Latitude Research°

Innovative Thinkers Wanted: How Do YOU Envision the Future of Storytelling?

Kim Gaskins — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:57:16 +0000

Click here to go directly to the survey, or read on for more information. ($50 Amazon cards will awarded to 20 individuals with the best responses.*)

Study Background

Latitude has been at work on a new, multi-phase innovation study, The Future of Storytelling. We’re aiming to uncover the questions, challenges, and aspirations of tomorrow’s storytellers, and identify how they can better align with audiences’ changing expectations. (You can read more about the study’s goals here.)

So far, we’ve spoken with a number of experts and innovators in the emerging “transmedia” space to understand what kinds of challenges leading-edge content creators are facing, and what the “next big thing” might be, as seen from their perspective.

Now Seeking Forward-Thinking Participants

Now, we turn to you: we’d love for you to tell us what kinds of stories are resonating with you now—and, more importantly, what kinds of storytelling experiences you’d like to be having in the future. (Do you follow your favorite TV character on Twitter? Watch webisodes with bonus content? Ever wish you could influence the course of events in a story? How about have a dynamic conversation with one of the characters about whatever’s on your mind? Or maybe … )

We’ve devised a survey (which takes approximately 15 minutes to complete) with basic questions about how you experience media in various contexts and a couple of open-ended questions where we invite you to get creative about possible futures for storytelling. We’re offering $50 Amazon cards to 20 individuals with the best responses.*

Click here to go to the survey.

*The 20 best responses are determined by Latitude’s team upon closing of the survey, and should be considered final/non-negotiable. Rewards will be issued within 4 weeks’ time. Please take the survey only once—additional data from the same participant will be discarded and considered not eligible for reward.

Privacy and information-use note: more information about privacy and attribution are available at the very beginning of the survey. Latitude respects the privacy of its participants. Unless you choose to be personally attributed when prompted in the survey (in the event we wish to publish your input openly), we will never publish your responses in a personally identifiable way. If you do not wish to be personally attributed, we reserve the right to publish your input but not in a personally identifiable way (e.g. “Female, 29, New York, NY”). Latitude will never sell your information or make it available to third parties. “The Future of Storytelling” is a self-sponsored, non-client study designed, run, and published by Latitude.

Got questions? Contact: life-connected@latd.com

InnoQ: What’s a Quantified Self Worth? [Mini-Survey]

Kim Gaskins — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:21:10 +0000

Latitude’s InnoQ activities are designed to let individuals engage with us in playful, “bite-sized” ways, providing us with different, ongoing data streams that we can analyze and share as insights with our community. We’ll continue to add new, interesting ways for you to engage with us and become an active contributor to our research. Check back at latd.com for InnoQ findings or connect with us on Twitter and Facebook.

This Week’s Topic: The Quantified Self

(You can scroll down to skip right to the survey.)

Many people are familiar with the story of two innovators at Wired, co-founder Kevin Kelly and contributing editor Gary Wolf, who picked up on the rise in self-tracking tendencies, and created a blog called “The Quantified Self” in 2008 to explore the topic further. Now, with the growing popularity of mobile apps (like Mint, LoseIt and RunKeeper) and new sensor-based gadgets (like headbands that track your sleep cycles and GPS-enabled Nike+ shoes), most tech-forward people have dabbled in self-quantification. Why are we so captivated by data-driven self-knowledge? Because “unless something can be measured, it cannot be improved,” Kelly tells us.

Because self-tracking isn’t anything new to many of us, we’re already generating loads of data—and companies are, more and more, realizing the value of this data. Interestingly, a recent survey found that individuals think of personal data-sharing with companies as a two-way street, with 86% of consumers seeing major benefits to sharing their data with businesses online. Understanding why, how, and with whom we share our data is becoming an increasingly interesting and complex task as new self-quantification tools and possibilities arise. Fill out the mini-survey below to tell us what you think.

Survey not displaying correctly? Try this instead.

Image credit: Riaz Kanani, (cc) some rights reserved.

Study: Robots Inspire New Learning & Creativity Possibilities for Kids

Kim Gaskins — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:40:53 +0000

In January 2012, Latitude Research completed a multi-phase innovation study (published in collaboration with LEGO® Learning Institute and Project Synthesis), Robots @ School, asking kids across the world to illustrate and write a story that answers this question: “What would happen if robots were a part of your everyday life—at school and beyond?”

Download the study summary (PDF) here.

“I have a few problems in spelling. The robot shall support me and improve me until I am at the same level as my classmates. The teacher tells the robot where my problems are. The robot is looking for one of his many stored programs and dictates to me. I write what he says and correct it. He can also wrinkle his forehead when something is not right. He continually encourages me even when I have not done so well.” —Girl, 10, Germany

“RJ is a cool dude robot. He looks like a transformer robot, and with a click of a button he shows me his screen. It then looks like a laptop. I may type my work into the laptop, instead of writing. Then RJ fixes my spelling, and tells me when my sentence is wrong. That way the teacher does not see all the mistakes, but can see how good my idea is.” —Boy, 12, South Africa

Overall, the study found that robots are helping to reveal a potential shift in kids’ social and learning psychologies—moving from acts of knowledge transmission toward acts of exploration, collaboration, and creation. This suggests new opportunities for educators and technologists to better address common frustrations children encounter in the learning process, to inspire self-direction and creative risk-taking, and to enhance kids’ experiences with technology more broadly.

Research Overview

Nearly 350 kid-innovators, ages 8-12, from Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have participated in the Robots @ School study, submitting drawings and text-based narratives of their imagined experiences with robots. (Latitude is currently planning to expand the study to include children in Asia.) An album containing some select submissions from our participants can be viewed here.

Researchers scored kids’ stories on variables relating to human-robot relationships and the dimensions of human-robot activities (e.g., play, learning, creation, and exploration). The infographic below captures some of the insights derived from children’s submissions:

Click here to view a larger version. Infographic created by Latitude in collaboration with ffunction, (cc) some rights reserved.

Key Insights

Smart = Social, Machines Tell Us
By and large, kids (64%) described robots as if they were natural, human-like companions: as humanoid peers that could speak and communicate with ease, came “pre-loaded” with smarts and useful knowledge, and were social naturals. While many of us tend to think of robots as boxy and mechanical in appearance, a full 1/3 of kids explicitly described their robots’ physical form as human-like, and 29% bothered to specify that their robots’ primary mode of interaction was speech.

“My teacher treated my robot just like she was a real human student. My friends treated my robot like a human, too. She is friendly and funny and she fits in with all of us. No one would ever know that she is a robot except that she is made of metal and does not have skin. She is really smart and everyone likes to talk to her. She has a funny voice, but we do not tease her.” —Girl, 8, United States

We know from our previous work with kids that they tend to view technology as something fundamentally human (rather than separate from humanness, as many adults perceive it). Not surprisingly, robots tended to be easily assimilated into kids’ existing peer groups. Unlike most kids in the study’s age range, who are starting to deal with social cliques and the complexities of popularity, robots possess an enviable ability to fit in with other kids—to be natural fixtures in peer groups because, not in spite, of their smarts. In other words, being a nerd is a net positive, not a social stigma, in kids’ story worlds. This is, no doubt, also true in the real world (sans robots) for today’s digital natives—robots simply helped to illuminate what kids value in social scenarios.
Robots Free Us to Learn and Create in New Ways
The majority of kids’ robots (75%*) acted patient and supportive in educational contexts. Many kids expressed that their parents sometimes didn’t have time to help them with their homework, or couldn’t explain things in the best way, despite their efforts.

“While children imagine robots that are virtually human in many regards, it’s their slight machine-ness that ultimately makes robots such effective partners for learning and creative exploration,” explains Ian Schulte, Latitude’s director of technology and business development, who led the study. “Robots support and encourage, but don’t judge. They don’t run into scheduling conflicts, and they certainly don’t ostracize kids for wrong answers or unconventional thinking. Because they’re just mechanical enough, robots enable kids to grow and explore without regard for social stigmas that so often stifle learning and creativity.” Since robots fulfill a range of emotional needs, they can render learning more fun and “approachable,” making kids eager to tackle even boring or rote material.

“The robot is like a new friend for me. It can [help me with my homework] much better than my parents because it knows exactly how to explain the lessons to a kid like me. The robot is very smart and can answer a lot of questions for me and tell me interesting stories. He always reminds me of all possible things, which I would have otherwise forgotten.” —Boy, 9, Germany

On a practical level, 25% of kids imagined robots that could help with chores or other “low level” responsibilities, freeing them up to pursue higher-order learning and creative activities—two processes (creating and learning) which were strongly linked in kids’ minds.
Let’s Close the Divide Between Learning and Play
While one might expect kids to create more stories about play than learning, an equal number (38%) focused on each of these themes. Kids are quick to see learning and play as related, often overlapping, activities, even if their lives are much more compartmentalized in practice (e.g., school, after-school activities, family obligations, etc.).

They recognize that they shouldn’t have to make trade-offs between learning and playing, and tended not to make hard choices between the two in their narratives; instead, kids (with their robots) moved fluidly between learning and play, and oftentimes participated in activities at the intersection of both. On one end of the spectrum, a robot might help a child make a game out of his or her math homework; on the other end, the act of building a fort can become an educational process. In the middle, kids seek to learn either physical or academic skills because doing so is enjoyable in itself.

Implications and Opportunities

Robots @ School sought to understand kids’ learning psychologies and to identify common hurdles in the educational process where robots (or other tech solutions) could offer them assistance, such as by:

making academic pacing feel more personalized to each child with intelligent, interactive technologies that feel genuinely “human” in certain respects
creating a more patient and accepting learning atmosphere by allowing tech—with its limitless time and “superhuman” tenacity—to sometimes fill the role of teacher
leveraging kids’ “relevance filter” to emphasize to them the importance of gaining certain kinds of knowledge, with the help of technology or without
offering opportunities for kids to learn in ways that feel more like play—such as through proactive, exploratory, open-ended projects that involve Web technologies: activities which are increasingly valuable for developing internet-age competencies like sharing, remixing, and repurposing others’ work

Download the full report to read more about opportunities for educators, entrepreneurs, technologists, and interactive content creators.

“Larry [the robot] said to me, ‘Look, maths is an important part of your life and you will be using it a lot in the future. If you don’t do maths now with me, I won’t be a close friend.’ I said, ‘Ok I will do it,’ so we raced each other with multiplication and he won but I got a better score than I got at school. Every time we did it I got better and started to kind of like maths. When we finished, I said to Larry, ‘Thanks for caring about me.’” —Girl, 11, Australia

“Children fall in love with robots because of the bots’ ambiguous nature (between animate and inanimate), relative autonomy (responsive yet with a mind of their own), and singular ‘personality.’ Bots have a way of being that is alien and surprising yet, at the same time, familiar enough to be recognizable, and endearing enough to be ‘be-friended,’” explains Edith Ackermann, an honorary professor of developmental psychology at the University of Aix-Marseille I in France and a visiting scientist at MIT’s Design Lab. “Because robots do things (as if driven from within), they capture our imagination and are treated differently than inert objects; from transitional objects, they become alter egos. A child’s infatuation with robots is at the image of our own endless human quest for renewed identity.”

Latitude 42 Study: Robots @ School

Study lead: Ian Schulte
Supporting analyst: Jessica Reinis

*This percentage is based on total number of submissions that were possible to code on this variable, rather than total number of study participants.

Latitude is an international research consultancy helping clients create engaging content, software and technology that harness the possibilities of the Web. To learn more about working with Latitude, fill out this form or contact Ian Schulte (ischulte@latd.com). You can click here to download more information about our full range of research and consulting services.

The LEGO® Learning Institute carries out foundational research on creativity, learning, play and child development based on the values of LEGO® play and learning. The institute has an extensive collaboration with academic experts and research institutions, to understand how to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.

Project Synthesis is an Australia-based ideas consultancy working with organisations and individuals to create action and change out of ideas and inspiration. Project Synthesis delivers projects across education, health, community and the third sector.

Image credit: ALIZ-E Project, used with permission.

2011 Online Holiday Shopping Stats Roundup

Kadley Gosselin — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:01:13 +0000

While the growth of eCommerce has been inconsistent due to economic instability and other barriers, the 2011 holiday season has given online shopping a boost across a number of platforms. People are shopping on their phones, tablets, computers—at home, in stores and even at work. This year has been the most active in eCommerce, mCommerce and newly tCommerce (tablet commerce)—with $32 billion spent online this holiday season so far (a 15% increase from last year), according to Comscore.

Holiday Shopping Season Recap

$32 billion spent online (in the first 48 days of the shopping season)
Biggest week: 12/12/11-12/18/11 consumers spent a record $6.3 billion online (Networkworld)
On Thanksgiving, 24% of all online purchases came from a mobile device (the highest share of online shopping between Nov 1 and Dec 18)

Top 3 Days for Online Spending:

Cyber Monday 11/28 – $1.251 billion
Monday 12/5 – $1.178 billion
Green Monday 12/12 – $1.133 billion
(CBR)

Top Motivators

(View the full infographic here)

mCommerce & tCommerce Recap

23.5% of smartphone and tablet owners said their device has been an integral part of their holiday shopping experience so far and they could not shop without it
On Cyber Monday, 10.8% of traffic came from mobile devices (versus 3.9% in 2010)
Mobile sales contributed 6.6% of total eCommerce sales on Cyber Monday (versus 2.3% in 2010), according to Internet Retailer
Mobile sales on Cyber Monday were 113% greater than on Black Friday (mShopper)

Top Categories Shopped via Mobile

eBay reported that the five most popular categories shopped via eBay mobile on Cyber Monday were:

Clothing, shoes and accessories
Computers and networking
Jewelry and watches
Collectibles
Sporting goods

Mobile Payments

PayPal reported a 552% increase in global mobile payment volume this Cyber Monday compared with Cyber Monday 2010
GSI Commerce (eBay’s eCommerce and mCommerce tech provider) reported a 374% increase in U.S. mobile sales this Cyber Monday compared with Cyber Monday 2010

The Typical Mobile Order

52% of all mobile shoppers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday used promotional codes
Average mobile order value: $88
Average order size: close to two items (Internet Retailer)

“Power Shopping”

Tealeaf’s recent social media study showed an interesting trend: “power shopping,” in which people claimed they were not only using their phones to help them shop in-store, but shopping via their mobile devices and shopping in the store at the same time.

Insights

Let there be discounts

As demonstrated in numerous studies, people shop online largely for the discounts. Mobile coupon codes are especially popular (52% of all mobile shoppers used them on Black Friday and Cyber Monday). Moreover, when they’re particularly easy to use, they can inspire a sense of urgency around a purchase which will often seal the deal. Discounts are appreciated in any form: SMS, browser extension tickers, and in email form.

Cash in on big spending days

While mobile devices have enabled a 24-7 shopping culture, people still rely on scheduled sale days, even—sometimes especially—if they’re shopping online. Numbers show that two of the top three days this online holiday shopping season were not spontaneous; Cyber Monday and Green Monday both grossed over $1 billion each. Cash in on shoppers’ heightened interest in retail on these specific days by offering deals that feel exceptional and not-to-miss.

Make it easy

Two of the top cited reasons for shopping online were around convenience: the ease of comparing products online and the ability to ship gifts directly to recipients. People want online shopping to be a smoother process than dodging crowds in stores—from start to finish. Make sure your mobile site (a soon-to-be necessity for eCommerce!) is user-friendly and streamlined, offering one-click-buying options wherever possible. Free shipping is also a huge draw, so make sure gifts can be personalized and shipped right to the recipient.

David Joyce

Study: Kids are the Royal Road to Tech Innovation

Kim Gaskins — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:30:12 +0000

This is part 1 of a 2-part series:

Part 2: Study: Kids Say the Future of Tech is Robots & Real-World Integration

Download the study summary (PDF) for Children’s Future Requests for Computers and the Internet.

Over the course of 2010, Latitude Research completed a multi-phase innovation study, Children’s Future Requests for Computers and the Internet, asking kids across the world to draw the answer to this question: “What would you like your computer or the Internet to do that it can’t do right now?” This study is part of a larger research initiative by Latitude that positions younger generations as a window into the future of technology, capable of informing tech experiences that resonate with people of all ages.

More than 200 kid-innovators, ages 12 and under, from North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, South Asia, and Australia, submitted drawings of their imagined technologies. By and large, kids wanted their technology to be more interactive and human, better integrated with their physical lives, and empowering to users (such as by assisting new knowledge or abilities).

“Teleport through the screen to another computer at the place of your choice.” –Male, 9, Perth, Australia

“I want an interface where we can search, not by text, but by drawing–and get image results with that particular shape or pattern.”
–Female, 12, Mumbai, India

Researchers scored kids’ inventions on the presence of specific technology themes, such as type of interface, degree of interactivity, physical-digital convergence, user’s desired end-goal, and so on.* The following infographic displays some of the top attributes present in kids’ created technologies across world regions. (Download the full PDF report summary to read more about cross-cultural differences.)

To view a larger version, click here. Infographic created by Latitude in collaboration with ffunction, (cc) some rights reserved.

The following are key insights from an analysis of children’s future requests for technology:

The Digital vs. Physical Divide is Disappearing (Tech = World)Kids today don’t neatly divide the “online” from the “offline.” For them, these two realms continue to converge as technologies become more interactive, portable, connected, and integrated with “real world” activities. Nearly 4 in 10 kids imagined technologies that integrated the virtual with the physical, such as more immersive experiences of physical spaces (e.g., real or simulated travel) or devices that assisted physical activities (e.g., playing sports). At a time when 3D movies are still a novelty and 3D televisions have just begun to hit the market, a full 9% of kids explicitly built 3D effects into their own imagined technologies.
“I’d like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real.” –Female, 10, Pakenham, Australia

“I’d like to go through the computer to the places that are inside it.” –Female, 4, Medellin, Colombia (translated from Spanish)

For kids, technology is no longer something that mediates experience, but something that pervades it. “There’s a real opportunity to create new experiences where the technology seems to disappear, where we experience the web directly–and almost magically–in the world,” says Steve Mushkin, Founder and President of Latitude who’s speaking at ReadWriteWeb’s 2WAY Summit today on the topic of kids as tech innovators.
Why Aren’t Computers More Human? (Tech = Me)Kids expressed a desire for more intuitive modes of input as well as higher degrees of responsiveness from technology. Only half of kids envisioned technologies that used the standard keyboard/mouse interface, while 36% went for more fluid interfaces: touchscreen, verbal/auditory, gestural, and even telepathic in some cases.
“Help Computer: it knows what you are thinking and does it for you–both touch and voice controlled.” –Male, 8, Brisbane, Australia

The majority of kids (77%) illustrated a technology with more dynamic, human-level responsiveness. Children in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America were much more likely to anthropomorphize computers in a direct way–to imagine them as friends or teachers that could share their experiences or help in the accomplishment of a goal. Additionally, 43% of all children drew themselves or another person interacting with their creations, highlighting the shrinking gap between gadget and user: the “iGeneration” understanding of device as merely an extension of oneself.

“A robot that would help me pick out fashion clothes everyday and dress me.” –Female, 8, Potchefstroom, South Africa
Technology Can Improve and Empower Us (Me = World)Instant access to people, information, and possibilities reinforces young users’ confidence and interest in self-development. One-third of kids invented technologies that would empower users by fostering knowledge or otherwise “adult” skills, such as speaking a different language or learning how to cook.
“I want to video kids on the other side of the world using a different kind of language.” –Female, 7, Warwick, RI, United States

“Kids want technology to either act as a companion–a friend they can enjoy various activities with–or as a tool that empowers them to grow and express themselves,” explains Jessica Reinis, a research analyst at Latitude who led the study. “In some cases, we saw the fusion of these two with kids envisioning tech as teacher.”

In addition to self-development, kids expected technology to enable and empower them as creators. One-quarter of kids’ inventions–the same number which favored gaming–centered on art or design. “Technology is a fully integrated part of kids’ lives, and this makes their creativity and their drive to create with it boundless because tech is really just an extension of themselves,” says Vanessa Van Petten, founder of Radical Parenting and author of Do I Get My Allowance Before or After I’m Grounded? Nearly 1/3 of all children went beyond simple creations, envisioning more flexible platforms for creating games, Web sites, action figures, and so on. Kids’ interest in a wide range of design fields–industrial, landscape, fashion, game, Web, and more–reflects the visual richness of the online world, as well as the can-do creative drive that tech encourages.

“I want to make up my own video game.” –Male, 8, Kennewick, WA, United States

This part 1 of a 2-part series. Check back later this week for the next installment including opportunities for creators of technology experiences for both kids and adults.

Latitude 42 Study: Children’s Future Requests for Computers & the Internet

Study lead: Jessica Reinis, Research Analyst

*Note: Reported frequencies may be based on total number of submissions that were possible to code on a given variable, rather than total number of study participants.

Image credit: Samuel Mann, (cc) some rights reserved.

Latitude is proud to have partnered with ReadWriteWeb on phase 1 of Children’s Future Requests for Computers and the Internet. Latitude is an international research consultancy helping clients create engaging content, software and technology that harness the possibilities of the Web. To learn more about working with Latitude, contact Ian Schulte (ischulte@latd.com).

Future of Storytelling Expert Series: Transmedia Best Practices from Filmmaker Sean Hood

Kim Gaskins — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 22:20:38 +0000

Recently, Latitude launched an innovation study on The Future of Storytelling. Why? So we can uncover the questions, challenges, and aspirations of tomorrow’s storytellers and identify how they can better align with audience’s changing expectations. Every week for the next several weeks, Latitude will share its conversation with a different influential individual. We’ll follow the series with a summary of best practices and insights for content creators and businesses from Latitude’s SVP, Neela Sakaria.

This week’s spotlight on Sean Hood:

Sean is a screenwriter, filmmaker, and instructor at The USC School of Cinematic Arts. He best known for horror films but more recently for action films. Sean has written screenplays for The Haunting in New York (Horror), Conan The Barbarian 3D (Fantasy), Rambo: Last Stand (Action) Blackwell (Thriller), and Subterranean (Sci-Fi). You can read his complete filmography on IMDb.

We’re glad to connect with you, Sean. We’ve been following some of your writing online, and we know you’re a very active thinker about the future of storytelling. Can you give us a little background on yourself and how you got into the “transmedia” space?

I’ve spent the last twelve years as a filmmaker. I went to the USC Graduate School of Cinematic Arts, and I’m teaching there now. Mostly, I write screenplays to make a living, but also direct my own films, and I blog about the future of storytelling and the craft of screenwriting at genrehacks.com.

Content that Sean created for the 2011 Conan the Barbarian movie bled out into a Web series, motion comics, graphic novels, a traditional novel, online multiplayer games, iPhone games—all of which told unique branches of the Conan story.

In the last five years especially, it’s become more and more difficult in Hollywood to get original projects off the ground. There’s a real focus on pre-branded content. So, I keep my eyes open for other ways to tell stories in emerging mediums. Movies are so expensive that I think many Hollywood filmmakers are looking for other, cheaper ways to tell stories—whether that be through webisodes, independent films, emerging mediums on multiple platforms, or transmedia. Transmedia in particular is becoming really attractive to storytellers, I think, because there really aren’t any rules for it yet; no one quite knows what they’re doing, and people are just sort of playing and goofing around with these new ideas and formats and seeing what happens. You don’t get to do that kind of experimentation in mainstream film or TV.

As a storyteller, why do you think transmedia holds so much appeal? Where do you see the most potential for it to change the ways stories are told?

Every time a new technology emerges, artists and storytellers tend to hi-jack and repurpose it for their own ends. Right now, there’s so many new kinds of media for communication: a YouTube video, a tweet, a Facebook comment, a blog article, a web chat, an iPhone game, a webisode, a motion comic, an eBook—any activity on the web suddenly prompts us to ask, “How can I use this tools all-together to serve a narrative?”

Yet with all these new tools, the fundamental nature of a story remains the same. For me, a story always contains two things. One: a story is about somebody for whom the audience has some empathy. Two: that somebody has some sort of problem—something they want something very badly but are having trouble getting, and they are fearful of what will happen if they fail. With those fundamental elements, you can use almost any tool to create a world around those characters or around that situation and build out from there.

What’s also appealing thing about transmedia—and one of the reasons I got into film to begin with—is that it’s highly collaborative. Transmedia offers opportunities to collaborate not only with other artists and storytellers, but directly with the audience. Otherwise, I get lonely sitting by myself in my office with my dog.

Going back to what you said earlier about Hollywood favoring pre-branded content and franchises due to cost issues—it sounds like you’re implying that transmedia is an attractive option cost-wise from a creator’s standpoint, offering a place to really experiment freely?

That’s absolutely true. For me, transmedia is about brand creation rather than brand recycling. I mean, the only movies I’ve written that actually get made have been sequels, remakes, or adaptations—and I’m not complaining. It’s lucrative, and it’s a lot of fun. But we screenwriters, filmmakers and storytellers got into the craft because we thought we had our own stories to tell. In transmedia, there’s an opportunity to start really small. Your project may eventually have seven branches in different mediums, but you start the project off on just one of those little arms to see how it takes off. Then, it can branch to another medium as it gets more and more popular and complex. If you are lucky, you get to a point where some of the more expensive mediums like a movie or a TV show become viable because you’ve pre-tested the concept and built an audience.

One of the things we’ve definitely been hearing and thinking about is: is it best to conceive of a project as “transmedia” from the outset, or can you decide to go that direction later?

You have to envision a transmedia project right from the beginning. If you think of it as just telling one story in one medium and then replicating it on a bunch of others, it’s not transmedia. You have to imagine how the world of your story and how the problem of your characters can branch out—you have to think about how different elements of the story can be told in different mediums, and why these branching mediums are necessary. The whole should be greater than the sum of its parts, and that takes vision from the outset.

That said, transmedia is not about pre-planning every single little piece as it extends in all these different mediums and different platforms. It’s more like crafting a little piece of DNA; you know it’s going to grow up into something really big, and you can imagine its potential in all these different realms. But once it starts growing and lots of other people get involved, you are more like a farmer growing a crop—you seed it, water it, feed it and nurture it, but you can’t completely control it, or even be entirely sure of what it will grow into. A transmedia project doesn’t just burst from your head, fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’ skull. A transmedia storyteller comes up with ideas and potentials and then works with a multiplicity of collaborators, including the audience, as it grows. It takes on a life of its own.

So why all the excitement about transmedia now? And is it really something new?

I think it’s because of the Internet. Even before the Web, there was always the possibility of a popular movie inspiring a line of original comic books or an original line of novels or toys. However, it was always a top-down process. Now everyone can sit in front of the computer and access all these different kinds of media. Anyone can be a writer, a filmmaker, a designer, or a visual artist, and put their work in front of an audience. The Internet has made us all active storytellers. This creates a different kind of opportunity for career storytellers because, not only they can put all their stuff online, they can interact directly with their audience through their phones and their iPads and their computers. They can co-create. It’s a massively new feedback loop.

Furthermore, storytelling always has to reflect the lives and the consciousness of the people of its age. We’re at the point now where everyone’s consciousness is constantly being expanded, taxed, overwhelmed, and sometimes even enlightened by all these different communication mediums that we have at our fingertips. So, the stories we tell have to reflect that, and utilize these very mediums that have so deeply affected, expanded and fragmented the human experience. There is no better way to do that than with a transmedia project.

One of the most striking things for me is the role of mobile and what it enables; there’s this expectation among consumers and audiences that they can bring the story or content to a level of personal relevance that they couldn’t before. In other words, it’s not just about me going deeper and deeper into the storyworld and finding out more about a character or a storyline. In some cases, it’s also about opportunities to bring the story out into my world.

Yes, exactly. In other words, stories used to be told in such a way that either you were alone in a room with a book or you were in a dark theater watching a screen or in a living room in front of a TV set. It was sort of locked down, but now it can come out into the world. It’s going to be really interesting. Of course, there are all sorts of gimmicks and games now—from flash mobs to planking to geo-caching, but, beyond that, I think there is an opportunity for storytelling to truly leak out into the real world, not only in the sense that you’re taking it with you everywhere on your phone, but that part of the story itself is experienced in public, physical locations.

I mean, when followers of the The Dark Knight transmedia campaign were going to bakeries and finding cell phones from the Joker hidden in cakes, the “medium” of the story became the real world.

From your perspective, what makes the difference between novelty or gimmicks, as you say, and really meaningful, good experiences?

The difference is that all the platforms, gimmicks and surprises that the storyteller uses in a transmedia way has to come from the characters—whatever problems, needs, hopes, schemes or dreams the characters have. The audience should feel that they’re moving from one medium to the other because the flow of the story and the goals of the characters call for it, because the story couldn’t be told in any other way.

Then, not only does the audience accept it, but they become that much more engaged because it’s reflective of the way we actually live. We live life in transmedia; we read a kindle while watching TV and are interrupted by a text. We talk on the phone while driving a car and are distracted by a video billboard. We tweet our location, share what we see, and comment on what others are doing hundreds of miles away, all in real time. So, it makes sense that fictional characters would be expressing themselves in this fragmented way, and that a story would unfold on multiple sites.

For me, the key is to think: “What are the needs of my characters, how would they express those needs and pursue their goals in today’s world, and how can that be expressed through transmedia?”

Transmedia, when it works, is not about plot. There are multiple plots all co-created and supported by the mob. Transmedia, at its best, is about the characters.

Yes, exactly. So, to what extent should the audience have input into how the story plays out?

I think it really depends on the particular project. What’s key is that the interactivity has to spring from the desire and engagement of the people involved. Otherwise, it can be very disruptive to the experience. The joy of listening to a story around a campfire comes from having empathy for the characters—really feeling the joys, terrors, and heartaches of that character—and also believing in the character’s world. Too often a clumsy interactive device—a simple, choose-your-own-adventure, for example—can disrupt that magical dreamstate. When I’m suddenly making a choice for my character, I’m not feeling for the character; I’m made aware that, “Oh. This isn’t a real person. This world is fake.”

So, the interactivity should be based on the audience believing, or suspending disbelief, that the characters and story are real and, specifically, that their own actions in the story have an effect on the emotional lives of the characters and the choices they are making—not that they’re making choices for the characters, but their input changes the quality of the fictional world. Then that world and the people in it become more and more real. Then the audience becomes a character interacting inside this world. Then, there’s the opportunity to become even more empathetically connected to the characters moving around the multiple mediums. The characters feel more like real people, and we feel for them more.

So, with interactivity, there’s an opportunity there to enhance storytelling, by increasing engagement and empathy, and there is an opportunity to blow it, depending on whether things are executed skillfully or clumsily.

As you said, at the fundamental core of any story is the notion of relating to or empathizing with a character. That hasn’t changed over time, but what is changing about the mechanics of storytelling, or the way we capture and unfold stories?

There is a major change that I think we’re on the brink of—closer than many people think—in the world of video games. Right now, video games are very immersive and cinematic in the way we can move through space and shoot at things, fight, manipulate objects, and so on. That kind of physical interaction with a finely detailed environment is very sophisticated. But the big change happens when the user becomes emotionally involved in the unfolding action the way they do in a novel, a play or a movie.

I talked earlier about the idea of empathy. We can empathize with characters represented as simply as a scribbled cartoon—take Charlie Brown, for example. That’s because human beings can project an inner life onto almost anything: a doll, a pet, almost any object or animal. We can imagine, “what is that creature feeling?”

So, as soon as the characters in a game or some sort of interactive environment seem to have an inner life and authentic emotional reactions to the things we, the game player, do within that game, that’s going to trigger our empathy, and get us wondering, “What is that character thinking? What is that character’s intention? Is she sad? Is she happy? What is she thinking?” Suddenly, you’re not just shooting zombies. You’re not just beating up bad guys. Now you’re imagining how this pixelated figure might be feeling and what she might be motivated by, and you are becoming more and more engaged in the relationship you are forming with this character.

What do you think is the best way to get people to connect in that deeper, emotional way? Will we need more advanced technology, or is it just about conveying some other element of the narrative differently?

We don’t need hard AI driving this kind of interaction; we just need enough of those triggers in the game character we interact with to make us project onto that image the idea of an inner life. Remember, we are capable of projecting an “inner life” onto a stuffed animal, a cartoon character, or a marionette. We just need the right triggers.

Filmmakers have become adept at creating these triggers. In a famous experiment, a shot of an actor with a blank expression was inter-cut in three ways; it was intercut with a beautiful woman, with a banquet table, and with a coffin. These three different montages were then shown to three different audiences, and the audiences were asked what the character—the man with the blank expression—was thinking. Each audience read his expression differently. One said, “Oh, that man is so in love.” Another said, “Oh, that man is so hungry.” The third said, “Oh, that man is so sad.” It’s the same completely blank expression, but we project an inner life upon it.

As of now, most of the interactive environments available haven’t really been able to access that capacity of the audience to believe in the inner life of the characters. But, when the people who design games move away from the rendering of the physical space, and into the development of characters and behaviors, then you can hit a tipping point; people are going to have entirely different experiences inside this virtual world because they’ll be interacting emotionally and empathically with the characters rather than just moving around in space and shooting them.

That brings up a really interesting question: is it possible that the more immersive visuals we’ve been able to create for video games have reduced the effort we put into thinking about them, and actually diminished our ability to project an inner life onto characters?

Often, if you look at a character in a game, it looks really close to being human but there’s something that feels creepy about it—like a wax figure or an automaton. In robotics, they call it the “uncanny valley.” We may find that, in the near future, a much more simplified graphic character that nonetheless behaves as though it has an inner, emotional life, will be far, far more involving and engaging. Some movies—like Beowulf and The Polar Express—have animated characters that look almost human but not quite, and to me they are creepy and off-putting. That emphatic connection is completely broken. I’m more likely to believe Bugs Bunny is real. So, we may find that backing off on the photorealism actually helps to cultivate empathy.

Screenshot from The Polar Express

That kind of counterintuitive response is very interesting. Switching gears a bit, do you have any suggestions for other storytellers who are interested in or working in the transmedia space?

I’d say that no one really knows exactly what “transmedia” is yet. So, if you’re a storyteller, there is no reason you shouldn’t be telling stories and playing around with whatever you can get your hands on. We’re at a time now where digital cameras, editing software, online publishing tools, and so on, are literally free—or close to it. I think it’s too often that people who write screenplays or books wait around for somebody to give them permission to publish, to produce, or to share that work with the world. There’re thousands of tools that can help a storyteller create content and reach an audience. Maybe you only get a hundred people to look at your work at first—but that’s a lot of people. To be a storyteller, you don’t have Charlie Kaufman or Steven Spielberg; you just have embrace the tools available all around you and be inventive.

Click here to watch Melancholy Baby, a short film that represents a more personal aspect of Sean’s filmmaking. It was created, developed and distributed to an online audience.

This interview was conducted by Neela Sakaria, SVP at Latitude.

[VIDEO] Tablets & the Future of News: a BBC.com/Starcom MediaVest Study with Latitude

Kim Gaskins — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:42:29 +0000

In September 2011, BBC.com and Starcom MediaVest partnered with Latitude Research on a thought leadership study to explore the role of tablets in people’s lives and in their changing interactions with the news. Overall, we found that tablets aren’t just convenient replacements for our existing behaviors with laptops and smartphones; instead, they’re opening up new possibilities for us to interact with content and advertising in ways we never expected to.

Tablet users are more interested in the news than they were before, with 78% following more news stories in greater depth. In fact, 70% of people who owned a tablet for one year or more found that it had become an integral part of their life routine, with benefits extending beyond mere portability and convenience.

Study background

Latitude conducted a the three-phase study amongst news readers that included:

In-depth phone interviews
A 20-minute online survey with approximately 1,100 American participants ages 18-54 (88% of whom were current tablet owners)
A week-long “deprivation” and “immersion” (e.g., current tablets owners were asked to stop using these devices while people who don’t yet own tablets were asked to engage heavily with them)

What do tablets mean for our everyday lives?

Below is a mini-documentary that Latitude produced from the study findings—capturing insights about the emerging “tablet psychology,” and what exactly tablets mean for us in the context of our everyday experiences and aspirations, from being more informed to making unexpected discoveries to forging new social connections, and beyond.

Tablets & the Future of News: Opportunities for Evolving Content & Advertising from latddotcom on Vimeo.

Based on what we discovered about tablet users’ need states and preferences across different contexts, the video highlights some essential best practices and opportunity spaces for content providers and advertisers, including:

Create opportunities to personalize content
Provide options for how content is presented
Offer visuals that immerse readers, but don’t distract them
Encourage exploration and browsing
Offer relevance that connects across stories, ads, and platforms
Offer a meaningful ad experience that fits with surrounding news tablet content
Ultimately… let people experience the news

Recent study press

Video created in collaboration with In the Car Media.

Why We Use (and Lose) Apps: a Video by Latitude for MTV Networks

Kadley Gosselin — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:19:47 +0000

MTV Networks recently released the results of Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em: Adoption, Abandonment, and the App-Addled Consumer, a thought leadership study conducted in collaboration with Latitude to understand how apps are changing our lives, and how we use different apps over time.

The study included a round of initial qualitative interviews, a deprivation phase (normal app users were asked to go app-free for 3 days), and a quantitative survey of more than 1300 app-engaged smartphone owners. Latitude and MTVN created the mini-documentary (below), offering a vivid snapshot of today’s app addicts and their motivations for using (or losing) various apps:

MTVN’s “Adoption, Abandonment And The App-Addled Consumer” by latddotcom on Vimeo.

For more information, check out the press release and a summary of the key findings here.

Image credit: Mr. T in DC
Video created in collaboration with In the Car Media

Future of Storytelling Expert Series: Author Xavier Waterkeyn on Communicating Transmedia Value

Kim Gaskins — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:47:50 +0000

This week’s spotlight on Xavier Waterkeyn:

Xavier Waterkeyn is a literary agent and best-selling author. In just five years, his books have sold over 1.5 million copies. He has worked, in no particular order, as a director, interviewer, adult educator, tour guide, actor, manager of a psychic centre, graphic designer, photographer, marketer, bookseller and editor. Despite his many careers, Xavier likes to think of himself simply as a storyteller. And perhaps a bit of a know-it-all.

It’s great to speak with you, Xavier. We know you’ve been quite busy working with your partner, author Nathan Farrugia, on The Chimera Vector—a transmedia project that involves a lot of different components: an eBook, an audiobook, a graphic novel, and an app down the line. Can you tell us a little about your experience creating and overseeing the production of all these different pieces?

The Chimera Vector is primarily a technothriller novel. It takes you into a world of conspiracy where various people in various organizations are striving to accumulate power—creating chaos and mayhem—and it’s all about secret operatives and what they’re trying to do to stop all of that. So, we’ve got a core text that appeals to people ages 18-30 generally, and we’re looking at the kind of media this target market engages with: social media as well as the traditional media of book, film, and so on. The Chimera Vector novel is being simultaneously adapted as an eBook, as well as being sold print-on-demand.

Who do you see as the primary audience for transmedia, and how do you think transmedia can fulfill varied audience needs and preferences?

It’s now hopelessly outdated to think of people simply as “readers” or “viewers” or “audience members”—since, at any one point, any number of different texts in different media will appeal to all of them. And there are different personality types as well, and people who have different sense modality prejudices; there are the visual people who want to see stories; there are the audio people who want to hear stories; there are the readers who want to read stories.

There’s also a range between the totally passive to the actively engaged super-fan. So, people who just want to look at something, read it, watch it, listen to it, go away—and then there are people who immerse themselves in a world and become contributors and co-creators to that world.

A transmedia experience should ideally encompass all of those different worlds. That’s what happens when you do transmedia properly. So, what you need to do then is use the technology that you have available to the best of your ability to engage an audience member in that process.

Do you approach transmedia by thinking everything through from the get-go, and or is there a sizable element of improvisation—which could mean flexibility with regard to bringing in a new platform, or letting the audience influence the storyline, and so on?

I believe that you cannot sit down and second-guess the creative process. And as creators, we have to leave ourselves open to the possibility of things happening during a co-creative process that we might not have thought about originally during any planning stage. However, our process from the very beginning is to think of as many possible points of engagement and as many different media and forms of communication because, ultimately, we’re talking about the communicative act in the entertainment industry; we’re talking about bringing somebody into our world. It doesn’t matter if it’s an MTV video equipped for a pop song or a video game that’s taken five years to develop—creators think from the very beginning, “if we’re going to do a game called ‘Myst,’ let’s think of what a novelized version of that would look like and read like.”

Image from The Chimera Vector graphic novel

A certain amount of audience participation—and, in many cases, co-creation—seems essential for transmedia. How do you get people engaged, and strike the right participatory balance so that people are motivated, but not feeling like they have to work too hard?

If the core text is engaging, then a fandom will arise spontaneously. Now, we’re not saying, “let’s control fandom,” but instead “let’s factor that in from the very beginning and let’s make it easy for fans to engage in the process.” In short: the one thing fans want is engagement, and the one thing that we have to do as creators is make that engagement as easy as possible for them. For creative reasons? Who knows. Some of the best fans do become creators, and that’s okay.

So, to get people engaged from the start, we’re saying, “why don’t you come in and join with us in the creation of the world? We’re starting you off with this novel and with this world and with these characters and their concerns—but we’re inviting your active participation.” We might listen to suggestions about plot events and write that scene into the next book. Or we might think how a fan’s suggestion could inspire an entirely new plot line.

What are some of the pitfalls or mistakes you’ve seen?

Marketing-wise, I think that people don’t think as globally as possible. I don’t believe they cross-promote enough. Take Heroes, for example. Did you know they created a graphic novel for the series? I didn’t, until I specifically started researching the space. So, there’s a graphic novel out there; somebody has gone to the trouble of drawing it, creating it, designing it, publishing it and you don’t know that it exists—but you know about the television series.

It would be so easy to product-place the graphic novel within the series. The problem is that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. That’s the core marketing mistake: you’ve got a whole bunch of people doing different things, and they didn’t think about their strategy holistically. It’s the absence of holistic thinking that’s bringing people down, not only for creative reasons but also strictly for marketing and economic reasons.

As somebody who’s creating in this space, is there anything that you wish you knew about people’s mindsets as they’re having these experiences? Or is it more about creating and seeing how people react to the world you’ve built?

I think it’s both. Personally, our initial approach has been “build it and they will come.” But, in terms of research, the sort of things that I would like to know would be “who are the people that are into this?” More than that, what turns them on?—and not just the text, but what style of engagement works for them? People have sub-languages; for example, Twitter and Facebook are creating their own languages. Relatedly, I’d want to know: “how do you use social media without sounding as if you’re doing a sales pitch?” That’s really important.

What we really want to know is, how we can talk to you without talking at you or down to you? How do we invite you into this process and make it as inviting as possible? How do we communicate how fun it could be? That’s the challenging part.

Xavier and his partner, Nathan, are currently raising funds for The Chimera Vector graphic novel on Kickstarter. Check out the project here, and pledge to help (as little as $5) by November 26, 2011.

This interview was conducted by Neela Sakaria, SVP at Latitude.

Infographic: When & How Are We Doing the Most Sharing Online?

Kadley Gosselin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:25:14 +0000

Recently, we completed research for the New York Times on the “Psychology of Sharing” online information, uncovering why—not just how—people share, with insights to help marketers align their content-sharing strategies with people’s motivations for sharing on the Web.

We were interested to come across the infographic below, which focuses on how, when, and where people share digital content. It was created by online bookmarking and sharing platform AddThis, using 5 years of data. AddThis processes 70TB of shared content a week – more than the Hubble Space Telescope collected in its first 20 years — and that’s nothing considering that simple sharing (e.g., copying and pasting links into emails, IM windows, and social media) accounts for up to 10x more sharing than do tools specifically designed for sharing, like AddThis.

The Journey of Shared Content
Ever wonder when your users are most likely to share? Online sharing is at its peak mid-morning (9:30-10:30am) EST, according to AddThis—moreover, 75% of clicks occur on the first day a piece of content is shared, with most users clicking within 2 minutes of the share time.

Get Your Content Shared
Looking at the growth in shares across social media platforms demonstrates the importance of a social media presence. Content creators and marketers should work to speak to this and engage users on the platforms they’re already using (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, etc), perhaps with a little extra attention given to Facebook and new entrant Google+. Releasing content during peak sharing time and making it easy to share (providing a shortened URL, adding “Share” buttons) will enable users to promote content more easily.

Image credit: Joshua Blount.