Designing Media

by Bill Moggridge

Overview

Connections and clashes between new and old media, as told by interviewees ranging from the founder of Twitter to the publisher of the New York Times.

Mainstream media, often known simply as MSM, have not yet disappeared in a digital takeover of the media landscape. But the long-dominant MSM—television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and books—have had to respond to emergent digital media. Newspapers have interactive Web sites; television broadcasts over the Internet; books are published in both electronic and print editions. In Designing Media, design guru Bill Moggridge examines connections and conflicts between old and new media, describing how the MSM have changed and how new patterns of media consumption are emerging. The book features interviews with thirty-seven significant figures in both traditional and new forms of mass communication; interviewees range from the publisher of the New York Times to the founder of Twitter. We learn about innovations in media that rely on contributions from a crowd (or a community), as told by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and Craigslist's Craig Newmark; how the band OK Go built a following using YouTube; how real-time connections between dispatchers and couriers inspired Twitter; how a BusinessWeek blog became a quarterly printed supplement to the magazine; and how e-readers have evolved from Rocket eBook to QUE. Ira Glass compares the intimacy of radio to that of the Internet; the producer of PBS's Frontline supports the program's investigative journalism by putting documentation of its findings online; and the developers of Google's Trendalyzer software describe its beginnings as animations that accompanied lectures about social and economic development in rural Africa. At the end of each chapter, Moggridge comments on the implications for designing media. Designing Media is illustrated with hundreds of images, with color throughout. A DVD accompanying the book includes excerpts from all of the interviews, and the material can be browsed at www.designing-media.com.

Interviews with:
Chris Anderson, Rich Archuleta, Blixa Bargeld, Colin Callender, Fred Deakin, Martin Eberhard, David Fanning, Jane Friedman, Mark Gerzon, Ira Glass, Nat Hunter, Chad Hurley, Joel Hyatt, Alex Juhasz, Jorge Just, Alex MacLean, Bob Mason, Roger McNamee, Jeremy Merle, Craig Newmark, Bruce Nussbaum, Alice Rawsthorn, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Paul Saffo, Jesse Scanlon, DJ Spooky, Neil Stevenson, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Shinichi Takemura, James Truman, Jimmy Wales, Tim Westergren, Ev Williams, Erin Zhu, Mark Zuckerberg

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262014854
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	10/15/2010
Series:	The MIT Press
Pages:	592
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

The award-winning designer Bill Moggridge, pioneer in interaction design and integrating human factors disciplines into design practice, was Director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City and a founder of IDEO, the famous innovation and design firm.

What People are Saying About This

Ian Bogost

We often hear that mainstream media like television and print are dead. Or perhaps undead—thoughtless, empty shells of human culture and creativity that will soon be vanquished by the heroism of digital technologies. But one need not look far to see that such claims are simply wrong. People still watch TV, go to bookstores, buy CDs, and so on. In Designing Media, Bill Moggridge and his interviewees show us that something more subtle is happening: pre- and post-digital media are combining in weird and complex ways—neither one winning or losing, but each changing the other. Like this book, the future of media is not a vanquishing of monsters but a series of conversations between forms.

Don Norman

The ways in which media are conceived, formed, and distributed have long undergone change, but now they are in full revolution. There is nobody better than Bill Moggridge to shed an illuminating beam upon the people behind these changes: not the technologists, but the writers, artists, musicians, editors, publishers, and dreamers who are changing our perceptions of the possible. Moggridge is a master of the interview—getting to the core and then collecting and distilling the essence in brief, insightful vignettes. This book is fun to peruse but even more worthy of thorough digestion, rumination, and reflection.

Endorsement

We often hear that mainstream media like television and print are dead. Or perhaps undead—thoughtless, empty shells of human culture and creativity that will soon be vanquished by the heroism of digital technologies. But one need not look far to see that such claims are simply wrong. People still watch TV, go to bookstores, buy CDs, and so on. In Designing Media, Bill Moggridge and his interviewees show us that something more subtle is happening: pre- and post-digital media are combining in weird and complex ways—neither one winning or losing, but each changing the other. Like this book, the future of media is not a vanquishing of monsters but a series of conversations between forms.

—Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology, coauthor of Newsgames: Journalism at Play

From the Publisher

The ways in which media are conceived, formed, and distributed have long undergone change, but now they are in full revolution. There is nobody better than Bill Moggridge to shed an illuminating beam upon the people behind these changes: not the technologists, but the writers, artists, musicians, editors, publishers, and dreamers who are changing our perceptions of the possible. Moggridge is a master of the interview—getting to the core and then collecting and distilling the essence in brief, insightful vignettes. This book is fun to peruse but even more worthy of thorough digestion, rumination, and reflection.

—Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, author of Living with Complexity

Editorial Reviews

On the surface, just another anthology of interviews. But the interviews are so good! And the range of voices so rich! I'm an unwilling fan of this book. Bill Moggridge moves the questions way beyond normal discussions about 'media.'—William Drenttel, The Design Observer Group—

Print isn't dead, Designing Media, a fascinating new doorstop of a book by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum chief Bill Moggridge, seems to say. It's just waiting for design to save it.

—Fast Company—

Under Moggridge's watch, Designing Media becomes more than a set of interviews. By the final comments in the last interview, the thrust of its underlying thesis that 'the printed word will not disappear' simply serves as a valedictory to a thesis that the reader has already discovered for themselves. Moggridge assures us that, 'while digital media is directly responsible for falling revenues in music, film and the printed word, individuals and companies will find ways to carve niches in the new digital domain.'

—Core 77—

From the Publisher

Under Moggridge's watch, Designing Media becomes more than a set of interviews. By the final comments in the last interview, the thrust of its underlying thesis that 'the printed word will not disappear' simply serves as a valedictory to a thesis that the reader has already discovered for themselves. Moggridge assures us that, 'while digital media is directly responsible for falling revenues in music, film and the printed word, individuals and companies will find ways to carve niches in the new digital domain.'

—Core 77

Reviews

Under Moggridge's watch, Designing Media becomes more than a set of interviews. By the final comments in the last interview, the thrust of its underlying thesis that 'the printed word will not disappear' simply serves as a valedictory to a thesis that the reader has already discovered for themselves. Moggridge assures us that, 'while digital media is directly responsible for falling revenues in music, film and the printed word, individuals and companies will find ways to carve niches in the new digital domain.'

Core 77

Print isn't dead, Designing Media, a fascinating new doorstop of a book by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum chief Bill Moggridge, seems to say. It's just waiting for design to save it.

Fast Company

On the surface, just another anthology of interviews. But the interviews are so good! And the range of voices so rich! I'm an unwilling fan of this book. Bill Moggridge moves the questions way beyond normal discussions about 'media.'

The Design Observer Group - William Drenttel