The Malleable Corantos : A Protoype of UserInvolved OnSite Customization for the Online Newspaper

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The Malleable Corantos A Protoype of
User-Involved On-Site Customization for
the Online Newspaper

• Yusun Jung
• IDT/GIT
• July 9, 2003

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Project Overview

• 1. Literature Study
• Historical review
• Paradigm shift Newspaper and reader
• Online journalism
• Customization of the online newspaper
• 2. Prototype Alternative
• Customization throughout the site
• Direct manipulation
• 3. Informal User Testing

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What is the Malleable Corantos?

• A prototype alternative of
• User-involved, on-site customization
• for the online newspaper
• Malleable? Directly adjustable interface
• Corantos? The first newspaper (1620)

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1. The Newspaper

• Historical review
• The Corantos (1620)
• The first paper
• Diurnals (1641)
• Regular publication
• Oxford Gazettes (1665)
• Spokepress of government
• Publik Occurrence (1690)
• Coverage on local issue

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• The New York Sun (1833)
• Penny press
• The New York Morning Herald (1844)
• Correspondent system
• In 2001,
• 10,000 newspapers
• 55,578,046 daily circulation
• 24,015,312 paid weekly circulation
• Broad and shallow coverage
• Severe internal competition

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2. Paradigm shift

• Papaer to the Web
• The medium is the message (McLuhan)
• true in printed newspapers
• In online newspapers?
• The message is the medium (Koch)
• The newspaper exists only
• through its message

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• Online newspaper
• Over 2,512 online newspapers were in service
  (1999), and 33 of the American received their
  news online (2000)
• Online newspaper is
• the representation of
• hyperlinked database

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• Hypertext
• is a method for browsing through extended text
  bases (Kommer)
• can be parsed into self-contained paragraphs
  which it can be read and interpreted
  independently (Whalley)

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• Printed newspaper
• Sequential, centralized
• Online newspaper
• Non-sequencial, decentralized (Nielsen)

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• Printed newspaper
• Pushing the media
• Online newspaper
• Pulling the content (Negroponte)

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• Reader to user
• People want to read
• what they want to know not
• what they should know
• Readers are active participants and consumers
• Media Literacy
• The ability to access, analyze, and evaluate
  what the media present
• Media literacy a user participant

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• Readers of the online newspaper are Interent
  users.
• Decreasing number of young readers threatens the
  future of the newspapers.
• The Important target audience are
• the young,
• who have high Internet literacy
• Exploit this characteristic!!

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• People subscribe newspapers.
• Regular, frequent access to the media
• They are ultimately frequent and
• experienced users
• Expert users are
• in need of tools for rapid performance
• willing to customize application interface.

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3. Online Journalism

• Three stage of the online journalism
  (Pavlik)
• Repackaging and broadening of the printed
  version
• Original and specific design for the
• online version
• Interactive features
• A degree of Customization

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• 3. New medium communication
• New narrative form
• Immersive storytelling beyond verbal
  representation such as 3D environment
• We are at the second stage now!
• Online newspapers are the most popularInterent
  application and a primary information source.
• People are accustomed to technologies of the
  online newspapers and percievenews as a service.

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4. Customization of the Online Journalism

• Readers lack the time to consume the newspaper
• less than 15 min per a newspaper
• The newspaper has succeded heavy information
  overlaod.

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• Nielsen (1995)
• Individualized newspaper
• Negroponte (1995)
• The Daily me the newspaper that delivers the
  right subset of information reducing the overload
  
• Bar (2002)
• Those who have survived are the ones that give
  the users the interactivity and control that they
  demand

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• The FishWrap in the MIT
• a university electronic news service
• The system personalizes newspapers for
  individual students, based on user profiles.
• University news
• Local news from students origin
• Personal interests

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Structure of the FishWrap
User
System

• Manage User Profile
• Vote for article

• Establish User Profile
• Origin
• Affiliation
• Major Interests
• Trace User Navigation

The FishWrap
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Rosenberg

• Personalization
• Involves an application that accumulates
  information about the users path throughout the
  site to indicate specific interests, and then in
  the current session delivers content that
  interests the user
• Customization
• involves the user is actively choosing the
  subject matter of interest

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• CRAYON (Create Your Own Newspaper)
• high extent of user involvement
• CRAYON does not interpret user profile to
  present an interface.
• It allows the user to tell what he wants.
• Page Setting for a newspaper interface
• News sources for each category

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• Tradeoff
• A Great deal of Customization
• Significant User Effort

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• The online New York Times
• Headline e-mailing system
• The user determines news categories of interest
  and the system sends headlines of the categories
  by e-mail.
• Basic form of personalization
• User participation is limited to user
  preference
• Concise gateway

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• The online Washington Post
• My Washington Post
• It divides the window into independent units .
• Each unit has own customization features
• A degree of direct manipulation
• Two major steps of the customization
• The layout of the whole front page screen
• Content filtering of each unit

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• Pros
• Customization in detail
• A degree of direct manipulation
• Collapsed approach to the information hierarchy
• Cons
• Repetitive procedure (cf. CRAYON)
• Limited effectiveness
• only effective on the front page

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5. Prototype alternative The Malleable
Corantos

• Customization of the online newspaper
• shifts a certain extent of editorial power from
  editors to users
• reduces the number of unnecessary page shifts
• minimizes the visual clutter of the front page

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• What is missing in current customization
• Customization that is effective throughout sites
• Effective only on the front page
• without the back button of a browser,
• there is no to exploit the benefits of the
• customization in the mother site.
• A tradeoff between user effort and customization
  in detail

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• Suggestion 1
• Customization that is effective throughout a
  site loss of connectivity between customized
  front page and the mother site
• Keeping the customized navigation bar
  consistently Items included in the navigation
  barrepresent the whole content of the site,
  therefore control over the navigation bar can
  customize the whole content

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Control over the navigation bar based on
information chunking and hierarchy
Level 1
Category 1
Category 2
C2 - A
C1 - B
C1 - A
Level 2
C1 - Aa
Level 3
C1 - Ad
C1 - Ac
C1 - Ab
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Control over the navigation bar based on
information chunking and hierarchy
Level 1
C1 - A
Level 2
C1 - Aa
Level 3
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Control over the navigation bar based on
information chunking and hierarchy
Level 1
Category 1
C1 - A
Level 2
C1 - Aa
Level 3
C1 - Ad
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• Suggestion 2
• A tradeoff between user effort and customization
  in detail
• Repetitive procedure
• Separation between the procedure and the result
  cognitive distance
• Direct Manipulation (Schneiderman)
• WYSIWYG interface

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• Principles of direct manipulation
• Continuous representation of the objects and the
  actions of interest with meaningful visual
  representation
• Physical actions or press of labeled buttons,
  instead of complex syntax
• Rapid incremental reversible operation whose
  effect on the object of interest is visible
  immediately
• Direct Manipulation benefits overall user
  satisfaction and task completion.

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• Four main parts of customization
• Navigation bar
• Number of modules
• Size of modules
• Assignment of the categories to modules
• All objects and actions employ the principles of
  direct manipulation.

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• DEMO
• The Malleable Corantos

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6. Informal user testing

• User testing procedure
• Pre-questionnaire
• Competitive usability testing
• My Washington Post
• vs. The Malleable Corantos
• Post-questionnaire

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• Informal User Testing Result
• Participants
• Visit 2-4 news sites
• Read less than 6 categories among all categories
  (approximately 50 or more)
• Consume around 30 of all stories
• Prefer ISPs, because they do not need to move
  around to read same the categories
• Prefer news sites, because it gives a sense of
  reading news
• Do not experience customization before
• Clear instructions for all possible
  functionalities are necessary

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• Participants say
• The new prototype gives
• More controllability
• Direct manipulation provides more user
  involvement
• Easy to modify
• No page shift, Immediate response
• Visible control, Narrowed and constant
• navigation bar
• The new prototype lacks
• Clear instructions
• Visible, Concentrated functionality

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• Participants suggest
• Clear instructions
• - Animated instruction prior to
  customization procedure
• - Pop-up window or icon
• - Consistent text somewhere on the interface
• A degree of automated personalization
• - Automated rearrangement of her
  selections

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7. Conclusion
The Newspaper Participarory media
SYNERGY?
Customization User participation
Direct manpulation User involvement
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• Successful employment of direct manipulation
• Immediate and visible response
• Continuous representation of the objects and the
  actions of interest
• Possible applications
• Large-information web sites such as auction
  sites, long-distance education sites, and
  shopping sites