Stern Magazine Discovers Augmented Reality
Karlsruhe/Hamburg (GER), November 2011 - The observer sees Michel from Hamburg looming across from him in 3D, water splashes, and a virtual image of the famous German musician and composer Udo Lindenberg philosophizes about his hat and the world. The German weekly magazine experimented "Stern" did some experimentation with augmented reality, and who knows - perhaps the reader will have a chance to read a follow-up story. At the LEARNTEC Conference, Werner Hinzpeter, editor for popular Hamburg-based news weekly's special editions, describes on the congress of the LEARNTEC the background of this novel concept and the experiences that came out of it. His summary: "It was a learning process based on a work in progress."
Had augmented reality played any role for Stern before this?
Werner Hinzpeter: Of course it had among the editorial staff. In our department we always follow all technical developments, but this didn't become possible until there were enough smartphone owners in Germany to take advantage of it. Besides, the first consumer AR applications were basically for tech freaks. It wasn't until last spring that we became convinced that there enough good, useful software that we could introduce to our readers.
Does that mean that the entire editorial staff really liked the idea?
Werner Hinzpeter: You can't do such an extraordinary project in any magazine in the world without having to convince people. But I was actually surprised at how many of the people from the most diverse corners of the editorial staff expressed their enthusiasm immediately. For instance our illustrators, the people in the video department of stern.de and the eMagazine, and also the cartoonists Gerhard Haderer, Til Mette and Tetsche.
After all, it was terra incognita ...
Werner Hinzpeter: It was completely unknown territory for almost all of them, and so we got our training on a living subject. And we set our sights high: From the very outset we knew we wouldn't be content just putting out any old thing with augmented reality; we wanted to test the technical possibilities to the limit. And for this task we set the goal of expanding the entire bandwidth of our magazine in a meaningful way. The result that you see in our AR edition comprises entertainment, things of useful value, serious journalistic pieces, and videos with surviving family members of the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center.
What were the greatest challenges?
Werner Hinzpeter: Definitely the technical hurdles. First of all we had to clarify which of our ideas were actually already were realizable for smartphones. It was important to us to produce the contents as far as possible by ourselves. They could only be built into the app, though, by the Metaio company in Munich, which works with completely different equipment. The software wasn't always immediately compatible. Especially the conversion of our 3D graphics demanded a lot of brain power. The learning curve was steep, but in the end everything we intended actually worked out.
How much time did it take to put this special edition together?
Werner Hinzpeter: The AR project had a three-month run-up period, and the production took five weeks. For an up-to-the-minute magazine like Stern so much prep time is a problem, and it was good that nothing happened in the last week before publication that required any changes in the overall topic. It would have hardly been possible to make any major modification because there wouldn't have been enough time to produce good AR content that suited another title. Fortunately, this technology keeps on developing at high speed, and in the future it would be easier to produce something faster.
Who should have a look at the applications?
Werner Hinzpeter: As many readers as possible. The software we worked with is available for iPhones and Android devices, so we used both systems. We also limited the amounts of data so that people who don't have the very latest generation of smartphones would be able to use the app. Unfortunately, this didn't always work out, though, because there's no unique Android standard. A colleague actually went out and bought a brand-new smartphone just for the special edition, but the chip it used was a bit old, so our app didn't run.
And how was the general response?
Werner Hinzpeter: Our applications have been viewed and used over 100,000 times, which people in our field find sensational. On the other hand, it means that we only to have reached a fraction of our more than seven million readers because, of course, not all of them have and use a modern smartphone. Maybe we should have also emphasized more strongly in the issue the other excellent offers linked to the AR pages. I guess that - in our typical Hanseatic way - we were too reserved in this first attempt.
Where do you view the added value of augmented reality for a renowned print magazine like Stern?
Werner Hinzpeter: It allows us to go beyond the -œnatural limits- that print defines for us - that is, we can expand our stories with moving images, sound, and 3D. But the point isn't to use these things just to have them. When I take my mobile and the app launches and waits for the content to load, I want to be rewarded with something worth seeing. If all I get is an antiquated little film, I'm not going to be happy. And if it happens again and again, sooner or later I'm going to stop using it all together.
And what's going to happen now at Stern? Are you going to include other augmented reality applications?
Werner Hinzpeter: We're at least thinking about it, and we know now how to do it. The relevant technology is progressing so fast that it will soon be relatively easy to link AR content in the magazine with an acceptable level of effort.
