did they even do one usability study?
Have you tried to read a newspaper lately? Specifically, at Wendy’s while enjoying a nice chicken nugget?
Newspapers have never made sense to me. Even before the internet, I was never sure how people handled the frustration of dealing with them. You read two paragraphs, get interested, then have to flip over 10 pages back to read more. And what else? It’s a huge pain to even get to that page, because for some reason the page is double sized and bent in the middle. It’s aloof.
Why is the newspaper user interface so poor?
I assume it’s a legacy feature from the first newspapers, which had to be printed cheaply and quickly. Why hasn’t technology enabled a newspaper size such that it’s more like a big book, where you don’t need to fold it in half, and you can flip pages easily?
Someone - get on fixing that.
April 5th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Didn’t you grow up in Chicago? The Sun-Times has the tabloid layout, like your describe. The only problem is it sucks.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
i’m with you. I hate newpapers because they’re so stupidly hard to interact with.
April 6th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
The multi-page layout is helpful for ad revenue I imagine.
Also the recycled paper on which it’s printed is quite inexpensive and printing on large papers is more efficient. The paper also doesn’t hold up to binding or stapling well.
The Sunday newspaper used to be the highlight of my week. Yeah, kind of sad.