Btw, did you mean “insidiary” in reference to my previous comments? I re-read my comments and I don’t see a lot of heat in them but if that was your impression, know that it was unintentional on my end.

> And user studies we’ve done

“We’ve”? Kevin, if that means you’re part of the Reader team, I’d especially love to hear further thoughts from you on why the Reader turned out as it did. Thanks. Actually I can recall your earlier insidery comments in the past. I hope you find my feedback helpful.

>It’s not so much about age. This experience is about reading more than scanning. If that’s somehow an “older” person thing than… OK reading is for old people then.

Scanning is for everyone. Few people have time to read the whole paper. Do you actually plow through the entire NYT each day? I myself zero in on the articles of most interest. To use a Bill Hillism, I love immersive reading, but I just don’t have time to lavish my full attention on everything.

> The busy / helter skelter pages of most news portals today are designed to entice ad clicks in a medium that doesn’t permit much else in the way of design. People flit from site to site. Ads are presented and pop up at you. Click, scroll, hunt, click, wait, click, dismiss ad, click, wait, scroll, scroll, scroll…

Hear, hear about your concerns, Kevin! But even with a PDA, I am giving the Times far more attention than with a typical newspaper site, including the Washington Post, just across the Potomac from me. A big reason is the wonderful Mobile option at mobile.nytimes.com–sponsored, I might add, by Windows Mobile. No prejudice against Microsoft, then. I can laze back in an easy chair instead of having to spend yet more time in front of my desktop. Yes, it would be nice to own a tablet, but even if I did, I’d prefer the arrangement I’ve described in the post above. The current Reader is still too much like a newspaper and not optimized sufficiently for display on a computer.

> This is a different type of experience that presents a package of news in a designed format. You can follow a kind of narrative from one end to the other via simple navigation with a keyboard or mouse. You don’t have to devote your energy to finding, scrolling and clicking. You can instead focus on just consuming, reading. If you happen to have a touchscreen, navigation is a simple as flicking your hand across the screen.

But it isn’t as if a graphical approach does away with the need to click. You’re just clicking on something different. What’s more, nongraphical approaches also can use dual columns.

> And user studies we’ve done suggest that users strongly prefer content in this layout (paginated, columns, etc) than in traditional Web layout.

See above. i don’t think this is limited to a graphical approach. You could detect the browers, screen stats, etc., and adjust.

> But I do agree this is not a replacement for newsportals or blogs. Those things have their place.

Exactly. And the Times software might as well. Best of luck with the product. It’s just that I’m not sure if it’s right for me. We’ll see. If nothing else, i do enjoy the novelty of the experience. But that’s not the same as committing to the Times Reader forever. All I can say is that I’d like it better if it used a different design philosphy. You could still make things rather attractive.

> Perf isn’t that great on lower end machines. It’s pretty good though on most hardware selling today – even the smaller tablets and laptops.

May the speed on other hardware be better than what I encountered. I’m usuing neither the faster nor the slowest machine.

> Btw, did you try the Topic Explorer? Curious what you think of that kind of experience.

Great question. I tried it just now but prefer the relevance display. Even better, would be a text-oriented outline option.

BTW, I do applaud Microsoft for experimenting with the display of search-generated items. I just think that for the moment, places such as Vivisimo do it better.

Thanks,
David

This is a different type of experience that presents a package of news in a designed format. You can follow a kind of narrative from one end to the other via simple navigation with a keyboard or mouse. You don’t have to devote your energy to finding, scrolling and clicking. You can instead focus on just consuming, reading. If you happen to have a touchscreen, navigation is a simple as flicking your hand across the screen.

And user studies we’ve done suggest that users strongly prefer content in this layout (paginated, columns, etc) than in traditional Web layout.

But I do agree this is not a replacement for newsportals or blogs. Those things have their place.

Perf isn’t that great on lower end machines. It’s pretty good though on most hardware selling today – even the smaller tablets and laptops.

Btw, did you try the Topic Explorer? Curious what you think of that kind of experience.