Digital Daily Newspaper Redesign: The 'Section Browse' Screen Swipe
Today's design feature: the "section browse." An aspiring developer could develop a Tinder-like screen-swipe that allows a reader to quickly peak at the tops of that day's newspaper sections like an outliner expand/collapse operation. Let's call this user action the "section browse."
What it is - analog:
That ingenious timeslice known as "today's paper" is nicely compartmentalized into "sections." Our regional paper the San Francisco Chronicle usually publishes A News B Bay Area C Sports D Business E Datebook. The sports *section* is published on green newsprint. The datebook on Sunday is published on pink newsprint.
What it could be - digital:
A click-hold-drag motion by the reader could stretch an expandable accordian display of that day's sections, a click-release could leave the display in an expanded state -- allowing the reader to click-"jump" to a separate section -- and a reverse-drag motion could collapse the sections back behind the *currently viewed* webpage.
Who wins - reader:
The reader gains a greater sense of orientation. When diving into many newspapers today, readers often feel like they're within an "avalanche" of linked story heds with no sense of accomplishment or nearing completion point for that evolved time unit known as the "day".
Who wins - newspaper:
The newspaper already organizes their daily paper in sections. Newspapers incur opportunity costs when digital readers don't click on entry points they would otherwise click on if they knew these entry points existed. Unclicked entry points are unviewed ad impressions.
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
