Transmedia means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. How do you explain what you do to someone who knows nothing about transmedia storytelling?

Everyone looks at transmedia through their own lens. Independent film makers may have the “bringing film into the digital age” angle whereas for others it’s franchising or adding interaction.

To me, transmedia is one or more stories that live on different screens. It’s about audience participation and the story changing with audience interaction, until that same story comes back and interacts with them in a different way.

The work you’re doing now is focused on the world of ARG [alternate reality games], but you’ve also advised brands like Ford, GE and Pepsi in your work with Undercurrent. How do these two sides of your work inform each other?

Sometimes my brand strategy work is directly informed by my gaming design. With Ford, for example, we designed the Focus Rally, which was an interactive race across the U.S. that we produced with Hulu and the producers of The Amazing Race.

They shot six competing teams in Ford Focus’ and we came up with this transmedia gaming strategy to let people at home live-stream the show, interact with the contestants driving, and influence the race. The team that had the most engaged followers won the competition.

Other times, it involves partnering our clients with indie game designers who are already doing awesome stuff. We help them make a big splash in a small community with what is probably, to a brand, a really small amount of money.

Do you think transmedia has the potential to cross-over to mainstream markets, or are you mostly catering to hardcore tech geeks?

We’re trying to figure that out. Socks, Incorporated was kind of R&D in that sense. We thought, what if we take some of the core principles of ARG and transmedia games and make them family-friendly, playable, light-hearted? Humour is a big part of our work, because we feel like it’s really lacking in the world of transmedia. So we tried that out and got a ton of research from the players.

There’s a ton of mixtures of technology that people haven’t tapped into yet, that alter physical and digital boundaries in a way that could make play happen anytime, anywhere.

Where do games fit into the free vs. paid content ecosystem? Are more people willing to pay for games than, say, newspapers and magazines?

We keep pushing our business models even further down the line. First you had to buy your Xbox game, then that was disrupted by games online that you could play for free with advertising or you would have to download the app and pay for that. Now, you can download the app for free but you have to pay to unlock additional content within the app.

I think the same thing is happening with transmedia, where the revenue models will be embedded within the story. We’re been toying with this model for the next phase of Socks, Inc., where  you can play most of the game for free but then you’re going to hit a paywall where if you want to keep playing a specific character’s mission you have to buy their badge or buy their sock puppet kit.

It’s like a FarmVille model, where you pay for an additional crop or animal that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. You don’t need it, but because you’re so engaged in the story you want to have everything.

I want to ask you about Jim Babb as a personal brand. You seem to exist in a gazillion online universes and you even created a microsite for your marriage proposal! How consciously do you manage that brand?

I think it’s important to have elements of yourself in your brand and to do things publicly. If you don’t, if you’re not doing it somewhat consciously, then what’s coming out unconsciously is probably not what you want.

Personally, as the years have gone on and my different online identities have melded into one image of myself, I find that my work benefits from being personal and transparent and vice-versa.

At StoryWorld you’ll be presenting on “The Evolution of Gaming Behaviours” along with Gabe Zicherman, Steve Peters, Dan Hon and Evan Jones. What are you guys planning to talk about?

For the longest time, we’ve been going on about the 1-9-90 rule, the notion that 1 percent of people on the internet are going to creating content for your game, 9 percent are going to be curating that content, and 90 percent are going to be passively browsing the website and then bouncing.

But things are becoming so much more interactive. Are people evolving or are games evolving? Were we not making the right kinds of games for people before?

I think the name “Evolution of Gaming Behaviours” sets us up on a really interesting topic: Are gamers changing?

Sparksheet is an official media partner for StoryWorld Conference + Expo, which took place this year from October 31 to November 2 in San Francisco. 

The sense of displacement was striking. Without the passing landscapes and material friction of travelling on land, it almost felt as though I wasn’t even moving. Travelling on an airplane can make us feel like we’re stuck in a timeless, spaceless purgatory, waiting for our destination to come to us.

I was making this trip because I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in the TEDActive Travel Project. As you may know, TED is an annual conference that attracts idea-minded people from different countries, industries, philosophies and walks of life.

While the flagship conference in Long Beach, California maintains a traditional audience-speaker dynamic, a separate group of people gathers at the Riviera in Palm Springs. These “TEDActivators” lend an ear to live-streamed TED2011 talks while engaging in conversations about everything from poetry to sustainability to travel.

As a user-experience designer, I was paired up with about 15 travel experts: aircraft designers, design professors, human-factors research specialists, and marketing experts working with Delta Air Lines, which sponsored the project. The group also included a few “laypeople” who happen to spend a lot of time in transit.

The workshop started with a structured brainstorm in a formal setting and progressed through a tipsy late-night chat. Throughout the event, participants were sent to gather information and feedback by engaging other TEDActive attendees. When all was said and done, I was given the honour of presenting our vision on the main TEDActive stage.

Our mission? To “humanize” the inflight experience.

Out of control

What we discovered centered around a clear hypothesis: Most of the anxiety associated with flight is related to a lack of control.

Think about it. We show up at the airport hours early without any idea of processing time, and only sketchy information about delays. We hand our baggage to the airline, trusting it will make it to our destination.

We trust security personnel with our bodies, our belongings and our safety. We fly through the air with barely a glimpse of the pilot and sign over our basic urges to sleep, go to the bathroom, eat and drink to the flight crew. As passengers sit disempowered in their cramped spaces, it’s no wonder they often become negative and stressed.

One area where airlines have begun to address the issue of control is in the realm of inflight entertainment. The relatively recent shift from “main screen” movies to on-demand entertainment systems and bring-your-own-screen approaches suggests the industry is moving in the right direction.

The lesson is clear: Not only is restoring a sense of control critical to improving the flying experience for millions of travellers, but it also may be the single most important goal for any airline brand.

Lessons from the tech set

User-experience design is all about putting the user in control. Good interfaces are designed to provide clear and useful feedback, allowing the user to monitor system status and maintain supervision over the computer’s tasks. This way, users remain in control even when the system is doing behind-the-scenes stuff (think of a loading progress bar, Windows hourglass or Mac “spinning wheel”).

Information architecture is created with respect to transparency, enabling users to navigate complex interfaces with their own sense of direction. For instance, here at Sparksheet, you’re able to catch the latest articles on the homepage, or use the categories bar to hone in on your interests.

Similarly, Web content producers are encouraged to use short paragraphs, bullet points and headings, allowing readers to skim at their leisure.

There’s no reason why designing airline services for passengers should be any different from designing technology or creating content for users.

The humanization of flight

Once our group of TEDActivators zeroed in on “control” as the central challenge facing the travel industry, the ideas and recommendations started pouring out. Here are some ways travel brands can make the flight experience a little more human:

• Enabling passengers to control certain aspects of their inflight environment can give them a sense of ownership over their space. For example, Air Canada’s recently launched Build Your Own Playlist feature allows passengers to preplan their entertainment experience.
• Establishing an “airborne community” can restore control to interpersonal interactions: What can flight attendants do at the gate before boarding to “break the ice”? We can’t choose our family, but why can’t passengers pick their neighbours?

• Building community isn’t just the airline’s job. Some frequent flyers and confident passengers might volunteer to wear a bracelet that identifies them as an approachable resource. Not only would this foster community, but it would go a long way in winning the hearts of worried flyers and travellers in need of assistance.
• Travel brands can distinguish themselves with innovative mobile apps and platforms that let passengers control their experience both during and after the flight. Airlines can provide tools for itinerary planning, car rental, booking hotels, making dinner reservations, ordering (and sharing) taxis and managing connecting flights right from their seats. The list goes on.

Some of these ideas may seem far-fetched, but startups like Planely and Weeels demonstrate the technology is already here. The question is, which brands are agile enough to integrate it, and brave enough to put their passengers in control?

Do you think story can really play a role on a screen that’s meant to be engaged with in terms of seconds?

I think it depends on the concept and on the story you are trying to convey. If you attempt to capture people’s attention by expecting them to watch something in 15 seconds, you’ve fundamentally failed.

If you go back to creating an old-school style of press ad in terms of a stopper – something that has stopping power when you walk past it – that glance only takes a second to understand. Then you can roll into a story where you’ve got their undivided attention.

You have to be very aware of your audience and be clever about how you communicate. Through digital outdoors, you still need to get people’s attention, but you have additional benefits including interactivity, built-in cameras, and eyeball detection.

This was used in a great Amnesty ad about domestic abuse: The violence went away when someone looked at the poster, and it started again when the person looked away – just like it does in reality.

The digital billboard is still being used and created for like a poster, but it’s not a poster. It’s an interactive format, it’s a server, it’s a wireless connection, it’s a touch-screen device. You have to think about it as a content management system. You have to think about the possibilities that the medium can deliver, and then you can create stand-out campaigns.

You’ve worked and won awards in both the online and offline marketing worlds. Do you foresee a world where the two will go hand in hand?

We just created a campaign for one of our clients where users can create things on Facebook that feed to outdoor screens. So we’re now taking online content and placing it in offline environments.

This type of campaign is exciting; it can drive revenue for the client and generate fame for the product, and it creates a need for advertising, which could ultimately include branded content from television sponsorships and programs.

Ultimately it depends on who your audience is. If they’re 65-70, which the majority of the world is going to be soon, then some of those people might be more interested in passive media like television. There wouldn’t be much point in doing a Facebook campaign for them.

Once you understand where your target audience or customer is, then you can develop a campaign and select the media that will interact with them in their space. We don’t expect them to come to us; we place a lot of our content where we think they might be.

I always say, “Never technology for technology’s sake.” The technologies should enhance the ideas and, ultimately, deliver a better experience.

iPad App by Ben Dodson via Flickr

Earlier this month media tycoon Rupert Murdoch made waves in the media world with the launch of The Daily, trumpeted as the first newspaper specifically designed for the iPad.

This daily publication is now downloadable in the U.S. app store with a free two-week subscription and the option to renew at 99 cents a week. While four dollars a month isn’t going to break the bank, the big question is whether an iPad newspaper is something anybody really needs.

When Apple’s groundbreaking tablet computer came out last January, many saw the iPad as the struggling publishing industry’s knight in shining armour.

But in the year since customers like me lined up outside the Apple store, traditional media outlets like the New York Times have found it difficult to charge a subscription fee under Apple’s strict in-app purchasing guidelines. So instead of redesigning the newspaper for the iPad age, legacy papers simply reformatted their existing iPhone apps for the supersized device.

While a few magazines have been specifically tailored for the iPad in the past few months (most notably Wired magazine and the iPad exclusive publication Project by Virgin), these are monthly publications that do not offer the scope and timeliness of my local newspaper.

Apple’s new in-app subscription policy opened up the door for companies like Murdoch’s News Corp. to create apps using a business model they’re familiar with.

At first glance, The Daily brings the best of print, broadcast and online media to the iPad’s rich screen. Once you start the application and load the latest issue, you’re taken to a home screen featuring a TV news-style video of the day’s headlines (or, if you prefer, an audio stream). Touch the screen at any point to interrupt the announcer and jump to the relevant article.

The articles themselves have several “touchpoints” that allow you to interact with the content and scroll through panoramic photos (I loved the picture of Egypt’s Tahrir square in the middle of the protest), sound clips, and videos. While the text downloads to your device, the video and audio stream from the Internet, limiting anyone who doesn’t have a 3G-enabled iPad if they’re on the go and away from a Wi-Fi connection.

As you’d expect, The Daily makes an effort to integrate social media networks like Facebook and Twitter into the content. While the Facebook sharing capability is still very raw, an article on Rihanna is complemented by the pop star’s constantly updating Twitter feed.

Of course, none of this is particularly new. Newspaper websites already have social networking widgets. RSS feeds, Twitter lists and existing apps like Reeder, Feedler, Newsrack, and Early Edition already allow us to customize and streamline the way we get our news. Why would I pay for something updated daily when there are so many 24/7 news sources available to me for free?

Perhaps it’s a matter of convenience. RSS and Twitter still require you to do quite a bit of legwork. It can be a pain to sift through your favourite sites and import them into yet another app. If you’re someone who prefers to have your news curated for you, The Daily may be the closest thing to opening the door and finding today’s newspaper on your doorstep. Or is that yesterday’s newspaper?

Last time, we talked about trust in cyberspace. It’s a theme that came through strongly in the Economist’s take on location-based services and a challenge to those seeking to engage with consumers in transit.

If anything, trust is even more important when you are on the go: trust that no one can see where you are unless you want them to, trust that you aren’t revealing your whereabouts to burglars. The question on every marketer’s lips is, does the average consumer have enough trust in social networks and brands to reveal his (or perhaps even more importantly her) location?

Work we’ve done in Australia suggests that there is some way to go before location-based services definitively break out of the “geek ghetto” to fulfil their brilliant potential. The majority of consumers express strong fears that knowledge of their location could be used to their detriment.

Around 80 percent were fearful of being tracked or stalked or burgled if the wrong person knew they were out of the house. For some (such as users of the iPhone app Loopt that allows friends to track each other 24/7) the notion of being tracked is not a deterrent, while for others it is downright creepy.

But the apprehensive are open to being persuaded. Based on the study, 41% of Australians believe the potential benefits of location-based technology outweigh the risks, while only 13% believe the risks outweigh the benefits. To address people’s emotions, services need to have in place clear and well-communicated safeguards that reassure consumers the technology is safe.

But if these services are to really take off, they also have to address a more rational question: “What’s in it for me?”

In this sense, location-aware is where online retail was 10 years ago. Consumers were reluctant to buy online until retailers lured them in with discounts, greater choice and a reassurance of security.

And just like then, some categories are better placed to lead the way than others. Some services, like gay dating app Grindr, appeal to people’s emotions, while others make the cost of disclosure seem so small it doesn’t count (which Ryanair did with online booking via its famous £1 fare). Urbanspoon is a leader here – the cost of revealing location is small but the payoff is a handy app that helps you find a spot to eat nearby.

Travel brands have the advantage of the “What’s in it for me?” factor: Public transport information and travel aids are much-desired location-based services.

In Melbourne, tramTRACKER not only allows commuters to find the nearest tram stop based on location, but lets you know exactly how far away your next ride is. Similarly, Lonely Planet has done a nice job of incorporating their guidebooks into apps that feed off current location.

Location can be leveraged into revenue as well. Indeed, special offers are the most effective way of accessing consumers’ location information; half would divulge their location for an immediate benefit, according to the study.

But marketers beware: Offers and advertising are not the same thing. Three-quarters of Australians will reject brands that send them ads without an explicit benefit. Consumers consider their mobiles a part of their personal space and if you’re stepping into it, you’d better make sure they get something out of it.

The benefits of all this for travel brands are twofold. Operators at the originating destination (think travel agents) can use location to engage potential customers, while businesses at the destination can use it to stimulate sales (by sending out a special offer to turn around a slow day, for example).

The key to cracking the location code is leading with the benefit and using that to start the conversation. Again, we saw that with the Internet 10 years ago. But it’s actually been true of almost all technology through the ages. The technology changes but the battle to win the trust of those 50,000-year-old bits of technology known as hearts and minds still has some common features.

Michael Freedman is Executive Producer and Trudy Storey is Program Manager for Qantas Inflight Entertainment.

Disclosure: Qantas is a client of Spafax, the company that publishes Sparksheet.

In some ways, airlines are more than companies; they’re also ambassadors for their country of origin. What is uniquely Australian about Qantas’ inflight experience?

Qantas takes its ambassadorial role very seriously. Australians have a reputation for being open, friendly, honest and irreverent and we try to embody those uniquely Australian characteristics in our programming and design.

Our demographics are almost 50/50 Australian and non-Australian passengers so we try to program from an Australian perspective for an international audience.

One of the defining values of contemporary Australia is its tolerance and liberal attitudes. This means that we can be rather more adventurous in our programming choice. We are often among the few and sometimes the only airline to book particular mainscreen movies and we have a strict policy of playing PTV movies only in theatrical version.

We also have a TV channel called The Edge, which is designed to show challenging and thought-provoking programs that are on the edge of ideas, art, politics and social mores.

Being a small English-speaking country with a multicultural population we are well placed to select diverse programming from around the world. We are less hindered by tradition or history.

Australia itself has a very strong movie, television and music industry and we try to program roughly 30 percent Australian content in all our entertainment categories.

Airline passengers are a diverse lot. How do you ensure that Q’s content and design work across linguistic, cultural, age and gender divides?

We focus primarily on our Australian-based adult customers as they represent over 50 percent of our passengers on international flights and over 90 percent on domestic flights.

That said, our non-Australian customers and children are important too and our approach is to make everything we do simple, clear, intuitive and easy to understand irrespective of language, age and background. Our design brief is to develop navigation that doesn’t require language.

For children, our A380 IFE has a “Kids Only” GUI which gives young children access to G-rated content in a simple, child-friendly way.

We don’t think too hard about the gender divide. Our philosophy is that quality programming and content will cross gender preferences.

At Sparksheet we’re sort of obsessed with the idea that people in transit have very unique needs, habits and preferences. How do you take this into account when selecting movies, games and other content for Q?

At Qantas we share that obsession. We see ourselves as primarily offering “mood-altering” entertainment as people in transit are generally looking for a change of mood. How to achieve that is the hard part. Light entertainment has traditionally been the drug of choice and we ensure that there is no shortage of that.

However, as flying becomes more comfortable and IFE systems more flexible and controllable we believe passengers will increasingly look for richer, more engaging and challenging entertainment options.

All airlines have access to similar content and games so we put effort into the categories and styles of entertainment we offer, particularly with TV, and do a great deal of research in sourcing programs to fit those categories. We like to think of ourselves as the tailors of entertainment.

How do you take into account the unique Transumer mind frame in the design and navigation of Q?

The complexity of international travel means that mind frame for most passengers when it comes to entertainment is simplicity and ease of use.

I think the ever-growing range of GUI options and enhancements on offer is a two-edged sword. Every additional piece of functionality potentially carries with it additional complexity for the user.

We evaluate every idea for the value/complexity trade-off and try to ensure that the value always outweighs the increase in complexity.

Do you have any plans to introduce inflight Wi-Fi or do you think passengers view flying as an opportunity to “switch off”?

Qantas is considering Wi-Fi as well as other forms of inflight connectivity.

Our long-haul routes and vast ocean flight paths make satellite coverage even more complex than for other airlines but it is something that we need to continue to develop.

We see connectivity as complementary to our traditional entertainment offering. Those who prefer to “switch-off’” and stay unconnected will always be able to do that on board Qantas flights.

What opportunities are there for partnerships and branded content on Q? Are passengers willing to sit through pre-roll commercials, sponsored programming or other promotional material if it’s compelling and relevant to them?

We run advertising and promotions across our domestic and international programming but there needs to be a balance. Passengers are savvy media consumers and if there’s too much advertising – on the ground or in the air – they will switch off.

We offer branded content for children’s programming but otherwise we tend to keep our TV “clean”. On our eX2 platform we have branded third-party applications from Lonely Planet (an Australian company) and Deloitte. Our video news service is provided by and branded from the Nine Network and Text News by Nine MSN.

While Qantas is committed to providing customers with curated content, other airlines are focusing on syncing their inflight systems with personal devices like laptops or iPads. Why not simply invest in connectivity and compatibility and let passengers bring aboard their own entertainment?

Qantas is a premium airline and the full suite of in-seat entertainment will always be part of our inflight offering. We are happy to enable passengers who want to bring their own devices and programs. We offer in-seat power and will soon introduce USB connectivity into the IFE system.

What’s the next frontier in inflight entertainment?

Live TV. Broadband connectivity. Digital newspapers and magazines.

In your conference brief, you talk about Air New Zealand transitioning “from selling seats to selling experiences.” What do you mean by this?

Air New Zealand started with the goal of creating the world’s best long-haul flight experience. To date most airlines have been in the business of selling individual seats. Even if you are a couple or a family, they will sell you more individual seats that happen to be next to each other.

The research that Air New Zealand conducted showed that there was an opportunity to break out of this model and provide experiences that combined the physical space, service and entertainment in a way that met the needs of specific groups of their customers.

For example, travelling with young children is a big challenge. Having recently been on a flight with my two- and four-year-olds, the appeal of having a flat area that they can play on and then lie flat is something I would pay for rather than trying to make the current individual seats work for me.

Air New Zealand's Skycouch (futuretakingflight.com)

The inflight experience has a lot of nuances that are extremely difficult to simulate in an office or on a computer screen. How do you design for the sky while stuck on the ground?

One of the key challenges we faced on the Skycouch project was how to simulate a flight and make it realistic enough such that test participants would exhibit real behaviours. If we were not able to achieve this, the quality of the data wouldn’t be good enough to make sound design decisions.

Air New Zealand had invested in building a mock Boeing 787 cabin in a secret location in Auckland (the first outside of Boeing’s facility in Seattle). Our firm worked on creating a realistic shortened flight experience. Some key contributors to the realism were:

• actual aircraft sound;
• lighting that mimicked a real flight;
• real cabin crew to provide safety instructions and service;
• adequate lengths of time for sleep to understand real behaviours;
• adequate number of passengers in a test flight to encourage real social behaviours.

For the initial series of customer tests there was the additional challenge of the seats being made of polystyrene and pieces of wood – these were crude prototypes. Our belief was that real customers would struggle to see past the crude nature of the setup and provide quality data.

We decided to hire theatre actors to take on the passenger personas that we had developed with Air New Zealand. This worked very well because actors are used to working in makeshift environments and this technique allowed them to focus on seat interaction insights rather than the imperfections of the environment.

Their feedback was further validated when we brought in real customers to test more complete prototypes. In fact we continued to use actors with the real customers as this brought a level of realism to the flight and helped other passengers get into a role-playing frame of mind.

Actors simulate the inflight experience

People have very specific needs, habits and preferences when they are in transit. How do you take this into account in the design process?

People on the go tend to be quite adaptive. When there is a great product or service design that meets core needs, I think passengers are free to push these solutions to the next level to make them even better or to interact with designs in a way that was not initially anticipated.

When the product or service does not address core needs well and is a bit of a bumpy ride, passengers will often get caught up in the design aspects that are causing frustrations. I think we saw that when testing the Skycouch. There was a design that worked well but when a family was put into the seats some real magic occurred and the seat was used in ways that were not anticipated.

What have you learned from designing for the airline environment that can be applied to other, non-travel spaces?

The lessons cover a number of different areas. First, up-front customer research is critical. The core customer drivers that are derived provide focus and consistency through the project and help drive good design decisions.

Second, don’t be afraid to iterate multiple times to get to the final solution – it’s surprising what issues you can miss the first time that you discover in future iterations.

Third, it’s important to explore creativity in the methods you use, and accept that you won’t get things perfect every time. The use of theatre actors was controversial but we were willing to try it and evolve it. This resulted in a great outcome.

Fourth, don’t underestimate the importance of environmental factors when setting up your test environment. We did not initially realize how important the noise factor was in our testing. As you test, always get feedback from participants as to how the environment can be improved.

And lastly, when testing physical space environments, have engineers available throughout testing to make changes as you see opportunities for improvement.

There seem to be a lot of innovative design ideas coming out of New Zealand these days. Is there something in the air down there?

New Zealand is a small country with only 4 million people but our opportunities lie in taking innovative ideas, products and services to the world.

Sometimes I think it is the fact we are stuck at the bottom of the world and often have limited resources that forces us to think outside the square and be creative in the solutions that we dream up.

The User Experience Masterclass takes place on September 20 in Montreal.

Photo by Yoshimai via flickr

I walk down the air bridge practically naked. My iPhone and laptop are packed away, my latest issue of The New Yorker is sitting at home with the mail.

In my civilian life, I won’t go to the grocery store without bringing an emergency supply of podcasts for the 15-minute trip.

But for this nine-hour journey from Montreal to Frankfurt, via Amsterdam, I decide to put my media and entertainment destiny entirely in the hands of KLM Royal Dutch Airways.

Customization vs. Curation

Both in flight and on the ground, most new technology falls into one of two categories: curated or customizable. On one hand, on-demand entertainment (think TiVo), à la carte purchasing (think iTunes) and personalized aggregation (think RSS) have put content consumers in control of their media diets.

At the same time, there’s still a hunger for professionally and thoughtfully curated material. The magazine, the TV series and even the venerable album may be going digital, but they’re not going away.

We’re seeing this tug-of-war play out in the airline world as well. While British Airways, for example, continues to stack its seatback system with new content and features, Southwest Airlines is set on helping passengers connect to the Internet using their own laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

At home, I’m a media control freak. I get my news from a hodgepodge of hand-picked feeds. I stream the TV shows I want, when I want (so while everyone is talking about Treme, I’m just getting into The Wire, two years after the finale).

But when I’m in the travel headspace, I prefer a more select menu. I want to see that movie I missed in theatres or immerse myself in a long, juicy read. And I don’t want to think too hard about it either. On this flight, I want KLM to do the work for me.

The Magazine Experience

Like many of my fellow passengers seated in economy, I begin my trip by reaching for the inflight magazine. The June issue of the Holland Herald is rather vaguely called “The Together Issue” and features a hand-drawn flock of flamingos on the cover.

Despite its newspaper-y name and so-so art direction, the Herald is a rich and engaging read. I enjoy a history-laden feature on Hangzhou’s enormous bike-sharing program (the first in China), a narrative story by French author Dominique Lapierre about driving a Rolls-Royce across India in the 1970s, and a shorter piece about an IKEA-made flat-pack home in Sweden.

Equally varied are the Herald’s advertisers. In addition to the usual suspects (Armani, IWC watches), I flip through ads for Bose headphones, select-service hotel chain Radisson Blu, a Dutch beach-tour company and the city of Free State, South Africa.

It’s nice to see an airline acknowledge that not every passenger is looking for ­– or can afford – a luxury car or designer perfume.

The Interactive Experience

After wearing out my eyes, I plug in my headphones and prepare to be entertained. KLM’s inflight system consists of a relatively small seatback screen and a hand-held controller that looks like it was designed by the makers of Super Nintendo. The controls are awkward and stiff and the response time is frustratingly slow.

But KLM offers a good deal of eclectic – if oddly categorized – content (who knew Mars Attacks was a “classic drama”?) The world movie section features dozens of Arabic, Dutch, Italian and Japanese films. My musical options range from Beyonce to Itzhak Perlman, and the audio book library includes titles by Michael J. Fox, Cormac McCarthy and Jules Verne.

I watch an episode of the new Jason Schwartzman comedy, appropriately titled Bored to Death, followed by the Coen brothers’ stark and stunning A Serious Man, which had been on my radar for a while.

I then indulge in a game of Tetris which, I’m delighted to learn, is an extremely faithful remake of the original Nintendo version. That explains the retro handset.

Back to Earth

After a stillborn nap, I decide to cozy up with the most innocuous movie I can find: Steve Carrell and Tina Fey’s Date Night. The system warns me that the film is longer than our remaining flight time, and I can’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment. That’s when I realize KLM has done a pretty good job.

Given the wealth of Dutch design talent, it’s time for the Netherlands’ national airline to recruit some first-class graphic artists to dress up its magazine and interaction designers to bring its GUI into the touch-screen era. But when it comes to providing diverse, relevant and compelling content, KLM is on top of its game.

With only 30 minutes to make my connection in Schiphol I hightail it to the gate, spurred on by the pep talk I received from the KLM check-in staff at YUL. As I step onto the Cityhopper to Frankfurt, I see that the seats on this smaller plane are screen-free. And for the first time all day, I miss my iPhone and the freedom that comes with it.

The app includes our exclusive Q&As with the world’s top thinkers, our signature Engagement Checkups – in which we examine what travel brands are doing with social media – and the entire Sparksheet archive.

Wait, did we mention it was free?

The Spark App is recommended for airport layovers, pitch meetings, lunch breaks, brainstorming sessions, WiFi-less flights and those late-night conference calls when you need some inspiration and can’t turn on the light (thanks to Slate for the inspiration).

Download it now from the iTunes Store and let us know what you think!

image by Ellen Von Unwerth

In my day-to-day work performing user-experience research and design, I put a lot of effort into understanding the psychological needs of those who use technology.

Last month, I spent a sum total of about 50 hours in flight during a pilgrimage through India. In addition to the many eye-opening revelations that came from walking the burgeoning land of my ancestors, my designer’s mind noted a major disconnect between the user experience of Air India’s inflight entertainment systems and the diversity of its passengers.

Sure, there were standard usability flaws like disorganized information architecture, slow response times, and ergonomic problems with the remote control. But a more fundamental problem lay in the system’s content strategy.

It all started with Air India’s movie selection, which consisted of about eight Hollywood new releases, a few “classics” (which, strangely, included Die Hard), and an array of Bollywood movies. It quickly became clear to me that I wasn’t very interested in any of the new releases: 500 Days of Summer (a theatric exploration of dating), The Proposal (an American tale of a green-card wedding), and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (about a womanizer confronted with the error of his ways during his brother’s wedding), to name a few.

Notice a pattern? All the English-language selections were romantic comedies selected to attract members of the Indian culture, in which love and marriage are a very different affair.

As Die Hard was ending, I tried to figure out why I clearly hadn’t figured into the target audience of Air India’s inflight content. I looked around at my fellow passengers and realized many of them were likely worse off. Sure, it was a flight from Canada to India via England, but the passengers appeared to come from a much wider range of countries and backgrounds. The content selection simply wasn’t appropriate for such a multicultural audience, and this was contributing to a poor user experience.

Designing for multiple cultures is not a new problem. I was recently involved in an exhaustive analysis of how well adapted international airline websites are to local cultures, based on factors such as the proper use of language and culturally sensitive imagery (Emirates came out on top). These sorts of studies always produce some surprising findings; did you know the Chinese have a very specific interpretation of the colour yellow?

The fact is that an airline’s clientele is inherently diverse and multicultural, and no carrier’s inflight entertainment can satisfy every passenger. But it can be internally consistent, positive and universal.

Consider the restaurant model, in which customers happily perform the host culture’s customs as part of the dining experience. We use chopsticks for Chinese food, eat with our hands at an Ethiopian restaurant, and sit on the floor at a sushi joint.

In the same vein, Air India could benefit from a user-experience strategy that emphasizes the brand’s role as an ambassador of a culturally rich society. The cabin crew already sports traditional dress and the inflight meal is unmistakably Indian, so why not also embrace this cultural expression in passenger entertainment?

Air India’s infight system could emphasize documentaries and programs that showcase the uniqueness of Indian media, introduce international passengers to the peculiarities of Indian culture, and complement the content with a distinctly Indian aesthetic (stylistic touches, decoration, music).

This strategy would exploit the natural curiosities of international travellers while creating an unforgettable brand experience. And on my next flight to India, instead of watching Die Hard – twice – I might learn a bit more about where I come from, and where I’m headed.

© Dan Lamont

Brent Friedman is Co-Founder and President of Electric Farm Entertainment.

How did you get major brands like Kodak and Verizon to sign on to something as new and untested as transmedia storytelling?

Our first transmedia project, Afterworld, was a great litmus test for the model. It became something that we could use to showcase what we were capable of from a production quality and creative standpoint, as well as a business standpoint. I mean, the reach that we got with Afterworld was globally over 20 million views and it made money!

So, although we didn’t have any sponsorship on that project, when we did Gemini Division as our next project, everybody could see we had credibility. We got Rosario Dawson interested and once we had her, and we had NBC, and we had Sony, we had the confidence to go after some big sponsors.

We got Cisco and Intel and Acura and UPS and Microsoft all as sponsorship integration deals on Gemini Division. It was an embarrassment of riches, but it was also too many balls to juggle. So by the time we got to Valemont and Woke Up Dead, we decided it’s better to have one sponsor take on a bigger role in our project. It just becomes too difficult to manage all of those relationships while you’re also trying to produce content.

Transmedia projects produced by Brent Friedman for Electric Farm Entertainment (chart by Sparksheet)

What have been the most effective ways to work these brands into your stories?

You really have to sit down and explore what it is that the brand wants to communicate; what aspect of their brand do they want to represent in this story, or in this experience? Taking the Verizon example, before we even knew that brand was on board, we had embraced this idea that the central narrative device of Valemont was going to be a cell phone.

When you’re working in two- to three-minute episodes you need shortcuts. Something I learned in video games was to cut out the first act of set up – jump right into the action – and the way we thought we could do that in Valemont was to give our main character all the clues she needed in the very first two-minute episode. Give her a cell phone with all the digital fragments of her brother’s life – his voicemails, his text messages, pictures, videos – so she could solve the mystery of his murder one clue, one episode at a time… using a Verizon branded phone, of course.

How do you integrate your sponsors into the narrative without insulting your audience’s intelligence?

That’s another thing I learned as a story consultant at EA [Electronic Arts], the video game company. When I was there they were really embracing the verisimilitude of advertising. It used to be that you had a major league baseball game, for example, and all of the signage inside the parks were jokes, they were parodies of real ads.

But then they started getting feedback that the game would seem more real if there were real ads that simulated the experience of being in a ballpark. And I think a light went on in everybody’s head – “Oh, wait a minute, they’re not going to feel that’s advertising, they’re going to feel that that’s reality” – because we live in a branded world. So from our standpoint, we could make a fake phone, and we could make a fake wireless carrier, but that would take you out of reality.

What are some of the ways in which you enabled your audience to interact with the story, as well as the brand?

As a kind of nexus of the entire ARG [alternate reality game] and interactive experience, we built a faux Valemont University website that we modeled after real 21st century college websites. Students could apply to Valemont University and when they were accepted, they got their own virtual phone through the website.

That became their communication device, where they got text messages and pictures and videos sent to them from characters in the show. And that was also a Verizon-branded phone, so it became a replicate experience to the show’s main character.

Both Woke Up Dead and Valemont have more or less completed the run of their episodes. How have your sponsors been able to realize some ROI on these projects?

We were able to offer click-throughs to the Kodak website. They featured Woke Up Dead on their main site and got a lot of attention for that. I think they really got a lot of return on their investment in terms of what it did for their brand., because it connected a new demographic to their digital cameras and made using them fun and cool. Plus, it allowed Kodak to loosen up their brand identity. In terms of actual numbers – selling cameras – I don’t know. But I do know that they couldn’t be happier with the whole experience.

Verizon was excited about a lot of things that happened on the show; the number of people who enrolled in Valemont U completely exceeded everyone’s expectations. The amount of engagement, the time that people were spending on Valemont U, the number of fans we garnered on Facebook, as well as the amount of streams they were getting to their V CAST users of Valemont was through the roof.

The retention rate of the Valemont episodes when they aired on TV was also off the charts. But most importantly, it wasn’t that people were watching the show, it was that they were engaging with the content.

And because Verizon was integrated into that whole experience, from the episodes to the websites, they felt like they were getting a lot of great exposure.

As a transmedia storyteller, how important is it to create a community around your content?

I think at this stage of the game it’s one of the most vital things. I think what’s happened is that there used to be this kind of wall between creators and audience. It used to be a one-way experience where creators created and they distributed to an audience at whatever time they chose to give it to them, for however long and for whatever price. Those days are gone and that wall has come down, and now you don’t have creators and audience, you have co-collaborators.

You have people who initiate the content and you have fans who invest in the content and even help market it virally. And I think that that relationship is going to be key going forward because the audience has become so empowered and so enabled because of the technology.

Something else I picked up at EA is the notion of “a universe worthy of devotion.” When you look at a project or a franchise like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, it’s not just that the movies themselves were successful. It’s that those worlds have been so fleshed out, so well conceived in their 3-D qualities, that fans want to go live there, they want to explore that world. The key is to create content experiences that satisfy that compulsion.

Taking Valemont as an example, what was the most surprising way in which your audience became part of the story?

We initially decided we didn’t want to have a fan forum on the Valemont University site. We were trying to create what feels like a real university site, so we couldn’t have fans talking about the TV show on it.

We thought we’d have a Facebook page where fans can gather and talk. But that’s not really a forum, that’s more of a bulletin board.

And so, without any prompting, a group of hardcore fans rose up and created the Valemont Commons, which is a very good replica of our Valemont U site. They emulated the design of the VU site, and created an adjunct, essentially, where fans could gather, and they did a really smart thing: they created an “on campus” portion of the forum where people could be in character and talk about Valemont as if it were a real institution, and then they had “off campus”, where you could kind of step back and talk about the show.

That happened instantaneously. It happened within the first week of the show being released.

Is transmedia a niche, or is it the future of entertainment?

It’s definitely the future. I think that what’s happening is that storytelling is taking on a different life because people are looking for a different level of experience. I think that transmedia producers are actually rising up to meet a need. I think that it’s an emotional, psychological need to not just watch passively anymore.

I think there is both an opportunity and a challenge for content creators. To trust the audience, to invite them in and let them make it their own. That’s exciting for creators and fans. And you don’t really have enough of that right now.

Honestly, I always look to video games when I want to peek into the future. Everything you’re seeing from Project Natal, which is creating interactivity in terms of not just movement recognition, but voice recognition, eye recognition, emotion recognition – it’s putting the viewer, the audience, into the game, into the movie, into the web series, and once they’re in there, they don’t want to just watch. They want to be part of that world.

I don’t know how far off that is as a mainstream technology, but that’s what kind of keeps me going – the idea that I’ll be around to not just see something like this, but to actually create a next-gen experience like that.

Wiki-Seating

A Web-based pre-flight discussion board can help customers connect at the very beginning of the journey cycle. Giving passengers the option of sharing their travel plans, interests and destinations before the flight could help users build their own “wiki-seating plan” together. Business travellers could choose to sit next to fellow attendees of a particular conference. Backpackers could find like-minded travellers to explore with.

Itinerary-sharing sites like vtravelled and social applications like Dopplr are already allowing passengers to connect and share information. But why should airlines concede this ground to outside parties (or in vtravelled’s case, leave the network itself on the ground)? Consider the long-term branding power of your customized application being responsible for a new pair of travel buddies, business partners or even close friends.

Social Embodiment In Flight

Enabling passengers to access Twitter from their seats is a great start. But why not construct your own inflight social network? I’m not just talking about seat-to-seat chat. That’s so AIM; this is the Facebook era. Passengers could volunteer biographical information that can be used to generate relevant social statistics. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that “14 people on this plane are flying for the first time,” or that “there are seven Spanish speakers on this flight”? A sophisticated social interface could allow passengers to customize their privacy settings, allowing more discreet passengers to participate in conversation threads without feeling vulnerable.

This type of content could also be a key marketing point, as statistics could present brand-specific information (i.e. “64 percent of the people on this plane booked their flight through Cheaptickets.com” or “59 people on this plane are staying at Holiday Inn”). If Facebook has taught us anything, it’s that people are happy to share personal information – with both people and brands – so long as they get something in return. That something could be a new best friend, an interesting bit of trivia or a great last-minute deal at a local spa.

Completing the Journey Cycle

The socializing doesn’t have to stop at the terminal. Your inflight system can help passengers coordinate their plans upon arrival. An interactive map of the destination city could allow passengers to pinpoint their hotels or conference centers – and figure out the best way to get there. The system could easily suggest social groups who might benefit from sharing a taxi, helping each other find a connecting flight, or sharing a drink during the layover. By providing these services inflight, you can keep passengers off their PDAs and engaged with your brand and partners throughout the journey.

It’s great to see airlines embracing social media. But it’s time to realize that your airplanes are social media with the ability to convert strangers into travel mates and frequent flyers into loyal customers. With a scientific approach to product design, you can turn your inflight system into a Transumer gateway. The key to real aircraft connectivity is right in front of your nose – or rather, in the back of your seat.

What’s the connection between content and interaction design? How do you take into account the product’s ultimate function – whether it’s entertainment or information delivery or communications – in the design process?

If we think of content in a broad sense, most interactive products have to do with content: either consuming it (watching an online slideshow), generating it (digital cameras), manipulating it (Photoshop), or some combination of those (social network sites like Facebook). For interaction designers, the important thing is to consider what it means to do one of these activities in the context of use, and design for that.

On the consumption end of the spectrum, often the interaction designer’s job is simply one of providing tools to find and navigate the content structure and to get the hell out of the way. On the generation and manipulation side of the spectrum, it’s a lot more complex, because sometimes the focus is on the tool itself, not just the content.

What effect does or should the aircraft environment have on interaction design? How do you account for tangibles like ambient lighting levels and less tangibles like user frame of mind?

Interaction design is all about behaviour, so things like lighting levels can affect that, helping put travellers into a different state of mind so that different behaviours seem acceptable or expected. Think of the cool violet lighting inside a Virgin America aircraft for instance. And certainly products like the back-of-the-seat touchscreen systems have changed life for the better for travellers by giving them a modicum of control in a situation that used to be entirely regimented.

The addition of the touchscreens can change the way processes have traditionally worked. To use another Virgin America example, the ability to directly order food and drinks from your seat whenever you want pretty much eliminates the need for beverage and meal service.

Ordering drinks on Virgin America's inflight system

What are your thoughts on the proliferation of interactive terminals for travellers—I’m thinking of everything from airport check-in terminals to tourist visitor centres to subway ticket counters. Do you think travellers have been adequately served by interaction designers in this context? Is there any area where person-to-person interaction is always better?

I think they’re great. They are the best additions to a massive service since ATMs became part of banking. Travellers have been well served by them, I think, and are getting better served every day, with online and mobile applications in addition to kiosks. Of course, like with ATM and bank tellers, there are situations too complex for the regular system to handle; sometimes you just need a person to explain a situation to, and they can use the more powerful tools at their disposal – as well as their knowledge of the system – to address complex problems. Not everything can be turned into hardware/software. Nor should everything be – major systems like transportation are so complex, it takes humans to work them.

What are some ways that brands can engage users through interactive interfaces? What are some examples of effective engagement, and where have people been turned off?

The simple answer to this is to make great products that meet people’s needs and that they enjoy using. That will make a positive connection in customers’ minds to the brand. Of course, that’s really hard.

I think it’s important for companies to remember that, except in some rare circumstances, customers aren’t there to “experience your brand”. They are there to do something. If you make it easy and pleasurable to do those activities, it creates brand loyalty. If even a fraction of the money spent on marketing and advertising was spent to make interactive products better, you’d see a huge improvement.

You can see effective engagement in products like the iPhone, TiVo, Facebook, Twitter. They are all products people use and then advocate for. You can tell bad products because people quickly tire of them or are reluctant to use them unless necessary. Products that are ugly and poorly thought out. We’re surrounded by this stuff all the time.

Well Fargo's popular ATM interface

Are gestural interfaces going to replace touch screens or other traditional interfaces? Are they simply a more advanced technology or is there still a place for good old push buttons?

To paraphrase Bill Buxton, all technologies are good for some things and bad for others. I imagine a future – a near future – where gestures, touchscreens, and mechanical/physical interfaces all exist side by side, used when and where appropriate based on the context of use. Take public restrooms, for instance. Gestural interfaces (in sinks, paper towel dispensers, hand driers, etc.) seem to have taken root there, in part because it makes both practical (because the less you touch in public bathrooms, the better) and business (it saves water, paper, and electricity) sense. Touchscreens and certainly not keyboards and mice don’t belong there. Likewise, I don’t see keyboards vanishing from offices anytime soon, because they are quite good for doing large amounts of data and text entry. I think we’re still in the process of finding out what gestural interfaces are good for, really.

Are gestural interfaces culturally sensitive? Is the iPhone as “intuitive” for someone in China or India as it is for someone in San Francisco?

Gestures certainly are culturally sensitive. The OK sign, for instance, is very offensive in certain parts of the world, as is a thumbs up. Touchscreen products have their own interaction design language that has to be learned, the same way there is a language on the desktop software (“cut and paste,” for instance). The hope is that there is less of a learning curve for products that are manipulated directly with the fingers than with a mouse or via menus. I don’t know if that is necessarily true, but anecdotally we keep hearing about children as young as two picking up iPhones and figuring them out. If children who can’t read can use something, it should translate across borders pretty well.

You edit a blog called No Ideas But In Things where you feature mechanical interfaces that inspire you. What are some of your favourite interaction designs from the physical world?

I really love controls for heavy machinery like cranes, bulldozers, and the like. There is something about their bluntness and clarity that all designers can learn from. Plus, the icons are incredible. Since a lot of the operators now don’t read English, there are more icons than words. My favourite was a Fast/Slow lever that had a rabbit on one side and a turtle on the other. Genius.

Hospital bed controls via No Idea But In Things

Are there any everyday appliances that you think ought to be completely redesigned? Is there a point of no return at which the way something works becomes so intuitive to most people that it can no longer be reconfigured?

Most of the appliances we have now have been refined over decades, so there are probably only incremental changes we’re going to see to them. Although who knows? I’d love to design a gestural stove. And the initiative to be more environmentally friendly may cause some changes in food preparation and storage that require new appliances.

It’s more likely we’re going to see the interplay of our appliances, and them becoming smarter and more aware. Dishwashers running when energy is the cheapest, for instance. Stoves that detect burning and lower the heat.

I don’t think there is ever a point when a product can’t be improved. Forks, for instance, evolved over several centuries. But the TV, for instance, was a fairly stable technology until DVRs disrupted the service.

What are the differences between designing for the stressed commuter, rushed businessman, Luddite senior citizen, multitasking teen, etc.? Do you aim for the lowest common denominator when designing a user interface, or for a specific demographic?

You might have all these seemingly diverse groups, but they might all have the same expectations, motivations, and behaviour. Those are the three key components to think about when designing. When there is variation in those, you have to figure out how much the interface has to adjust for. In some circumstances, like for public transit ticketing machines, it is designing for the widest acceptable range. For many other products, that’s not the case at all. You target one set of expectations, motivations, and behaviour and that is your product. Other products are made from other sets of those characteristics.

What are some common mistakes you’ve seen in other people’s designs? Any pet peeves?

Emphasizing the wrong button is one I see frequently. Drives me crazy. Squint at the screen or the device and see what is the most prominent item. If it isn’t supposed to be the most important control, the design is likely wrong.

Saffer’s presentation on gestural interfaces at the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference in New York City