Journerdism

Will Sullivan's guide to mobile, tablet & emerging tech ideas

May 7, 2012
by Will Sullivan
13 Comments

My next adventure: DC with the BBG

I have some pretty big news: I’m leaving Lee Enterprises to work for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Office of Digital and Design Innovation as their Mobile Products Manager in Washington D.C.

I know what you’re thinking, “Did he say the BBC?”

Nope. :)

So who are they and what do they do? The BBG‘s mission is, “To inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” It’s an independent agency of the federal government focusing specifically on delivering journalism to countries who don’t have a free press or who have governments that control information access. Some of the properties include: The Voice of America, Radio and TV Martí, Middle East Broadcast Network, Radio Free Asia and Europe. The gig will be executing products and partnerships across mobile and emerging platforms — from the complete spectrum of tools like SMS through the mobile/tablet device array to broadcast and ‘second screen’ social experiences. It’s very tech focused and will offer an amazing array of opportunities to learn, grow and tackle very unique challenges from low bandwidth, low tech countries to places where the leadership is actively jamming your signals and blocking your satellites. It’s going to require a lot of creativity, a lot of learning, experimenting and a whole lot of innovation.

Leaving Lee and the Midwest is going to be tough; we’ve made a lot of progress and had some good times, but this new adventure is going to be amazing. A multi-platform, multi-media, multi-national, multi-talented team and I can’t wait to get started at the beginning of June.

December 21, 2011
by Will Sullivan
0 comments

New Poynter eye-tracking study focuses on tablet design and user experience

Tablets have been around for a while, it's time we finally learn how people use them.

Well, SND STL was amazing and is finally in the books. After a little recovery and catch-up-on-reading time, I’ve found my next side project: The Poynter Institute’s new eye-tracking study, focused on tablet design and user experiences.

I remember when the previous eyetracking studies were released it was kind of like this kid on Christmas morning. I’ve regularly referred to them and re-read them throughout my career and now to be involved in the project now is amazingly humbling and exciting. The group involved in this round of research is like my fantasy journalism design team: Sara Quinn, Dr. Mario Garcia, Jeremy Gilbert, David Stanton, Rick Edmonds, Regina McCombs, Roger Black, Rusty Coats, Andrew DeVigal, Jeff Sonderman, Jennifer George-Palilonis, Michael Holmes, Damon Kiesow, Miranda Mulligan, Tor Bøe-Lillegraven, Nora Paul, Robin Sloan, and Matt Thompson.

Our focus this time around, tablets, are an interesting beast because they seem to marry dynamic and interactive content of the web with the portability and “lean back” nature of print or even TV experiences. Often lumped in with mobile devices, tablets are similar, but very unique in many ways. Mobile is always with you and very utility, speed-driven; tablets tend to be portable within the house and workplace, and early research shows that people tend to consume more content and for longer periods on them than either mobile or the web.

We’re going to look at design challenges such as which view do people people prefer to consume content in most frequently – portrait or landscape.  Even in those two options, I suspect the behaviors from users on an 10-inch, letter-box shaped device like the iPad may differ greatly from those on a 7″ tablet, like the Kindle Fire. Or the type of content they’re consuming will likely also change the results, from my personal anecdotal experience (and what I’ve observed in others), I tend to read text more frequently in portrait mode and video in landscape no matter what device. But that’s just anecdotal.

There’s lots to learn and this research will offer ‘more than a hunch’ solutions to help us all improve our products. Specifically, we’ll focus on some of these issues and questions, which Sara spelled out in her original announcement post:

  • Tools and tasks: How intuitive can tablet navigation be and how long does it take to successfully complete a task?
  • Satisfaction: How happy are users with an overall experience and how does that impact their perception of the credibility of the source?
  • Comprehension and retention: Which forms help people to understand and remember what they have seen or read?
  • Business and revenue: What strategies might work for news organizations? For advertisers? For consumers? How might editors set up a newsroom to create content for a tablet product?

How you can help right now

  • Your questions - Share your thoughts, comments and suggestions on the Poynter Eye-Tracking research page on Facebook and follow along there to learn more about what we’re learning.
  • Funding – The Knight Foundation and CCI Europe is helping kick in money, but the more funding, the more extensive research we can do. Please contact Sara about this at: squinn [at] poynter.org.

 

December 20, 2011
by Will Sullivan
3 Comments

31,556,926 opportunities but a link blog ain’t one.

For me (and many others) the end of the year always is a time to reflect and think about the past and future. This year is no different; it’s been an amazing whirlwind of layered and sometimes overwhelming experiences with some of the most fantastic people I’ve ever met. From my RJI fellowship, election to the ONA board (and the plethora of committees and projects I’m tied to for that now), helping lead the SND St. Louis conference, and promotion to Director of Mobile News for Lee Enterprises just to name a few big projects, plus all my work helping co-direct the NPPA Multimedia Immersion workshop, teaching at more than a dozen universities, South by Southwest Interactive and other amazing conferences and workshops.

Looking back on it, it’s overwhelming and I learned an immense amount, especially about hyper-effective time management, closing deals, shipping product, finding chinks in the armor before battle begins and listening and learning from my intuition. But I also realized that I took on too much. I’m proud I didn’t renege on any of my commitments and delivered on my word while keeping all the plates spinning.

I was taught by my mom at an early age to always say, “Yes,” to opportunity and while the PCP addiction was hard to kick, I sure have some crazy stories and met a lot of interesting people. (I’m kidding, obviously. Most of the people were jerks.) I still love and face the day with that adventurous “say yes” spirit and I will continue to seek out new opportunities but I’ve also started to realize I’m mortal and need to focus on how I spend my finite time left on this earth.

So what’s that really mean?

Well, I’m going to have to start saying “no” to things more than I’d like. Maybe it’s the awkward nerd deep in side me, always wanting approval but that nerd has gotta evolve; I have too many half-finished books, to dos, napkin-sketched project ideas, half-coded sites and Read It Later stories that need to be dealt with. I’m going to continue working on industry projects as always (maybe not as many at the same time) and I also need to focus on some of my own projects with the same indomitable energy, razor-sharp focus and liberal time that I give to so many other people and organizations. I’m also going to seek out deeper, personal experiences with smaller, curated groups more frequently than massive, perfunctory popular events (I.e. hackathons and Hardly Strictly Young-type experiences, as opposed to mega-conferences and Facebook). There’s also this thing called “work-life balance” that evidently exists for some people? I think I’m going to try and check it out. I need to start travelling like I used to (and not just for weddings or conferences, board meetings and other work activities) and I have a handful of non-journalism projects I’m going to dive into. Perhaps, most of all, I need to take better care of myself.

Why are you telling me this?

Partially to make it official and hold myself accountable, but also because the net effect on Journerdism will be that I’m not really going to be doing the jambalaya links anymore and I hope that shift in time/focus will allow me to post original pieces more frequently (or at least more than the couple times I have over the past year).

There was a time back in the original “Carnival of Journalism” days (before the amazing David Cohn resurrected it from the grave) when there was just a few dozen voices in online journalism and even less curating mass journalism and tech links, when I aspired to be the techier Romenesko (as Matt Thompson described me to others). There’s now plenty of aggregation tools and curated content options out there with full-time, paid staff doing a better job that I could ever hope to in my spare time so I have to let that go, prune my RSS feeds and focus. If you’d like to check out quick hit links I’m reading, linking and commenting on, please follow me on Twitter.

So thanks for reading. I hope you’ll continue to do so and keep me in mind for interesting opportunities and ways we can make this world a better place, even if I’m not sending out links as frequently as I used to (it’s been a while though, so hopefully this is no surprise).

Onward and upward!
Will