“What Is Code?” Businessweek Article Illustrates Rich Content Potential

The painful reality is that we still live in a print-under-glass world, struggling to produce content that leverages our powerful phones and tablets. I was explaining this to a publisher recently and the phrase "escape velocity" came to mind.

In simple terms, escape velocity is what's required for an object to break free from another object's gravitational pull. For example, a rocket being launched from earth or, in this case, a publisher trying to create content that's more deeply engaging than simply putting the print edition on a digital screen. In the latter case, everything from significant print revenues to industry indifference represent the gravitational pull that needs to be escaped.

The latest example proving we're still in the print-under-glass era is a terrific Businessweek article called What is code? The fact that rich and engaging pieces like this draw so much attention and are so few and far between proves we're still only in the early innings of digital content innovation and evolution.

If you haven't read the article I highly recommend you take the time and carefully go through it. If you're not a programmer you'll learn a lot. But even if you're a coding master you'll still learn a thing or two, including how content will eventually take baby steps away from today's print-under-glass approach.

Here are the most important takeaways I got from this Businessweek article:

• Measuring visits and reading time - I opened and closed it a few times before finally reading the entire piece. I found it interesting that a pop-up noted how many times I had opened it previously as well as how long I had already spent scanning it. This information may not be valuable for a magazine article but it would be very useful for tutorial content to see how long it takes to learn a subject. It would also be extremely valuable for publishers to discover where readers tend to spend the most time.

• Dynamic visuals - Be sure to check out the circuitry animation that appears at the start of the second section. If you're not familiar with the concept of logic gates, take a minute or two to read the callout and watch the animation. And have you ever wondered what happens when you press a key on your keyboard? There's another animation for this and, as the callout notes, quite a few things happen behind the scenes before the key you pressed appears on your screen. Note that neither of these are "enrichment for enrichment's sake." Creating deeply engaging content like this requires a great deal of work, especially when it comes to figuring out exactly what type of dynamic visuals will add to the experience, not interfere with it.

• Deeper dives, but only if you want them - Note the rounded rectangular numbered items interspersed throughout and how they're used as pop-up notes. It's not the best user interface (UI) element but I love how they quickly provide more depth without taking the reader away from the current paragraph. A key here is to provide this additional depth unobtrusively. The best UI enables a smooth reading flow for readers who don't care to read these pop-ups while ensuring the additional content is easily accessible for those who want it.

• Annoying visuals - As good as this Businessweek article is, it would have been even better without the animated blue box character with the black hat and flower. The designer probably felt it added personality or maybe even gave the piece an attitude; in reality, it made the whole experience feel like a 1980's experiment featuring a Walking Dead version of the Charlie Chaplin PC Jr. character. The lesson here is to focus on functional value rather than gimmicks.

If you read to the end you'll discover another feature that combines something useful with yet another gimmick, which is unfortunate.

I applaud Businessweek and author Paul Ford for helping show the possibilities of a post-print-under-glass world. Here's hoping escape velocity is just around the corner and soon this sort of content will be considered standard, not edgy.