I am putting this in the context of a digital publication. The iPad is fast becoming a powerful platform for magazines and newspapers.  The argument made by the vendor was somewhat flimsy, as they tried to tell me that iPad users don’t want a globally accessible menu. They asserted that the users prefer to back-track to the beginning of an experience to find a menu rather than jump to where they want to go next.  When I can pick up a newspaper or a magazine and flip through at my leisure to whatever section I want, I asked myself – why would an iPad user want a more onerous experience than what they get on paper?  The rationale from the vendor didn’t stand-up.

Notwithstanding that almost every publication app comes with a persistent menu that can be engaged at any time. Apps such as Wired magazine, Flipboard (timeline) and the Apple-endorsed Maclife all use persistent menus.  The point I’m trying to make in all of this is that the iPad is a new frontier, and though application development is a similar process between iPad and iPhone, the user experience deserves a different approach.  Mobile vendors must realize that we are all new to this and are still getting a sense for the possibilities while trying to establish key usability standards.

The rules aren’t written yet but be wary of any mobile developer that claims to be an expert at usability on the ipad. The possibilities in using HTML 5 will level the playing field even further. Unlike iPhone, where mobile optimized experiences tend to be watered-down, we can build a number of robust HTML 5 applications for iPad.  Regardless of the possibilities in this new frontier, good usability is good usability and applying the solid design thinking that we’ve learned over the last ten years is the best place to start.

The design layer has become more flexible and with such a large community of designers supporting it, having a custom theme is quite cost effective.  In the past year or so, I’m seeing larger brand names and publications turn to WordPress for an enterprise solution.  You might ask – What about secure hosting for enterprise sites? Well, now that there are services like WordPress VIP, security is no longer the big concern it once was.

The attitude towards open source platforms has really changed in the last three years. Enterprise vendors are embracing open source products such as Drupal and WordPress and offering it as the other half of their custom business solutions.

Serious news publications are starting to find out how easy it is to use the CMS compared to what they’ve been struggling with on their legacy systems.  Most importantly, businesses are learning that using open source platforms will save them time and money in the development and deployment of web products. Web products have always depended on a speed-to-market strategy. Because you’re only making money while you’re the flavour of the month, products have to constantly offer newer and better features to stay competitive.  It is now becoming apparent that you can do more with a smaller web team and get to market faster than ever before.

Here are some great resources and articles from the WordPress community:

Designing your own themes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crWNonVaHKM

http://psd2cssonline.com/

Word Press VIP Hosting: http://vip.wordpress.com/

Popular Brands Using WordPress: http://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/21-popular-brands-that-are-using-wordpress/

I know first-hand from reading a comic book on the iPad that the experience is visually stunning. The ability to zoom-in and pan on image blocks makes it even more appealing than the print equivalent. Though I suspect there will always be a limited edition print product for years to come. After all, you can’t really call the digital edition a collectible.

Perhaps the rest of the publishing industry can learn something here. Readers want options and they like to consume content that is visually appealing. Maybe the news industry can take a page from the comics (no pun intended) and allow users to consume content in a more visually interesting manner. One of the things Newspapers aren’t doing enough of is leveraging their archives to bring a more cohesive content offering to the table. This, coupled with a better digital format, perhaps scrap-booked around topics, would make for a very powerful online product. Another thing to keep an eye on is Marvel’s Xbox Live-style subscription model. They offer an annual plan for $60.00 per year. This makes it affordable to pretty much anyone.

The difference here is that comics are for a wider audience and newspapers are traditionally meant for a local audience. While most metro dailies are still looking for that local market to go online, maybe it’s time to start broadening the market to a wider web audience.  At any rate, we should keep a closer eye on what the comic books are doing digitally to monetize their product – there is something to be learned here.

Check out the digital editions for comic books:

http://www.comixology.com/

http://marvel.com/digitalcomics/

I recently came across an online clothier that has managed to offer tailor made shirts for their customers. Shirts My Way is a website that allows the customer to custom design every part of their shirt. You can mix and match from a catalogue of fabrics to get exactly what you want. In addition, you can choose the buttons, the style and enter your own measurements for the perfect fit. They do a great job of tutoring the customer through the process with online videos and step by step fitting.  Considering the complexity of designing your own tailor-made shirt, they make the experience quite painless. In playing around with the custom fitting application, it really only took about ten minutes of my time.

Best of all, it’s a smooth, non-flash experience that gives you the option to download your work in progress if you need a second opinion from a friend.  Overall, I think this is a clean user experience that will draw repeat business.

Check it out for yourself: http://www.shirtsmyway.com

Of course, it goes further than the ipad. Any device that can run windows will also have access to this version of Safari and the new reader feature. It makes me want to read more online and it’s as easy as clicking one button. It just works – no configuration required.

Being a user experience professional in the digital publishing industry, the first alarm that goes off is, “what happens to our ad impressions?” The initial web page still has to load before the reader button is available so the impression should still register. Although animated ads that string through a number of animations or elaborate take-overs may suffer from this new feature. There is some relief for advertisers however; the reader feature is not available on index pages and other lead pages. In the case of an index page, the reader button is replaced by an RSS button. Only once you have selected an article, will you see the reader button.  Perhaps reader will strike a nice balance between the commercial experience and better web design.  Overall, I think its step in the right direction. This new feature underscores the need for UX designers to employ a simple, clean design approach. If we don’t do this, browser developers might do it for us.

Try it out – Download the new Safari Browser

There’s a lesson in this story. Your posts, your info, your pictures and your videos are out there and they’re staying out there. You can delete all you want. You can migrate your whole web life to another web app with a better privacy policy. Just remember, whoever wants it already has it and in some cases, it never really goes away. It reminds me of that line from the original Fast and the Furious movie when Vin Diesel’s character – Dom says, “…I had Jesse run a little background check on you, Mr. Brian Earl Spilner. He can find anything on the web, anything about anyone. So, why bullshit?” Truer words were never spoken Vin.

Don’t post anything that you don’t want anyone out there to know. Think twice about posting those bikini pictures from Cancun and please don’t drink and post.  By all means, if you want to join the group that has made a commitment to quit Facebook by May 31^st, you should definitely do that. The privacy debate that has circled around Facebook in last few months really just underscores the “what” more than the “where”.

I suspect books, newspapers, magazines, comic books and video will be the content family of choice when users bring it along.  For those who feel conflicted and wonder if they might miss their netbook or laptop…well, there’s an app for that.

Check out this video of the ipad as a laptop using a bluetooth mouse:

1 .  It’s not just a bigger version of the iphone
2.  The web looks sexier on the device

As I embark on developing my first set of apps for the ipad, many ideas in our design group have been floating around. Our potential mobile development firm alluded to the fact that once you build an app for the iphone, you can reuse around 60% of the code to build an ipad version of the app. That’s all well and good from a cost standpoint but what about the user experience? Because the ipad library of apps is rather sparse right now, Apple makes all the iphone apps available and usable on the ipad. You can choose to run the iphone app in its intended aspect ratio or you can double the size of the interface. The problem is that it seems a bit awkward and it looks stretched on the ipad when you do this.

Although iphone apps run just fine on the ipad, one thing that I decided right then and there is that the ipad deserves a better version of the application to take full advantage of the real estate and all the things the ipad can do. As I head down the path of developing for the ipad, I will be looking at building an interface specifically for the device. Here’s the opportunity we’ve all been waiting for. The ability to develop and shape applications that will drive a new platform and set new standards in user interface design.

My advice to all who want to start working with ipad is to stay away from the easy route of developing another version of your iphone app. Instead, approach it as a blank canvas and create something unique and exciting. Its best not to take a “one size fits all” approach.

For the purpose of this article, I’ll use the example of an ice cream shop. There are many ice cream shops, most of which are big chains such as Dairy Queen or Baskin Robbins.  If you do your home work and look within a given geographic area, you might find that the ice cream shops that exist may not be offering the best service. They may not be offering new or innovative products that could create buzz in that local market.

You could try the ice cream at different shops within a certain area and get an idea what people are willing to put up with to get some ice cream or just how far they have to go to get good ice cream. Entrepreneurs in local markets can and will make outrageous claims and embellish the truth about their product. Some of them may just get lazy and take for granted that they’re the only ice cream shop within a ten mile radius and so they feel secure that the public in the local market has fewer options. They may continue this way until public attention shifts to a new ice cream shop that does it better.

Now imagine if you take what we’ve learned over the past fifteen years in online business and applied that strategic “click” thinking to a brick and mortar business.  You’ll suddenly find a new world of opportunities. There is still a major disconnect between web and traditional businesses and somewhere in between is innovation and the ability to create a new market. Online users are very demanding and less tolerant of a bad experience because there are simply more choices on the World Wide Web. Consumers in a given local market will put up with a lesser product or lesser service because it’s a local market and the choices are limited. If you can apply the savvy from your online strategy to a local brick and mortar business, you’ll find that you’re already driven and motivated to keep up your game and play at a higher level.  This is the advantage of having fifteen years of web strategy and e-commerce learning behind us. As web professionals, consider your future business opportunities in the lazier local markets and take that opportunity to innovate and push the envelope.

As it turns out, a friend of the family happens to work for a community newspaper in Toronto. Her little newspaper, which is actually called, “The Little Paper” is geared towards young families in urban Toronto.  It offers information about community events, activities and stories and it does so from a parent’s point of view. The content is highly targeted and more importantly, highly relevant. They do a great job of making parents in the community feel comfortable enough to be avid readers and contributors.  This is a point of view that continues to elude most metro newspapers.

The metro dailies will need to drastically change their approach to hyper-local content if they have any hope of surviving the inevitable shift from print to online. The daily metro must become an extremely well-informed citizen. This is not a role that journalists are likely to take on. It will require a fundamental change to the newsroom process and citizen-journalist resources that need to be installed in urban and sub-urban centers alike.

I think the newspapers can still transform themselves into a valuable online product.  They already have the urban stories, national and world news. If they can find a way to offer all of the usual within a collaborative news platform that is relevant to the community, they may survive this next step in media evolution.