The world around us is constantly changing, now more than ever. Because this is especially true for a paper medium like the ‘Brabants Dagblad’, the theme of their 2013 Christmas special build onto this topic, with ‘Opvolgers’ or -in English- ‘successors’ being its title.
For a digital addition to this special, the paper wanted to create an online experience surrounding the story of Rick Goverde; a relatively young journalist who experienced the evolution of the newspaper, from strictly paper journalism to a type of journalism where a story contains self-made photo’s, short stories for the website, multiple tweets and an elaborate background article for the paper itself. After experiencing all of this, Rick decided to take his next big step: Move to Morocco to start his career from scratch in an unknown culture, without a network.
This story was to be presented in style of an interview. It was up to a fellow trainee and me to think of a way to present this interview to the audience. We decided to make it feel like the user is directly interacting with Rick, in a chat-like setting. To achieve this, Rick taped his answers to all the questions, which can be individually selected by the user.
The design is a recreation of the Rick’s Desk in Morocco. This creates a realistic setting and shows the tools needed for today’s journalism. All interactive elements are as close to realistic as possible to simulate the feeling of a video-chat.
The website was featured along with a one-page article in the Christmas Special.