Design with context and memory. Present with context and memory. Develop with context and memory.
In a recent blog post by Shiv Singh about the New York Times‘ iPhone app, he is disappointed by certain aspects of functionality he feels was left out. He wonders why location-awareness for locally relevant news isn’t built in. He is unhappy that he can’t make and read comments on articles. He wants to know what articles others in his social circle are reading. In short, he wants the analog, pre-digital experience of the Times available on the iPhone application, but he doesn’t say it that way. Perhaps he doesn’t remember the experience of reading the New York Times before there was a digital environment, so let me talk about “the way it used to be”.
Image by JcOlivera.com via Flickr
A morning subway ride to work with the broadsheet version of the New York Times might begin with a paper carefully folded to display an article that fit into a few columns; easy enough to read and hold while standing and holding onto a strap in a crowded subway car. Reading time: about 3-5 minutes per article, written with major information in the first paragraph, and more and more detail added as you read down through the story. If you didn’t finish it, at least you had the core content.
Sometimes I’d find an article I really thought a friend should read. So, I had two ways of getting that message across, first by asking, “Did you read the article about _____________ in the Times’ today?”. Or, if I really felt strongly about it, and wanted to make sure my friend knew all of the details, I’d rip it out of the paper, or clip it, and give it to them.
Next step: the crossword puzzle. My first introduction to crossword puzzles was on Sunday’s, when childhood weekend visits with my grandparents included an overwhelming hour or so working the New York Times’ fiendish Sunday crossword with my grandfather—never to completion. Later there was a period when a group of four of us at work would spend lunch hour solving the weekday NY Times’ crossword together.
Image by Listen Missy! from Flickr
I never wrote a letter to the Times, but I have to other newspapers, including a rather lengthy one to the San Juan Star which prompted an feature article about three months later. But letter writing was a venue for interaction that could potentially be shared with the entire reading audience, even though the bottleneck was much tighter to get through when print and paper costs (not to mention the manditory editorial curation) kept “Letters to the Editor” short and strictly controlled.
The Times’ Metro section could be tunneled down into if I wanted to know what tidbits were happening in my Borough of choice. I grew up in Queens, but Manhattan, my current home, was far more alluring. The Metro section fueled the imagination of goings on in the glamorous neighborhoods, the “real” New York.
It was all there. The things Shiv want’s aren’t new. So, I agree with him: if the New York Times will review the history of the user experience of their paper, they will find plenty of features to add to an iPhone app, an iPad app, a Kindle app, an anykind of portable digital version that will come down the pike.
People tend to want the same things over and over. It’s not a bad thing, it comes from certain patterns, desires and needs that come from the human experience. As designers, developers, storytellers, we just need to uncover that common story, that familiar experience, and figure out how to recreate it with new tools. Put a successful experience into place, regardless of the tool, and you will have an engaged audience.
And to that point, Shiv, I too, would pay for a subscription to the New York Times if they would give me those capabilities as well. And I might even read some of the ads too.
Post image: Subway, 1934, oil on canvas by Lily Furedi; from Flikr collection of cliff1066™
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