From Print to Web to e-paper - the challenge of designing the e-newspaper

• Newspapers have a long tradition and centuries of experience behind today’s newspaper design. Pages, headlines, columns and fonts have been tuned in form and function to optimize content and context. They are all part of a user friendly and universally accepted product. Newspapers have two internationally recognizable formats, i.e. broadsheet or tabloid, familiar to readers all over the world. The first online newspapers appeared ten years ago in 1994, and since then research has been done to gain knowledge about how to design user friendly news sites. Today, we are facing the introduction of yet another media channel, the e-newspaper, which once again will require new design solutions for the graphical user interface (GUI).E-paper is a wide and not defined term. For this paper we limit our research to e-newspaper that will emerge on a new breed of e-Reader terminals based on E-Ink technology. These future terminals will most likely be in the size of 5-8” in size and have been used as a base for his paper.The change in the dimensions of printed broadsheet or tabloid newspapers into a smaller, digital e-paper format will radically change the user experience. Presumably, this e-newspaper solution will not replace the web but rather aim to replace the printed newspaper in the future. When designing for e- newspaper, the best from both worlds, i.e. print and web, should be considered in combination with the unique advantages of this new media.Traditional newspapers hold the advantages of portability and readability while the online newspapers enable continuous updates and user interaction. The e-newspaper offers faster and cheaper distribution than the traditional newspaper but not the same interactivity that the web offers. Further, the production and distribution of the e-newspaper is more environmentally friendly.In this paper we a) give an overview of the design possibilities and constraints of the e-paper technology, b) discuss design solutions from print and web that could be transferred to the e-paper media and c) present early empirical results from different studies. One study reports from experiences of prototyping e-newspaper interfaces. Another study presents results from interviews with designers at ten different newspapers, representing the publisher perspective.Based on the above we propose a set of future scenarios for e-newspaper design. These scenarios will be used as basis for future research and prototype development in the research community as well as within the newspaper industry.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Medieteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Media and Communication Technology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

E-newspapers

Electronic newspapers

E-papers

Design

GUI

Future scenarios

Publikations- och innehållstyp

pop (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)