What should news apps on the iPad look like? John-Henry Barac on space & touch in digital news design

By Joshua Benton

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad last month, there were immediate debates over what kind of impact it would have on both the news habits of consumers and the bottom lines of news organizations. But one thing seemed obvious: that the iPad would be a glorious playground for user-interface designers, information architects, and others who think about how information should be found, structured, consumed, and designed. That 9.7-inch screen, combined with the iPhone’s multitouch interface, will inspire some innovative new ways to present news. At the unveiling, the only taste we got of these new ideas was The New York Times’ iPad app (above), which brought a bit of the typography and layout DNA of the print newspaper onto the device.

To think about these issues, I got in touch with John-Henry Barac. He spent a decade at The Guardian on the print side, as an art director and designer, then moved to the digital world. As a consultant, he designed The Guardian’s first iPhone app, which stands out as one of the more interesting within the iPhone news app world, much of which bears a certain bland sameness. (I particularly liked the small tag icon that allows the curious to quickly match other stories to the keywords of the current one.) John-Henry’s now an independent design consultant, anxious to get his hands on an iPad and to explore the new medium.

Here’s an edited version of our conversation. Among the topics we discuss:

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Is online news just ramen noodles? What media economics research can teach us about valuing paid content

By Seth C. Lewis

The New York Times’ announcement that it would be charging for some access to its website, starting in 2011, rekindled yet another round of debate about paywalls for online news. Beyond the practical question (will it work?) or the theoretical one (what does this mean for the Times’ notion of the “public”?), there remains another question to be untangled here — perhaps one more relevant to the smaller papers who might be thinking of following the Times’ example:

What is the underlying economic value of online news, anyway? Keep reading »