discussion arose on whether or not interactions should publish more articles, and possibly the magazine in its entirety, for open download, online

( acm.org/interactions). Mark Vanderbeeken, of the experience design consultancy Experientia, and I spoke on the “Interactions Magazine Comes Alive” panel. We discussed some of our personal thoughts and experiences of open content, and discussed our perspectives about making the content of interactions freely available on the Web. Some of the points we brought up there reappear here.

First and foremost, paraphrasing John Thackara, quality that is not communicated is simply not quality. To put it crudely, who cares how great the ideas are if we make barriers to hear-ing/reading them so high that the ideas reach only a small in-group? Closed content is restricted content, and restricted content shared among the few is likely to have limited impact.

Second, the Internet has been criticized as a disruptive to the publishing industry—that is, a technology that drives or enables change in a value network. This could mean the creation of a new industry or transformation of an existing one. That said, readership of print magazines in the United States remains stable; around 85 percent of adults read consumer magazines, and this figure has not changed since 2003. So far, it looks like digital publications are simply not a replacement for carefully designed printed artifacts.

Why? Well, for starters, print and digital artifacts have very different properties. They invite a different interaction, and the

experience of the content is radically different. For example, I am a big fan of O’Reilly’s Craft magazine. I have given copies as gifts to a number of people. I like to annotate my own copies with scribbles and notes, which I share with friends. Copies are scattered around the house visibly waiting—plaintively calling out—to be read. And, more crucial, my magazines can be read in the bath, getting just a little soggy without catastrophic effect.

Digital artifacts should invite the reader to desire the physical artifact. And vice versa: I go online to sites like ravelry.com, to instructables, and to You Tube. com to find other crafters and to see videos of how to do something—some skills, especially motor skills, just don’t get communicated as well in static print.

The layout of a magazine differs greatly from the layout of content on the Web. Flicking through a magazine and stopping when something catches your eye is different from browsing through windows, pointing and clicking. Tearing a page out feels different from bookmarking or printing a page. In short, the Web page and the magazine have different informational, tangible, and aesthetic properties and “affordances.” And in my opinion, the core product— the print magazine—is not going away. However, I believe that medium matters, and we need to take seriously the careful design of a complementary relationship between the print and digital.

Third, there are many kinds of value, aside from charging hard currency, for content. Value may be purely nonmonetary. For individuals who do not charge

for their labor to produce content, the value may be personal satisfaction, or reputation and contribution to the community. For companies who produce materials, like print magazines or websites and blogs, the value provided may come from a subscription, or it may come from where the content directs people to perhaps spend down the line. The artifact may be a link in a chain of value but not the point of monetary exchange.

Mark’s report of Experientia’s strategy on content sharing renders abstract assertions around value generation concrete. Experientia has demonstrated that the paradigm of company information as proprietary, protected at all cost, is now completely obsolete. Rather, an alternative approach is being taken there: Everything not protected by NDA or of strategic value (e.g., the markets they plan to address in the next four months), should be open to all. All important content and ideas are published on the company blog, Putting People First. The blog started out as something internal. However, it was not protected, and before long, it was getting more and external visitors. The team decided that was not such a bad thing. Many visitors now come to the blog from major international companies like Yahoo!, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, and Samsung.

The company has directly experienced several benefits of this approach:

1. A channel—Putting People First provides an easy-to-handle communications channel (no email newsletters, no expensive advertising campaigns);

2. An audience—usually about

September + October 2008