According to the Society of Digital Agencies (SODA) 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook, marketers are looking to spend more marketing dollars on mobile applications and technologies that tie into mobile apps. Sure hot technologies like location-based features and HTML5 help make cool experiences, but what about the content? This is where good storytelling comes in.
Opertoon’s Strange Rain app is an interesting example of “appertainment” and possibly a glimpse of the novel of the future. Best experienced on an iPad, the app features ambient raindrops falling down right onto your screen. The experience is highly interactive. You can control the raindrops, and you’ll notice an eerie textual storyline unfolds as you tap on the screen. The more you interact with the application, the more of the app’s story will unfold.
With each tap on the glass, snippets of a mysterious character’s inner monologue float onscreen. Drag your fingertips across the rainy image, and even more stream-of-consciousness flows from the clouds.
Strange Rain’s designers describe the character as “a man in the midst of a family crisis who has wandered into the rain to collect his thoughts. His world, too, has gone from familiar to strange, even as his beliefs are following the opposite course. Your interaction helps determine when and how he decides to come in from the rain.”
My two cents: Since I live in rain-drenched Portland, I can just go outside and let real rain trickle down on me. But this is a cool idea and a new way of presenting a story. For that I give it three umbrellas.