future of journalism, no doubt. But it will be a journalism radically changed from what we are accustomed to. Storytelling will be at the center of it, but the stories will adapt to the platforms in which they appear. Print will not be king, but will play a role. I think that one cannot separate a discussion of the future of journalism from business models that will make journalism affordable by the companies that produce it. I believe there will be dramatic changes in the business models. Good journalism is expensive to produce, so we will have to adapt, and make radical shifts to accommodate it.

What role is “the packaging of news”, the design of and for newspapers and media in general going to play in this context?

Extremely important, but I see design embracing also information architecture. It is not so much that we will make a product look better through color, design, typography, but that we will actually use what we know about how people read stories, how they follow content, to create much better organization of content in whatever media. Design and packaging are important, but the way content is planned and presented will be key.

There’s this notion of “paperless paper”, where the appearance of paper-based newspapers and magazines could be pretty much literally recycled for high resolution tablet computers. If this has a near future, how is a more print oriented graphic design going to converge with layers of interactivity (eg. conversation)?

As I said in the previous answer: we will analyze the content, use information architecture to take that content and present it thru the best platform, then let design guide how it appears. No question in my mind that there will be digital modes of presentation for all information, but there will always be – at least in the near future – a platform in print as well. Don’t forget the role of mobile phones, by the way.

In modern journalism, the writing of an article does not end with its publication. The subsequent conversation and discussion is a vital part of it, but current design solution do not have much to offer. What are your ideas and suggetions for improvement?

This is already happening in digital media; interactivity is a top priority for users who wish to interact with editors and with other readers; it is more difficult to do this in print, but major titles around the world are developing blog summaries and readers’ pages in print to bring in this need of the user to interact. Every newspaper should have, at least once a week, a blog summary page, what the top topics are, and what the readers are contributing through online, from photos to stories, to comments.

Many people seem surprised how popular it is to read the news or even whole books on mobile phones. What’s your reaction?

I am not surprised at all, because I am 62 and I am inseparable from my iPhone and sometimes I read parts of the Sunday New York Times on the phone, and I like it – although for me, nothing takes the place of the printed copy in my hand, but I adapt and I read where I can. That is the way the world moves. One cannot stop this.

Probably an intentional switch between your iPhone and the printed issue of the New York Times could be part of the storytelling concept …

Yes, could be. But when I read the Times in my iPhone, is when I am in some remote place in the world where I have no access to the printed version.

What do “citizen journalism”, crowdsourced content creation and open data APIs mean for digital newspaper and magazine design?

It means what it is already: we have seen with events like the landing of the jet on the Hudson River, or the death of Michael Jackson, that users who have the right technology do participate in the news gathering process. They relay text messages about what they see, or move videos and photos through their phones. Another reality that we need to embrace, not be afraid of and use as well as we can.

On one hand it means more and very heterogenous sources, but it also leads to a whole different pace. Doesn’t this speed and dynamics also endanger the craftsmanship of well designed information? Should we – as several blog posts already suggest – get used to those ugly looking species such as “Google Fast Flip” or “Google Wave” as parts of a new face of news design?

I guess we have to get used to that, because as with everything digital, there is no going back. This is here to stay, and, indeed, will be intensified. But one can use crowdsourcing as a first step in receiving the information, then the professionals can retool it, reedit, and present in a way that is not ugly, disorganized or amateurish. I see journalists’ role doing this more and more often.

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, an infographic or interactive data visualization is worth … ?

Infographics are not as strong as photos, since they have to be studied, which takes a few seconds more. Photos and videos do convey the meaning of the story on the spot.

What do you think about the data visualization and visual storytelling work by the New York Times? Do you think other publications are going to step into their shoes?

Indeed, this is the way to go, but the New york Times has a large, well trained staff of people who can do these things. For the rest, this is a goal, but quite a distant one at the moment.

German Magazine de:bug has a special feature on Augmented Reality in their December Issue (138) and makes the assumption that “the actual future of print media is the interconnection of Augmented Reality and Paper”. Several publications are experimenting with it already – Esquire, Popular Science and now COLORS Magazine. The technological bandwidth is between added graphical codes within the content or even more advanced: image recognition. What’s your take on digitally augmented paper?

I have been reading up on Augmented Reality and I am quite fascinated by it. It is pure science fiction, although I know it is really happening, and many universities have made tremendous progress in making this come true. Just the idea of this next step, a sort of fusion between virtual reality, which creates immersive, computer-generated environments, and the real world in which we live and consume information, augmented reality is closer to the real world. Augmented reality adds graphics, sounds, haptic feedback and smell to the natural world as it exists.

To think that we may be reading a story about food – tapas, for example – and really smell what the writers talk about (or taste the wine)? I know that mobile phones are driving a lot of this technology (look at the iPhone) and I am perplexed and amazed (like a child) by it all. Remember, I am 62 years old.

Now about newspapers, and putting stories within the palm of our hand, and making all the other senses come alive, not just vision – if this is the future, I want to live another 40 years to enjoy it.

One question remains: what will happen to imagination? Will too much reality be harmful? Just wondering. Remember, you asked me!

You have come across this: you’re working on a presentation and you need to show a generic user (which is absurd in itself, but anyway). You for sure did an image search or asked Iconfinder, but all you could find was glossy 3D rendered bodies with hairdos, but without faces. Or the exact opposite: bland pictograms that remind you of bathroom doors.

We prefer it graphically reduced, but not boring – so we developed our own generic user illustration. It’s basically made with simple geometric shapes, but we added a selection of well known pop culture symbols as shirt prints.

And the best thing: you can download them as vector data – for free! You can alter them just the way you like – in case you’re not into the logos we chose in the first place (we’d love to hear about your modifications!).

Until release later this year, registered Reaktor users can take part in a that public beta test and provide their feedback.

Last year we worked with a start-up from Berlin on their first product, a multi-room audio system. The core of this new kind of hi-fi system is a remote control with a multi-touch interface. We developed a visual language for the controller software, which was then implemented and evolved by an in-house team.

The audio system, called Raumfeld, is now available for sale. The initial batch of preorders has been shipped to customers and the first favorable reviews are pouring in. It‘s a promising debut, constantly improved by a small, but talented and dedicated team. Definitely a company to keep an eye on!