Digital Content & Printer Apps

The mobile web is something that has overtaken the world of design, and it continues to creep up on us. Some might say that web design is still a little ignored from traditional design realms (such as institutions of learning and what not), and if that’s the case, things are about to get even more backed up. Web and mobile web design are still in their infancies, and as I’ve stated on Read Between the Leading a few times, there’s going to be a lot of growth and unexpected things to come.

A lot of this is due to the devices we use, and the way in which we use the internet. Google and Apple add to the cloud. Users post and search for photos and videos. All the while, we’ve needed new forms of interaction with our devices and the increasingly media-based content they present.

The reason these forms of design are still in their infancy is that we still don’t know what we need. It isn’t so much that we’re stumbling around, trying to find the best ways to present users with content; it’s that we’re trying to find the best ways to present the content that we may or may not know exists yet, with the ever-changing technology we have available. The mobile web is an evolution of the web, and mobile as we know it will continue to evolve on such devices.

Earlier this year, HP unveiled one of those really unexpected devices, a printer with “Touchsmart” technology. These little things need no computer, they’re based (get ready for it…) on apps. Of course, they work like a normal consumer printer as well, but you can run applications completely on their own on the printer’s built in LCD. Some examples of these applications include maps, online-service based photos, and even Fandango tickets.

Unlike mobile devices, the printer isn’t running a rendering engine for web sites, but instead running individually made, specific applications. This is something that we saw take off with the iPhone to other mobile devices, and it’s something we’re also hearing about in upcoming technology.

Although we slowly lose the physical feel of a page turning in our hands, the opening of a CD jewelcase, digital content providers have strived to make it up to us through these interactive elements. For example, Apple recently released new iTunes albums based on a technology dubbed “Cocktail.” These albums have a sort of animated home screen to access the songs, possible videos, and other content. It is an experience that walks us through the album and CD booklet, and provides a more engaging atmosphere than a simple PDF. Being digital, it can create a more engaging atmosphere than even the physical CD booklet might be able to, with music, animation, and other elements. This is our trade off, and while some argue we continue to lose feeling and emotion as we enter a digital world, we are slowly seeing design meet us in the middle: not cold, template like, and replaceable, but not specifically custom and once-off.

To explain what I mean by that a little more, let’s talk about Apple’s upcoming mystery tablet. Multiple content providers have discussed it and their content on such a device. The idea is akin to the Kindle, a digital e-content reader. Magazine and news organizations know and have stated that they can’t keep up with the cost of printing in today’s data driven world, and because of it, the smart ones have avoided going bust by putting more effort into their websites. The tablet, however, provides a different experience. Buy a magazine for your tablet, and you aren’t staring at the same website set in Verdana that you do every month, with an article that look the same as the last one, with flat images appearing over important text and Flash ads everywhere. Instead, you get what you expect: a magazine. Different from month to month. Newly designed, newly laid out, but with as much interactivity as you’d expected from the web nowadays.

This is the full-circle of design that we’re just now starting to see. The web is great, but in many ways it can be more stale then print content could ever be, and yet we don’t need to be stuck with it. We can have both worlds. We can have a design for every article that differs, designed in the same way we would for print, but with interactively connected elements. For now, it is in the form of single serving apps, or bite size interactive websites on mobile devices. What’s next? I don’t think we’ll know exactly for quite a while still. We can hypothesize, we can say this or that is dead, we can compare losses and gains from different technology, don’t for a second think that design will allow itself to be stifled. We’re witnessing a huge evolution that hasn’t been seen since the printing press.