A closer look at Spiegel Online's time machine

Some time ago, Spiegel Online, Germany's leading news website, launched its ambitious portal on contemporary history, einestages.de. The idea was welcomed everywhere, although the navigation was considered to be too complicated. The masses of photos are difficult to access (why isn't there a real slide show functionality?), and beside (sometimes too) sophisticated texts, I miss some short catchy statements.

The latest innovation on einestages.de is the „einestage.de-Zeitmaschine“. This time machine application shows how historic content can be accessed visually: Imagine you rush in a space shuttle through the universe: the years fly by, and masses of photos that stand for contemporary events pass your way. Technically, the flash solutions works quite well – in case you have a fast computer and the latest flash version. Of course you can set your starting time – either you start the flight nowadays or 100 years ago. The speed can be controlled by the track wheel.

So far so good. This time machine seems to be a smart idea to arrange historic content via expressive photos, giving inspiration to events you haven't known so far, satisfying a certain play instinct.

It really sounds perfect at first thought, but obviously it is not so easy to handle. To be improved: the link between the photos flying by and the real content: If you find a photo of interest, you can only click on it. A new site opens that shows the photo and provides some basic information such as location, date and relevant tags. But: neither title nor explanation what it's about. To access a short description, you have to click once more. But by getting into details, e.g. clicking through the slide show or reading the related article on einestages.de you leave the time machine. So if you want to continue your flight, you have to restart the application. You can't go on the point where you had left the time machine.

In brief: the time machine is a fascinating idea which picks up a human dream. The application is visually attractive, playful and full of inspiring content. But: Once more we get aware of a central challenge of visual journalism: to provide a close link from the attention-catching photo and the real content. One photo may not always suffice to immerse users into meaningful contemporary events.

For me, however, flying through the times with the einestages.de time machine would be even greater if some brief content snippets would be provided just one click away. Of course, everyone wants to maximize page impressions. But in this case, I fear the einestages.de time machine would be reduced to a playful gimmick and not to an inspiring way to discover contemporary history.

The eyeblogger manifesto: visual journalism and visual story telling

Eye bloggers believe in the „iconic turn“ as it describes the medial shift of paradigm from text towards image.

In the past the image followed and supported the text content. In the convergent media worlds text will follow more and more the visual content message (even print will continue to become more and more visual).

Related to the iconic turn is the term „visual literacy“ , defining the intellectual human capability to decode and interpret images.

The visual shift, the growing media dominance of picture, video, info graphic or other visual forms of content vs. text will accelerate in the upcoming years. The arguments are apparent:

1. Text is an inconvenient and highly demanding access to information. It will become more and more a tool of the information elite. Mass media on the other hand will attract users more and more via a more emotional and less complicated visual access.

2. Within the next five years TV and web will converge. IPTV and video streaming on internet portals will replace classic broadcast TV. Video will become a strong third visual format besides photo and info graphics.

3. The convergence of TV and web will resolve the divide in user experience between lean back (TV) and lean forward (web) scenarios. The hybrid combination of TV and web requires graphical interfaces to navigate from the couch.

4. Advertisement is shifting from the established media to the web. The new tools to measure reach and justify ad spendings are changing. Clicks and page impressions will be replaced by view time. A pre condition for this new criteria are visual and interactive contents with high stickiness, which attract people and keep them on the site as long as possible.

5. Technically VDSL broadband allows complex and data rich visualisations. User who can afford these high speed accesses, expect a new user experience. New combinations of visuality, interactivity and multimediality will in their potential beat all established media formats (e.g. world of warcraft).

6. All media platforms converge. Within a couple of years users will hardly be able to distinguish the web portals of print-, TV- or internet only providers since they will all offer the same elements of text, picture, info graphic, audio and of course video.

7. Visualisation still seems to be a theoretical subject for information scientists and digital artists. Now it is time to use the new opportunities for professional visual story telling and develop a visual journalism. This is especially true since images and visualisation can easily be manipulated or be misinterpreted. Linking the emotionality of images to the preciseness of the word is a highly journalistic duty and profession.

8. The convergence of digital platforms will lead to a convergence of journalistic job profiles. The basic competence of print and broadcast editors will get more and more similar. Focus and joint fundament will be visual web formats.

9. Visual journalism will pose new requirements to editorial training. A new profile of visual editors will unite classical journalistic abilities with the competence for visuality, interactivity and mulimediality.

10. Visual content can easily inform and entertain a global audience, regardless what language they speak. It thus ideally meets the requirements of the web as the only truly global medium.

11. Even in e-learning visual story telling provides new opportunities for handicapped people suffering from dyslexia and illiteracy.