So this week saw the last of the lunchtime digital seminars put on by the university. I didn't get to attend as many as I wanted so I haven't been blogging about them regularly. So to catch up, here is what I had to say about the ones I did make it too.
Charley Darbyshire - Educake
Educake is an online homework resource for GCSE science students. Teachers can use the tests available as homework for their class and then can see the results and the students' progress online. Charley taught us about the difficulties of education publishing and keeping material up to date and appealing. This is especially hard with a digital subscription-based product as there has to be incentive for people to keep buying it. The product needs to be valuable enough to justify the investment you are asking of your customers. It is no longer the case that the customer-publisher relationship ends once the money is handed over, now the relationship is long term as you have to continually work to guarantee reinvestment.
So the main issues are pricing, justifying and defining value and maintaining good customer relationships, very different to a one off print purchase of a textbook.
Tom Scholes - Managing Director of Grove Street Media
Grove Street Media are a new media company that develop apps, websites and games. Tom taught us just how important good usability is and how extensive testing is just as important as the development in achieving this. You have to try things out to learn where they need improving. He also pointed out the problems that arise from customers not being entirely clear what they want. Many come and ask for expensive apps when a website would do just because they feel they should be. This is also the case with social media, everyone has heard of it and so everyone thinks they should be using it. But you have to match the format and the marketing to the product or you will miss your market. Tom then showed us some of his skills by building a basic game live in front of us that involved a giraffe and Kim Kardashian racing across the wild west.
So it's important to know exactly what you want, listen to developer's suggestions and test your product with real people.
So I've learnt a lot from these sessions about surviving in the real world of digital publishing. I've spent a lot of time in the classrooms learning the skills and building ebooks but I have absolutely no idea how to use these skills in the real world so it was great to hear from the people out there doing it now.
Charley Darbyshire - Educake
Educake is an online homework resource for GCSE science students. Teachers can use the tests available as homework for their class and then can see the results and the students' progress online. Charley taught us about the difficulties of education publishing and keeping material up to date and appealing. This is especially hard with a digital subscription-based product as there has to be incentive for people to keep buying it. The product needs to be valuable enough to justify the investment you are asking of your customers. It is no longer the case that the customer-publisher relationship ends once the money is handed over, now the relationship is long term as you have to continually work to guarantee reinvestment.
So the main issues are pricing, justifying and defining value and maintaining good customer relationships, very different to a one off print purchase of a textbook.
Tom Scholes - Managing Director of Grove Street Media
Grove Street Media are a new media company that develop apps, websites and games. Tom taught us just how important good usability is and how extensive testing is just as important as the development in achieving this. You have to try things out to learn where they need improving. He also pointed out the problems that arise from customers not being entirely clear what they want. Many come and ask for expensive apps when a website would do just because they feel they should be. This is also the case with social media, everyone has heard of it and so everyone thinks they should be using it. But you have to match the format and the marketing to the product or you will miss your market. Tom then showed us some of his skills by building a basic game live in front of us that involved a giraffe and Kim Kardashian racing across the wild west.
So it's important to know exactly what you want, listen to developer's suggestions and test your product with real people.
So I've learnt a lot from these sessions about surviving in the real world of digital publishing. I've spent a lot of time in the classrooms learning the skills and building ebooks but I have absolutely no idea how to use these skills in the real world so it was great to hear from the people out there doing it now.
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