Orchestrating Magic

• May 19, 2011
• 6 notes

I’ve really tried to like The Daily. I want ambitious projects to succeed on iOS. I want to see the delivery and consumption of news reinvented on the iPad. But I just don’t look forward to launching The Daily. It hasn’t become part of my daily reading routine.

A distaste for the editorial voice may be part of my hang-up, but I do actually enjoy many of the stories when I take the time to launch the app. However, that’s where I frequently get hung-up… taking the time to launch the app.

I’ve been hesitant to speak my mind on the app because I know what it feels like to work incredibly hard on something only to have it torn apart by armchair quarterbacks. But I just can’t hold back any longer.

Instead of ripping apart the hard work of my friends and colleagues, I’m going to offer a very specific solution for solving one of the biggest complaints about the app. I know a lot has been written about this, and I’m likely repeating things that were said months ago, but the app has now seen several updates that failed to properly address the issue, so I think it’s time to bring it up again.

When I launch an app on any computing platform, I do so with very specific intent—to read, to catch up on Twitter, to edit a photo, etc. Anything that comes between me and that intent quickly becomes frustrating, especially when I launch the app often. This has always been the case with computers, but it’s especially apparent on mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad. I don’t want to wait for things to load, I don’t want to navigate through a messy jungle of options, I want to get right to doing whatever it is this particular app does well enough that I bother launching it in the first place (further reading on that subject: Tapworthy).

And guess what? Many iOS developers have gone to great lengths to satisfy that expectation. I remember launching Reeder for the first time on my iPhone and being absolutely shocked at how quickly my feeds loaded. My expectation had been set by other slow RSS apps which discouraged me from spending much time with them on my iPhone. Reeder changed that.

Now, you could argue that The Daily is a different type of app—people launch The Daily with the expectation of spending some serious time in the app. That may be true (though I doubt it is), but that intent doesn’t change the expectation set by the launch speed of most well built apps on the platform. The launch experience of The Daily is about as far as I’ve seen an app stray from that expectation.

I could go on and on about why this is bad and why it’s not acceptable even for a “newspaper app,” but I’ll cut right to the case and offer my thoughts on a potential solution. You may want to download and experience the app yourself if you haven’t already, or just read this: The Daily Wait.

Though many would argue with me here, I don’t think the launch animation is necessarily a bad thing. It’s a pleasant animation with a nice branded look and sound. Like the Twitterrific chirp, the sound will cue most people in the room as to what you’re up to, and I’d argue there’s even a pleasant psychological cue, kind of like the crinkle of a physical newspaper. There’s a certain sense of comfort in those subtle aspects of a routine. The key is to use that sequence as a kind of slight of hand, or “magic” if you will. The user gets a little brain treat while the app is racing to deliver content in the background.

When the app launches, the first process that should spin up isn’t the launch animation, but a request to deliver the current day’s front page and table of contents. Then, in a separate thread start the animation sequence. I’m not sure this is technically feasible, but if it is, here’s why I’d do it that way…

The carousel is a fun bit of UI (at least in theory, it’s still a bit laggy and jittery for my taste), but there’s just no way to quickly deliver enough content to make the carousel usable. The front page and table of contents, on the other hand, could likely be fully delivered in the 4-5 seconds from the launch of the app to the end of the launch animation. Sending users directly to the front page (or potentially a redesigned table of contents, but I wont get into that) will make it feel as though the app has been magically filled with content.

The user can start reading the front page and even swipe to the table of contents instantly. To make this work, the left to right swipe to go to the back of the issue should be permanently disabled. Just after launch it’s unlikely that the last page of the issue will have been delivered, and even if that could be prioritized, I’m just not sure swiping from the front cover to the back of the issue is the best interaction.

Next is the prioritization of content delivery. I have no idea if the backend of The Daily currently allows individual stories to be delivered out of order, but if not, I think re-working the backend to enable this should be a top priority. The millions of dollars spent on development and content creation has been significantly tarnished by the UX. Fixing it would likely be cost effective as evidenced by Flipboard: Flipboard Triples Daily Usage in Two Months After Speed Improvements

Anyhow, back to content delivery. The first stories that should be delivered are the ones highlighted on the front page. It’s likely that users will be taken by a headline and jump right to one of those stories. In the few seconds it takes to read the headlines the full content of those stories could likely be delivered (though large files like video and 360º images should probably be separated from the main text/photo content so as not to slow that process). If the user does tap on one of those headlines, BAM, they’re reading the story, no loading spinner, no delay, just carefully orchestrated magic.

If the user doesn’t tap on one of the main stories, there are a limited number of possible interactions, so the next step is to prioritize those options. If the user swipes left to right, the page moves with their finger, but bounces back when let go—indicating that they are at the beginning of the issue. If the user swipes right to left, they are taken to the table of contents which has already been delivered.

Another option is for the user to tap on one of the section headings. I’d guess that most people are at least somewhat habitual in their reading and will either go directly to the table of contents (which is already accounted for) or jump to their favorite section. It would be trivial for The Daily to start logging which section shortcut, if any, is tapped most often on a particular device. After launching the app a few times, it should be able to reasonably predict which direction the user will head and prioritize the delivery of that content.

If the user typically swipes to the table of contents then just keeps swiping into the stories as if they were reading a magazine cover to cover, just deliver the content linearly. If the user always jumps directly to the sports section, it’d be best to start delivering the sports section right after the front page and table of contents have been delivered (even before the stories on the main page). The prioritization of delivery will be slightly different for each user, but will feel like magic to them all.

There will be times when the user inevitably strays from their typical patterns or are on a slow connection that delays the delivery of their favorite content. In this case some sort of loading screen will be inevitable, but the app better damn sure drop everything it’s doing and load that particular page as quickly as possible.

I’ll bite my tongue on further critique of the carousel view as the intended primary mode of navigation, but I will say that the app should only prioritize the loading of those assets if the individual user actually navigates to it frequently. Either way, it just too data intensive to be the spot where people land when the app first loads.

I know first hand how hard it is to build great iOS apps and I hope I haven’t been overly negative in this critique. The Daily is one of the most ambitious apps to have been created on this platform and though I’m quibbling about a few things I see as flaws, shipping such a complex app was, I’m sure, a superhuman feat. I’d love to see it reach its full potential.