Why the page is killing innovation in magazine UX

Why the page is preventing innovation in magazine UX !!authored by @robboynes

!

!!UX Camp Brighton November 2013

The page is the evolution of the scroll. !

The scroll is the evolution of the page.

!

Magazines have great UX !Hierarchical content based on grid systems

Clear signposting of sections

Linear narrative from news through to features

Curated content

Paper - nice to touch and easy to read

!

Magazines are user focused !!Shareable

Robust

Portable

Cheap

Recyclable

Comfortable

!!!

!

The page works !!“The question of [an effective page] is not merely one of design

and format; the question of legibility is of equal importance.

The reader should be able to read the message of a text easily

and comfortably. This depends to a not inconsiderable extent

on the size of the type, the length of lines and the leading.”

!!Raster Systeme, Josef Muller-Brockman 1981 !!!

On the next slide we can see a current magazine page and how

the grid behind it looks.

Grids control the eye by using hierarchy.

!

The page gives control… !!!

!

therefore the page remains !!!

When the iPad arrived, the majority of publishers really just wanted

what the following slide describes.

!This explains the constant presence of replica magazines in Apple

Newsstand from PixelMags, Zino, etc.

DRAG MAGAZINE FILE HERE

CREATE DIGITAL PRODUCT

Adobe created the DPS framework allowing print focused

designers to ‘layout’, in InDesign, pages from their magazines and

place them within a fixed UI/UX on tablets - originally this was

focused only on iPads but later, to various levels of success,

this was extended to android tablets and mobiles.

!DPS requires the designer to design pages to fit every individual

screen size and orientation. The following slides show the DPS UI.

I have used WIRED as an example as it was the first to use the

DPS platform - no other reason.

!There are other such folio softwares that use these behaviours and InDesign workflows including:

!Mag+

Future Folio (to an extent - has it’s own non-InDesign workflow)

Woodwing (now part of DPS)

Press Run

The next slide is the storefront.

The next slide is the in-issue scrubber.

You use this to scan through content.

The next slide is the drop down menu.

You use this to view favourites and content.

The next slide is the page itself.

You can scroll down for more if the page is designed larger than

the screen size. Page swipes are controlled left to right.

!It’s to be noted that this could be at odds with iOS7:

!Swipe Left to Right is BACK in UIWeb

Swipe Right to Left is FORWARD in UIWeb

Swipe Up from long scroll activates the device menu.

DPS and it’s contemporaries caused some initial design problems.

The tablet page was smaller in dimension and the workflow was

complex and expensive - yet publishers and editors wanted all the

print content to be in the digital editions without omissions.

!This was so they could claim an increase in circulation. At the time

ABC (the circulations regulatory body) only considered a digital

magazine part of the brand circulation if it had exactly the same

content as the print edition.

!

Trying to innovate the page !!The problem:

Getting all the things to fit on the page

!The solution:

Hide things

!!!

This next slide shows how a print designer has created scroll

boxes to attempt to fit in all the print matter into a small screen

space - at the expense of the user.

This next slide shows that along with the individual scroll areas,

there are still another 3 global app level scrolls potentially in play

with the user.

!The designer has then created a number of UI identifiers to

command the user into the various hierarchies and actions.

!We start to see the rise of design elements / signposts such as

‘swipe to view’, ‘press here’ and ‘scroll to see more’ appearing in

page designs.

!One user described to me the process as ‘masturbating hamsters’

referring to the constant small scale swiping and scrolling needed

to view content in some magazines.

!Discoverability is an issue here.

This next slide shows the concept of hiding content to satisfy the

use of page space. ‘Hotspotting' was rife during early magazines

and still pervades today. On this page there are 12 hotspots and

two hidden videos for the reader to locate. In the print edition no

content was hidden.

!Hotspots hide content behind UI buttons which when activated

reveal their content, often at the expense of the user and overall

page clarity.

!This can leave readers being ‘bird like’ as they tap around pages

on a quest for content. Users can also find it quite tiring.

!Discoverability is an issue here.

We end up with a print UX experience, but in many ways the

experience is actually worse due to discoverability.

!DPS UX solves two issues for a print reader:

!- Getting a new issue on demand or internationally is sometimes

hard to do.

!- Back issues take up space at home.

!Response to these issues:

!- From a solution based perspective, issues could be globally

delivered via Amazon next-day delivery. So this is a distribution

issue alone as the content is the same in both digital and print.

!- DPS issues often are over 1 - 1.5 GB each, so back issues cannot

be stored on devices for very long before they reach capacity.

!

The result !!An overly complex and anachronistic User Experience !

As the UX and UI is fixed in DPS style apps, they don’t consider

the end user. As such magazines had to design user guides to

allow users to actually understand how to view content and be

able to navigate around the app.

!This shows a problem with discoverability, but also how designers

began to find solutions to try to make user focused UXs despite

their limited app environments.

!This is shown in the next slide.

Several publishers began to question the workflow that DPS

dictated. Dennis Publishing was one of these publishers and have

now removed DPS from their portfolio.

!Some of these publishers decided they needed a scaleable

solution and looked to HTML and Native.

!

The next step !!The problem:

The page isn’t scaleable

!The solution:

Let’s look to the web

!!!

!

Remove the linear navigation !!!

The next example shows how tabulated navigation was added to

Men’s Fitness. This allowed the user only two UI gestures to get to

any content in the app to speed up navigation.

!The UI and page design was predominately flat and everything

was focused on transparency of content and wayfinding.

!The concept of page swiping became secondary and the contents

page and search menus are replaced by micro index pages for the

various sections.

!This becomes less a magazine but a magazine branded product in

it’s own right.

!The following slides show the user journey from issue / store

front to the article through to sharing and saving the article.

!The UX design here was authored by Rob Boynes.

The next example shows how this translates to mobile through

responsive templates.

!This project follows the COPE strategy of ‘create once,

publish everywhere’ in that the mobile automatically renders

content alongside the tablet edition.

!The UX of the phone is specific to mobile and very different to the

mobile and is based on the mobile user:

!- Index pages and tabs are replaced by a long news feed.

- Articles are run end-to-end allowing a user once in an article to

use infinite scroll to view all articles in an uninterrupted scroll.

- Swiping Left to Right takes the user back to the menu

(following standard iOS7 UX).

- Swiping Right to Left allows the user to drill down into article

level share and save options.

Removing the concept of ‘issues’ removes another layer of

‘magazineness’ from the digital model, but allows the user to

access to on demand content at regular intervals.

!This becomes a user focused - rather than publisher/industry

focused - advancement.

!

Remove the concept of ‘issues’ !!!

The following example shows how the user journey works on the

magazine brand ‘EVO’.

!The UX design here was authored by Clearleft.

All these solutions have problems however.

!In the next section of slides I discuss some of the problems that

remain and how we might begin to solve them.

!

But…the page remains !!There are still some problems as we move

from the fixed page to the responsive infinite scroll.

!Firstly, everything is vertical…and really long.

!!

Responsive pages can be really long on some devices.

If via COPE we deliver all content on all devices, then we end up

with some content that isn’t suited to a device or how a user uses

their device.

!For example:

!“Do I want to read your 20,000 word feature on my mobile”

!The answer is usually ‘No’.

!

!!Which makes anything disturbing that copy flow a problem. !Inline video is disruptive to reading and are also a poor way of viewing video. !!

Here we can see unrelated inline video breaking up copy flow.

!

Removing the page !!If we see the page-based magazine user experience as one of many

experiences within a brand ecosystem, then we can make ‘editorial’

experiences not for devices - but for specific user requirements.

!!

!

Video !!Let’s develop editorial video players that allow access to video

elements without the need for scrubbing. Let’s allow users to see

*inside* the video content and jump to what’s relevant.

!Let’s improve video players for the user.

Here we see the current inline video in Men’s Fitness, then look to

Buzzfeed and it’s use of breaking up video into 3-5 second GIFs to

illustrate a narrative.

Here we look to SoundCloud and how it allows users to comment

on specific time codes - as well as visualising entire audio files

before actually listening to them.

Here we look at how a combination of these UXs could form a

new way of previewing, sharing and viewing video editorially.

Here we see how search in magazines has always been a problem

- contents pages usually provided a basic solution to this.

!But web search is declining.

!It poses the question - what if we provided content to users they

actually wanted, based on algorithm, previously viewed content,

shares and other readers habits?

!We can look to Netflix as a comparison.

!

Search !!Search is hard work.

Search requires you to know what you’re looking for.

!

!

Why can’t my content just be delivered to me? !!Replace search with relevant content the user actually uses. !!

FOR ROB

MOST POPULAR

MOST SHARED

Here we see the idea of commenting on an article level which is

viewable before the article is selected.

FOR ROB

MOST POPULAR

MOST SHARED

Share becomes central over search.

!Browsing is still integral however:

!Content is served on your given preferences(1)

!Other content is chosen via:

(a) your like or dislike of the content (1)

(b) if you share all or parts of the content (2)

(c) you reading / not reading the article - (3)

(d) your overall user analytics and behaviour (4)

!This feedback loop is created for each user and it

becomes integral for monitoring the evolution of each

user experience the brand maintains.

!

Beyond the page !!!

!!!!!!!!Let’s create great experiences for users…

BUT relevant to the content and how it’s consumed.

!!

!

Conclusion !NOBODY create a ‘turning pages’ app for Leap Motion or Kinect.

But let’s collaborate.

!!

Authored by Rob Boynes November 2013 !Twitter: @robboynes