User-friendly video apps and WBEZ's Curious City

In this week's Futures Lab update, the Reynolds Journalism Institute shows some state-of-the-art features for tablet video apps, and explains what happens when audience members get to accompany reporters in search of answers.

PART 1: User-friendly video apps

About 65 percent of tablet owners spend an hour or more every day watching video on their devices, according to research by IPG Media Lab and the ad agency YuMe. Meanwhile, recent research from RJI found that nearly four out of five tablet owners have downloaded one or more apps specifically for news. Put it together and it spells a lot of potential eyeballs for news-related video on the devices. In light of that, RJI offers a roundup of user-friendly ideas for presenting video inside a tablet app.

PART 2: WBEZ's Curious City

With its Curious City engagement project, Chicago public radio station WBEZ not only encourages audience members to ask and vote on questions to be answered – it also takes members of the public out alongside the station's reporters in search of the answers. Two members of the WBEZ team explain what it's like to include citizens in the reporting process.

Watch the RJI Futures Lab video update here.