With User Experience, the tiny details make a good app great
July 12th, 2008NetNewsWire for the iPhone is great, but has a flaw that spoil it.
The User Experience is all wrong when you read an article.
Your eye starts at the top of the page, you scan down the page to read the preview, then you have to go all the way back to the top to tap the title, in order to view the full article. To make things worse, you then need to scan all the way back down to see the progress indicator. I don’t mind about the “Open in Safari” button in the top right – that’s an exceptional use-case, not the norm. But to have your eyes jumping up and down while in the regular flow of usage is not good.
The fix is simple – add a button, in the footer, for viewing the full article (replacing the “tap the title to read the full article”). So your eyes make a single movement, top to bottom, ending on the progress indicator in the bottom-right.