“Alexander interestingly combines many modes and media to [produce] immersive, engaging nonfiction storytelling. Its audio performances and imagery create a unique experience to consume media.” —Kadambari Sahu
Overview: The Alexander app produces and publishes high-quality, long-form content stories to its readers. Brooklyn-based design firm L+R worked with Alexander’s founders and created a one-of-a-kind digital platform and service to house its stories, written and performed by world-famous writers and voice narrators, paired with beautiful videos and imagery of famous actors and actresses. L+R guided the app’s product strategy, UX/UI design and mobile development and created and refined the elevated digital customer experience through advanced mobile technologies, elegant microinteractions and a robust content management system.
Custom features let users effortlessly bookmark, highlight, take notes, and share quotes, annotations and stories as they read.
L+R designed a proprietary content management system, database, registration and in-app purchasing/subscription system.
From concept to completion, the project took eight months to produce.
Comments by Chris Martinié and Javier Torrús:
What do you think are the project’s core features? “We created a patent-pending technology that lets readers move seamlessly between reading and listening. We further refined the digital experience through microinteractions and animations. Users simply tap a word on the written version of the story and the narrated audio track plays exactly from that word. Behind the scenes, this feature leverages natural language processing to produce accurate speech recognition and turns an expensive, tedious and error-prone process into a streamlined automation.
“Alexander is now working with the best storytellers in the world like Helena Bonham Carter to publish these next-generation stories. Enhancing superior long-content format, the app will enhance a user’s experience and broaden the accessibility and depth of each story. Alexander successfully combines an OTT-type experience with content based on strong storytelling and an intuitive, elegant mobile app experience.”
How many people and/or agencies worked on the development? “A total of ten people from the L+R teams in Spain, New York and California. In partnership with the Alexander team, we also collaborated with Ohmycode, a highly skilled development team headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, supporting the back-office content management system.”
What was the most challenging aspect of the project? “Finding that balance between a truly fresh and unique design while not sacrificing usability and immersion into the various types of media that the app utilizes. We had originally been brought on to support the reinvigoration of an unfinished app. Our challenge was to reduce the product to its essence—an app delivering long-form content that captures the imaginations of an audience whose time and attention are limited—and quickly deliver a superior user experience and user interface on a platform designed for scale and sustainability.”
