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Channel: News – Adobe Experience Manager Mobile

Adobe Powers Mobile App Production for Leading Corporate Brands

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Senior Marketing Leaders Across Geographies and Industries Select Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to Engage Stakeholders with Apps 

After making great strides in the publishing industry over the past few years, Adobe is proud to announce that Digital Publishing Suite is now also powering mobile app production for some of the world’s best-known brands. Given its rapid uptake, DPS has become the professional standard for quickly and cost-effectively creating tablet and smartphone apps to help companies engage customers, employees, and other stakeholders through digital channels.

“If you’re a senior marketing leader looking to engage audiences on tablets and smartphones, Digital Publishing Suite offers your team the opportunity to create apps that look amazing for much less than native app development,” says Nick Bogaty, Head of Digital Publishing, Adobe. “It’s exciting to see the many ways brands and organizations are using Digital Publishing Suite to produce apps that quickly engage their customers and employees with compelling content on popular mobile devices.”

Industry leaders producing public-facing apps to drive brand engagement, launch products, and strengthen relationships with consumers include Arsenal FC, Audi of America, Bass Pro Shops, Ball State University, Buffalo Bills/NFL, Casa/JWT (a WPP company), Celebrity Cruises, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Lowe’s, Raymond James Financial, Syracuse University, UCLA Anderson School of Management, University of Notre Dame, and more.

“With Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, we very quickly created a high-quality app that showcases our cruising destinations with rich images and interactivity,” said Lisa Z. Kauffman, vice president of marketing at Celebrity Cruises. “The app makes it fun and easy for customers to interact with our brand and explore our cruise ships and destinations, resulting in more engaged customers and an increase in bookings. Best of all, because we rely on Adobe for the app and technology infrastructure, we can focus our attention on creating compelling travel marketing content.”

App

Celebrity Cruises uses Digital Publishing Suite to engage travel agents and prospective customers with its cruise offerings around the world.

In addition to public facing apps available through mobile marketplaces, many global brands are also creating and updating sales enablement and internal communications apps using DPS. These apps are made available internally through a corporate intranet or mobile device management solution or through restricted distribution capabilities to specific external audiences. Customers engaging their employees and affiliates through these private apps include Remy Cointreau, Sotheby’s International Realty, and Specialized Bicycle Components.

“Using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, we produced a sales enablement app and made it available to our reps through private publishing,” said Alexandre Page-Relo, global chief technology officer for Remy Cointreau. “Now, our sales reps always have up-to-date sales sheets, product information, and sales calculators in an interactive format, right at their fingertips. The return on investment of not having to print materials that are quickly outdated has been phenomenal.”

See more examples of leading organizations using Digital Publishing Suite in the DPS Gallery


Forbes Insights Report reveals apps strengthen connections with customers and are driving internal efficiencies

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Increasingly, consumers expect the ability to retrieve information on-the-go with tablet and mobile devices. To further explore these trends in mobile marketing, we’re releasing today a new report about apps that examines how marketers are integrating them as a key part of the marketing mix. Produced in conjunction with Forbes, the new report The Connected Marketer: How Apps are Engaging Customers, Partners and Employees, surveyed top-level decision makers in large organizations and found:

  • Apps are on the rise. Of companies with customer-facing apps, 78%, report increases in their mobile app audiences over the past year.
  • Use of customer-facing mobile apps is seen as a post-sale loyalty strategy. 31% of respondents say that customer-facing apps have the greatest impact when maintaining loyalty post-purchase.
  • Internal apps are driving efficiencies. More than two-thirds of executives report the number of end-users of their internal apps has grown over the past year; they see apps playing greater roles in facilitating sales, communication and training processes.
  • In-app analytics represent opportunity. 44% of respondents attempt to measure metrics within the app such as content views and number of downloads. However, marketers are not yet focusing on user-interface metrics such as analysis of navigation through the app, pathing or length of time spent with the app in large numbers yet –an area that represents opportunity for marketers to gain further insight into their customers.

 

As marketers seek to create stronger connections with their customers and employees they should:

  • Have marketing step up to the task. In a majority of cases, both external and internal apps are developed within the organizations—mainly with the assistance of IT, and internal designers/developers. Because IT plays mainly a supporting role – and given marketers’ focus on the customer – app publishing is a role that marketers are uniquely qualified to step up to.
  • Implement unique content to attract users. Apps require more than simply scaling down a website to fit a smaller screen. Sixty-eight percent of all the respondents say they are offering exclusive content that cannot be found elsewhere. A majority of those who have seen the number of mobile app users increase, 60%, attribute that to the fact that they are making more exclusive content available through the apps.
  • Analyze metrics to create a compelling experience. According to the report, the ability to design user-friendly interfaces and to keep end-users interested and returning to the app was seen as the biggest challenge for marketing executives. Since only 44% of marketing executives look at metrics from their app, they should use a data-driven approach to gain further insight into their customers and optimize the user experience.
  • Get the word out across channels. Use both your own and third-party marketing channels to drive downloads of your app. Sixty-nine percent of companies rely on their company’s website to get the word out to customers about their apps. Another 58% employ email as another means of advertising availability of apps (58%). Other strategies include search engine marketing (36%), Facebook notifications (35%) and app store marketing (35%).

Two Adobe customers are mentioned in the report as case studies of successful companies using app marketing.

WorthwhileFor nine years, Raymond James Financial has published Worthwhile, a quarterly aimed at high net worth clients and the most popular of all its client communication pieces. In 2013, the firm decided to use Digital Publishing Suite to supplement the printed quarterly with a digital edition, expanding its reach and allowing financial advisors to custom-brand it for their clients. Clients can email their advisor or go directly to their website from the Worthwhile app. The result has been a deeper engagement with clients and increased customer loyalty. “The digital edition brings financial advisors and clients closer together,” says Cameron Diehl manager of advisor productivity and marketing strategy at Raymond James. “It keeps advisors’ names in front of their contacts who can then email the advisor or go to their website directly from within the WorthWhile app.”

Another example is Sotheby’s International Realty, the global luxury real estate network whose Anthology app has replaced the printed brochures it used to distribute to its nearly 700 sales affiliates around the world, and which were often out of date as soon as they were printed. In contrast, its iPad sales enablement app provides up-to-date information to its affiliates and includes interactive features such as slideshows and videos. Best of all, the firm has seen direct ROI as a result of the app—in addition to the $1 million a year it saves by using a tablet app instead of print collateral.

GlobalMedia

Learn More:

Download the Forbes Insights Report – The Connected Marketer: How Apps are Engaging Customers, Partners and Employees

Version 29 of Digital Publishing Suite Now Available

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The theme for this release is consumer marketing! With this latest version, marketing teams can drive even greater brand and editorial engagement. There is a lot in this version for marketers to like and learn about. Let’s quickly cover the highlights.

Welcome Screen

WelcomeScreen The new HTML Welcome Screen is a great tool for savvy marketers who are looking for new and compelling ways to promote content and gather data within their application. For example, consumer marketing teams at magazine publishers could use the Welcome Screen to promote a free issue, support log-in to digital content or encourage subscription purchase by promoting special offers.  Enterprises could make use of the welcome screen to orient users to their app, encourage account creation or capture data such as an email address.  Because the Welcome Screen is custom built using HTML, it can take on the look and feel of the brand and display any content the market team deems important to their marketing, sales and editorial strategies.

Before we move on, a few more details about the Welcome Screen important to know. First, the Welcome Screen is only available for iOS apps on iPhone or iPad.  Second, it only displays on first launch of an application (after download or re-installation).

Need more information?  Check out the video on Adobe TV.

Now, on to the next feature: Targeted Push Notifications

TargetedPushDialog In-app push notification has been a consistent, high performing marketing tool within DPS for quite a while. Whenever a publisher or brand makes use of an in-app push notification, there is usually a corresponding increase in the number of issues downloaded.

Ultimately, what makes a push notification work even harder is its ability to target a specific communication to a specific “segment”. With DPS version 29 you can now send a unique communication to a pre-configured segment, without a lot of backend work or support from your analytics team.  Want to send an in-app notification to all users who have iOS devices? Now you can.  Want to communicate with only iPad or iPhone users? Send a push notification specifically to users by device.  Want to encourage laggard users to open your app? Now you can send a push notification to any user who has not engaged with your content in the last thirty days.

For more information on enhancements to targeted push notification, check out the video on Adobe TV.

Streaming Audio and Video

StreamingAudioVideo

Another new feature that allows readers to get to your content even faster is support for streaming audio and video. It is no longer necessary to embedded multimedia files in your folio. This in turn reduces file size and improves download times.

Plus, if you don’t have to embed your multimedia content in the app you have more flexibility to keep your video and audio content fresh and your app highly engaging.

For more information, check out the video on Adobe TV:

There are many other new features and enhancements within version 29, including App Builder improvements, new sharing behaviors and Web Viewer improvements.  For full details, check out the DPS R29 release notes.

And don’t forget about our other helpful DPS resources including the Digital Publishing Suite Developer Center and the new Digital Publishing Suite Showcase Gallery.

Adobe Launches Year in Review App

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This post originally appeared on Adobe Conversations. Posted by Adobe’s Mark Garrett, Executive Vice President and CFO.

Today, we released a new 2013 Adobe Year in Review app that provides an interactive recap of Adobe’s highlights last year. As CFO, most of the documents I oversee aren’t all that exciting – 10-K’s and 10-Q’s are important, but they aren’t bedtime reading. With this app, produced using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS), I’m finally able to tap some of the cool technology we provide to our customers to tell our own business story.

YIR-App

The Year in Review app highlights our performance in 2013 and our vision around Creative Cloud and Adobe Marketing Cloud— including the new connections we’re making between our content creation technologies and our digital marketing solutions.

The app includes video and interactivity to bring the numbers and data to life—along with providing information about Adobe’s strategy, exciting customer case studies and our efforts with corporate social responsibility programs.

Because this is a mobile app, we’re also able to engage our stakeholders wherever they are, including customers, employees, partners, investors and analysts. Additionally, because the app is integrated with Adobe Analytics, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, we’ll be able to see how the content and interactivity is resonating with our stakeholders.

Learn more

Mobile App Use Now Makes Up 52% of Total Digital Media Engagement

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Comscore just released its US Mobile App Report confirming that mobile apps now dominate content consumption: “Mobile has swiftly risen to become the leading digital platform, with total activity on smartphones and tablets accounting for an astounding 60 percent of digital media time spent in the U.S. The fuel driving mobile’s relentless growth is primarily app usage, which alone makes up a majority of total digital media engagement at 52 percent.”  Check out the report here.

Comscore

 

While mobile users obviously spend a lot of time in their social, radio and news apps, they are also spending time in a wide range of other apps that are important to them –  whether at home, in the office, or in the class room.  It has been great to watch app usage expand to include content such as the NFL Buffalo Bills app which is driving an entirely new fan experience both inside and outside the stadium.   And a terrific app from Audi that is helping its dealers and customer stay ahead of the curve with an interactive product experience app.

Visit the DPS gallery on Behance to see more examples of mobile apps.

Gartner recognizes Adobe as an Industry Leader in Mobile App Development

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Adobe is excited to have been recognized as a Leader in the 2014 Garnter Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms research report. The Gartner Magic Quadrant is a go-to resource for an objective perspective on technology markets. We feel being recognized as an industry leader—based on both “completeness of vision” and “ability to execute” —is the kind of validation that makes our team proud.

We know that companies increasingly need to develop mobile apps for a variety of uses. A Mobile App Development Platform (MADP) brings order and control to the potential chaos of app development. Whether teams create immersive brochure, sales enablement, or magazine apps with video and interactivity, or utility apps with custom functionality, like mobile bookings or ecommerce —they still want to retain control. They want to ensure consistent customer experiences, efficient content management, and measureable results. That’s where a MADP comes into play.

Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) is a key component of Adobe’s MADP. DPS allows companies to create content-rich apps that immerse users in interactive experiences. The more engaging and compelling apps are —the more effective they are. But the cost of apps doesn’t start and stop with initial development. Updates are constant and can be costly. So DPS integrates with content management systems, like Adobe Experience Manager, making it possible for marketers to update content themselves —saving time and money. Plus, with built in dashboards and integration with Adobe Analytics, DPS delivers valuable insights that lead to smarter decisions.

We’re proud that DPS is changing the way companies engage with customers, communicate with investors, and empower their employees and sales teams.

To read Gartner’s full report, click here.


Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Adobe DPS named by InfoTrends as Leader in Enterprise Digital Publishing Platforms

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We are excited to announce that analyst firm InfoTrends, in its latest “Digital Publication Platform Market Overview” report, ranked Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) as leading the pack of enterprise digital publishing platforms. We believe this recognizes Adobe’s unique ability to deliver the best digital publishing platform to enterprises today.

The report notes that Adobe DPS is one of the most well-known digital publishing platforms, and that it dominates the space. “With many of the major publishers using Adobe DPS, the solution currently supports over 2,000 publications on the market,” according to InfoTrends. The report indicates that because Adobe DPS has extensive integration with Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Marketing Cloud, it “has some features that other publishing platforms have yet to incorporate into their capabilities.”

The report also finds that:

  • The need for better content marketing is driving customer investment in digital publishing platforms.
  • Over 90% of enterprises are moving toward electronic documentation – including for annual reports, brochures, and other corporate publications that are transitioning from print to digital.
  • Only six digital publishing vendors truly dominate the space – with Adobe DPS as one of the most-well known solutions, with the largest market share.

Through a unified user experience, rich interactive capabilities, and cross-platform publishing, Adobe DPS provides one of the best solutions for each of the criteria used in the report: rich media publishing capabilities, analytics and data reporting, publication management, and content distribution.

Learn more about Adobe DPS

Connect with a Rep

Download the report

Video: Sales Enablement Apps Made Easy

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Gain a first hand look at the new Adobe DPS for Sales Enablement solution through a short video we’ve produced. The three-and-a-half minute clip shows the features and customization available with the new offering. With the new solution, Adobe Consulting builds your sales app from start to finish—so getting your salespeople a persuasive sales app can be done quickly and easily.

The app includes features that have been tested and proven to help drive sales, including:

  • A branded user interface
  • User management and targeted content distribution
  • Centralized content administration
  • Training for your team from Adobe
  • And more…

Watch the video below and be sure to join our webinar on January 22 at 10am PT to see our experts demo the solution, ask questions, and learn more.


Re-imagining Publishing with Fast Company

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About a year ago, the editorial and design teams at Fast Company and my team of designers, developers and researchers from Adobe’s Experience Design group spent several days in a corner conference room on the 29th floor of 7 World Trade Center. From there, we could see across to the then nearly complete One WTC Tower, down over the Ground Zero monuments, and beyond where the Hudson and East Rivers meet. It was a breathtaking view, to be sure, but even more inspiring to us were the in-depth discussions we were having with our partners from Fast Company: Bob Safian (Editor-in-Chief), Noah Robischon (Executive Editor), Florian Bachleda (Creative Director), and numerous other key members of their teams.

Fast Company and Adobe design teams in an early brainstorm meeting. From left to right: Kenji Arakawa (Senior Design Manager, Adobe), Florian Bachleda, (Creative Director, Fast Company), Jeremy Clark (Director of Experience Design, Adobe), Noah Robischon (Executive Editor, Fast Company), Anne Marie O’Keefe (Consumer Marketing Director, Fast Company), Yohko Kelley (Senior Design Lead, Adobe), Ming-En Cho (Senior Developer, Adobe), Rob Adams (Senior Researcher)

 

The discussion centered around what defined a “magazine” in this modern age of digital consumption where readers are increasingly engaging with brands on the web, on mobile devices, at all times of day, with increasing frequency and with broadly different expectations. While revenue from digital divisions of many publishers are growing, what has becoming increasingly clear is that the web traffic is often very fleeting. Average visit lengths across the web are measured in seconds instead of minutes, a vast majority of traffic comes from search engines or links from email newsletters, and repeat visitors per month can be scarce. On the other hand, print and digital subscribers are highly engaged and valuable to publishers, but surprisingly don’t tend to consume as much daily content on the web.

Adobe team conferring during a meeting break. From left to right: Jeremy Clark, Rob Adams, Amanda McCoy Bast (Senior Designer), Yohko Kelley, Kenji Arakawa, Mathieu Badimon (Designer), Johannes Eckert (Senior Design Lead)

 

Fast Company’s web content includes several prominent “sub-networks” (as we referred to them) such as Co.Design, Co.Create, Co.Exist. Across this family of digital properties, there are upwards of 40-50 articles published each day, many by the same writers and contributors as the content that is published periodically in the magazine. Yet many of Fast Company’s most loyal print readers may rarely see this content. Is that because they don’t think to visit the Fast Company website each day? Is it that they prefer a leisurely, monthly reading experience as opposed to reading articles more frequently? Is it that they appreciate the curated story arch in the magazine instead of the random nature of a typical blog feed? And the converse was also a challenge: How do we help capture the attention of those readers who may get sent a link to an article from a friend, on a news aggregator website or in their social feeds, and help them to discover additional stories they may be interested in? How do we extend the value of the magazine brand to casual readers and turn them into more loyal followers?

1 World Trade Center (left) and 7 World Trade Center (right), where Fast Company’s offices are located.

 

With a clean slate, we set out to define a new mobile-first reading experience for Fast Company together. Our goal was to blend the best of both the web and print and ensure that readers could immediately be immersed in Fast Company content without having to first make a purchase. We also wanted readers to be able to get a quick hit of a few selected stories to read on the go, give them the option to follow just the digital networks they cared about and access all of the content that is normally found in the print magazine — including longer feature stories — but in a mobile-friendly fashion.

We arrived at a content model where the stories or articles themselves were the atomic element instead of an “issue.” We created logical ways of grouping stories together to provide more flexibility for the Fast Company editorial team and enjoyment to their readers.

Fast Company and Adobe teams reviewing interface and content layout design progress. From left to right: Bob Newman (freelance Design Director for Fast Company), Christian Gaffney (Designer, Fast Company), Noah Robischon, Kenji Arakawa, Florian Bachleda, Nayong Park (Designer, Adobe), Stephen Lim (Senior Designer, Adobe)

 

We also created an interface that got out of the way so the reader could simply focus on reading, a way for users to quickly and intuitively navigate the content hierarchy through the use of common gestures and a way to encourage readers to easily discover content that they’d be interested in. And finally, we wanted the experience to scale gracefully between phone and tablet — not simply scaling down articles intended for print — but leveraging responsive design principles to adapt the articles for the targeted screen size.

Over the course of the year, there were countless in-person meetings, exchanges of ideas and designs online, and many rounds of working prototypes to test our interface concepts. In true partnership, we pushed each other to make sure the application we were designing truly met our collective aspirations.

Tour

Now that the app is live, let’s take a closer look at the new app and some of the features found within. For the sake of keeping the images small, I’ve used screenshots from the iPhone version of the app, but the iPad version functions identically.

Overview

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There are three top-level sections within the Fast Company app:

  • Our Picks:
    The five top stories for the day, as selected by Fast Company’s editors
  • Latest Stories:
    The entire feed of stories from Fast Company’s various properties
  • Magazine:
    The articles that comprise of this month’s magazine, as well as back issues

Upon launching the application, the first section a user sees is called “Our Picks.” If the user swipes from right to left, they will switch to the “Latest Stories” section. If they swipe again, they’ll end up in the “Magazine” section where they’ll see the latest cover.

Alternatively, it is possible to tap the icon in the upper left of the screen (represented by three lines, or also affectionately known as “the hamburger”) to bring up a drawer from the left that allows for quick access to any section as well as application settings:

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From any of the three sections, one can drill down into articles and then traverse back up to the top level by either using the breadcrumb (context-sensitive “back”) button at the top, or by using a left-bezel swipe gesture (dragging their finger from the left edge of the screen into the content):

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Article-centric

This might be a good point to discuss how articles work within the application. As mentioned earlier, one of the major goals of this new publishing platform was to make the article the atomic element rather than an entire “issue.” In the Fast Company app, most all of the articles available to you are displayed in the “Latest Stories” section, including many of the articles in a given magazine issue as well as all of the networks (Co.Design, Co.Exist, etc.). The “Magazine” section and the “Our Picks” sections are a filtered, visually different way of viewing a collection of stories. In the case of “Our Picks” it displays five stories per day with large images, and in the “Magazine” section it is laid out much like a table of contents. This provides the Fast Company editors with different ways to present content to readers, depending on how they like to consume it.

Our Picks

“Our Picks” is a curated selection of five top stories for the day from the editors of Fast Company. As we intended this section to be highly visual and quick to navigate through, each of the five stories is represented as a full-screen card that one can simply drag up to expose the next card underneath.

09_ourpicks_1

Beyond the first five cards, you’ll notice the date flips back in time and exposes the top stories from the previous day. For those who don’t want to sift through all 50 or so articles a day, this provides a shortcut to things they might be most interested in.

Stories

If you tap on a story card, you’ll be taken one level down to the article. We’ve strived to provide a very focused reading experience here – free of superfluous interface elements and distracting links. We know the real estate on mobile screens is precious, and we wanted the content to be the only thing displayed (aside from the iOS status bar at the top so that you can still see what time it is, and what your signal and batter levels are at). In fact, when you start to scroll down through an article, we even remove the top menu bar with the breadcrumb navigation and share buttons. Not to worry – if you want to expose the menu to share an article for instance, you can do so by simply scrolling back up a tad.

10_ourpicks_2

Speaking of sharing, the Fast Company app works natively with the built-in iOS sharing solution, which allows you to send a link to an article through text message, email (as shown below), social networks, or even AirDrop it to your desktop or another iOS device.

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At the end of each article, we bring up the top menu bar automatically, and we also offer a visual shortcut to the next article in the collection you were viewing (in this case, the next “Our Picks” article) so that if you’re wanting to continue reading articles in succession, you can do so without having to go up and back down the content hierarchy (or as we refer to it, “hub-and-spoke navigation”). But you don’t need to scroll all the way down to get to the next story: just as you can use a lateral swipe to switch between the three top level sections, you can use swipe gestures to navigate between all of the stories within a collection (in this case again, for “Our Picks”). This allows for another speedy way to leaf through articles almost like you might in the printed form, albeit with the distinct benefit of only having to leaf through one “page” per article, since all articles scroll vertically like a web page would.

12_ourpicks_4

Latest Stories

As mentioned earlier, the “Latest Stories” section contains stories from all of Fast Company’s sources – some 40-50 articles on a given day. We’ve provided an easy way to filter the feed if the reader wishes, by tapping the button in the top menu. This allows one to select only the story feeds that are of interest:

13_latestnews_1

As one would expect, tapping on any thumbnail or headline takes you down to the article level. From here, just as with the “Our Picks” section, you can use the breadcrumb or left bezel swipe to go back up to the “Latest Stories” parent level, or you can swipe between articles to navigate through them directly.

One thing to point out here is that Fast Company displays an icon at the article thumbnail level that lets you know if there’s an image gallery or a video featured within the article. In the example below you can see the icon in the lower right on the “Latest Stories” feed. Once you tap the article, you can then tap the main image (also featuring a special icon) to go into a full-screen viewing experience for the gallery or video content.

14_latestnews_2

Magazine

The last section to highlight in this tour is the “Magazine” section. Magazine editors and designers go to great lengths each month (or each week, for some publications) to put together a highly curated, well thought-out selection of articles. Often there’s a major theme or story arch to an issue: for instance, the March 2015 issue of Fast Company is focused on highlighting what their editors have identified as the world’s most innovative companies. Not only will the feature articles be dedicated to this topic, but much of the “front-of-book” and smaller articles will also be focused on innovation in general. So while most all of this content will also trickle into the “Latest Stories” section over time, the “Magazine” section is the first place where it will all be presented together.

15_magazine_1

A visual Table of Contents (TOC) displays a representation of the cover (simplified as needed for smaller screens), feature stories, and then the rest of the articles in the issue. As one would expect, tapping a thumbnail or headline takes you to the article level and you can navigate back up as you do in other sections, or you can swipe to continue through the magazine in the order it is presented in the TOC.

The Fast Company app also allows users to go back in time and view older issues by tapping the “Archive” button in the top menu. This takes one to a cover selector, where you can scroll down and tap a previous issue’s cover to view its TOC and navigate to content.

16_magazine_2

Check it Out

We’re really excited about what we’ve built in collaboration with our partners at Fast Company, and can’t wait to see how it is received by the broader publishing industry. Adobe is certainly leveraging all that we’ve learned from this close engagement with Fast Company to drive the direction of Adobe’s digital publishing platform, which we will start to deliver on later this year. But by no means do we feel that our work is finished. We have a laundry list of additional features we’d like to add. Be sure to visit the “Send Feedback” link in the application menu drawer and in Settings, to let Fast Company know what you think!

 

Read our announcement of Fast Company’s app here.

Download the Fast Company app now.

If you’re interested in hearing more from Adobe on the new product that will be released in summer 2015, sign up here.

 

New Fast Company App Reveals Adobe’s Vision for Future of Digital Publishing

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We’re very excited to announce that Fast Company, working in close collaboration with Adobe, has just launched a new mobile app that provides a preview of a completely re-imagined mobile experience that Adobe will bring to market in the summer of 2015.

The new Fast Company app–running universally on iPhone and iPad and available in the Apple App store—breaks from today’s print-like paradigm and gives readers access to a highly curated brand experience that combines magazine content with real-time news on a platform that is fully optimized for mobile devices. Early beta testers of the new Fast Company app have called it “a better approach to online magazine than anything I’ve seen” and “the future of periodicals.”

The app gives an early look at many of the capabilities that are core to Adobe’s vision to transform digital publishing—a highly-focused reading, viewing and browsing experience, continuous updates to content on a cadence that makes sense for mobile consumption, and the enterprise tools required to manage apps across a wide variety of mobile use cases.

From Bob Safian, Editor in Chief, Fast Company
“The app offers a different experience than traditional digital magazines. Collaborating with Adobe, we can now combine real-time news stories with magazine content, in a mobile platform available on phones and tablets, updated continuously. We believe this sort of mix will define digital magazine content in the future.”
Read more from Bob Safian here.

Here is a detailed look at the new capabilities that are a sampling of what to expect from Adobe this summer:

A content-first experience

The Fast Company app gives readers direct access to content as soon as the app is installed, removing barriers like storefronts, issue downloads and immediate payment requirements that have inhibited engagement in the past. Once the app is installed, readers can explore articles, videos, the magazine and more. The app delivers an immersive mobile experience, capturing audience and engagement.

A modern browsing, reading, and viewing experience

The Fast Company app is a mobile-first experience that breaks from the print-replica model and offers readers a browsing, reading, and viewing experience that is thoughtfully designed and delivered seamlessly across multiple screens through responsive layout.

The app has three main sections:

Today’s Top 5: Our Picks

Fast Company editors handpick five new articles each day for their mobile audience and date stamp them to clearly indicate that fresh content is constantly available to readers.

Latest Stories

A dynamic feed automatically pushes the latest stories from fastcompany.com and the Fast Company networks including Co.Design, Co.Exist, and Co.Create, a perfect aggregated mix of these leading web properties.

The Magazine

The monthly magazine is now presented in an article-centric, easy-to-browse experience and is no longer a fixed dimension layout format optimized for a single screen.

 

Fast Company also integrated offline reading so that when readers find themselves without internet access—on the train, the subway, on a plane—they can still access the Fast Company content everyday, whenever and wherever they are.

Continuous content updatesBlog bit 2

At the heart of this modern app experience is the ability to give readers fresh content that creates a reason for frequent visits and drives deeper engagement. Mobile app publishing is no longer tied to print schedules and instead content updates can be made as makes sense for today’s mobile world. Native capabilities in the application offer the reader a tailor made custom experience that feels fluid and rich.

Article-based–not issue-based–publishing

Fast Company adds 40-50 articles to its various properties each day and now, they are easily able to push those articles as bite-sized pieces of content to their app throughout the day so their audience can quickly read while on the go in a native app experience. With article-based publishing, the app stays up-to-date and relevant with its readers.

Subscription options

This new model of continuous, article-based publishing requires a new way for readers to pay for content. While single issue and subscription purchases will continue to be available in the future, a new, all-access payment model will become available in Summer 2015. So, while the Fast Company app is free for the first three months, they will have the ability to offer an all-access subscription that entitles the reader to everything in the app–an attractive option that mobile readers will welcome.

Enterprise-grade administration tools

This re-imagined mobile experience will also include an accompanying flexible set of administration tools that will empower practitioners to assign the right level of responsibility and access to everyone on the team, including employees and external agencies.

 

Adobe is very excited about the partnership with Fast Company and this first step toward offering all customers–publishers, corporations and higher education institutions—an entirely new way to bring content to their audiences. If you happen to be headed to the Adobe Summit, don’t miss the Fast Company session on March 11 where Bob Safian and Nick Bogaty, Adobe’s senior director, head of digital publishing, will host a live discussion on this transformative time in digital publishing. Don’t miss our session that provides a detailed look at the roadmap product for a brand new Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) that will be released in summer 2015.

 

Read more about the creative collaboration between Adobe and Fast Company and how they redefined the modern mobile media experience.

Download the Fast Company app now.

If you’re interested in hearing more from Adobe on the new product that will be released in summer 2015, sign up here.

 





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