Flipboard Psych

As a busy college student-athlete, I want to be able to read interesting and relevant articles without having to spend the time to go searching for them. I am interested in staying up to date with news, but I also want to read things about design and productivity and . Many news sources have larger sections that may contain articles about these passions, but they're often hard to find.

In comes Flipboard to the rescue. 

                       

After making an account, I told Flipboard my interests and it compiled sectioned magazine type tabs with the most recent and relevant articles from many different sources. I didn't have to personally go to each site it was pulling from and subscribe to some newsletter. Even better, I didn't have to go searching for them in the first place. Amazing. I can even be more specific about what subsections I am interested in. For example, under Productivity, I was able to tell Flipboard that I only wanted to see articles about time-management and it happily obliged. Double Amazing.

         

In addition to convenience, I am able to make my own flip books/magazines of the articles that I found worth holding onto by pressing the plus button on the bottom right of the articles. (Honestly, I use the personal magazines more as a "read-later" repository). I'm also able to follow other people's magazines, if they have a topic that I think would be interesting to follow. For example, I follow a magazine called "The Daily Edition" that curates the most interesting news for the day.

                       

   

The app also features a search page in case you want to find a specific person, source or topic. I personally haven't used it much because I can't think of any topics that I would add, but I think it will be super useful when I decide to use it. 

I usually add new topics to my Flipboard dash using the "What's Your Passion?" tab which is the last tab on the sliding top menu.

Lastly, the app has a notifications page. I honestly don't go to this page very often, but I think for someone who is more social on the app (ie. shares articles through Flipboard) would find it more useful.

NOW FOR THE CRITIQUE 

When you enter the app, you first arrive at the For You tab which features a combination of the highlights (most recent) from all of the passions that you selected. The design is very similar to that of the NYT website with large photos accompanying the main article, bold text differentiating the titles from the article excerpts beneath it. There is not too much color distracting you from getting to your curated reads. The ads appear as you "flip" through the articles. They only really use color to bring your attention to what subsection of your passions the article belongs to, such as #TIMEMANAGEMENT over the hummingbird in the second row of photos above, or to important actions, like saving your selected subsections (top row second photo), or creating a new collection (second row middle photo). 

Related to color, they do a cool thing on special days, like Sundays, where they curate articles that they think everyone would find interesting to read, or that they think everyone should read regardless of interest. They bring your eye to this tab (inserted between the For You tab and your next passion) by placing the red Flipboard logo next to it. Though it's not in your face, its enough to draw my eye to the tab bar to wonder what it is, especially if every other day that I use it, For You is immediately followed by Design.

They seem to have accounted for their colorblind users by maintaining a sleek mostly three color design. Other than the photos, there isn't anything in the app that someone who is colorblind would have any trouble reading.

They use continuity in the top menu to show that you can scroll through your options. The app allows you to physically scroll the top bar and tap on the tab you wish to go to, or simply swipe across the screen until you land on the tab you want to focus on. Once you reach the desired tab, you are able to "flip" through the curated articles for the day. The designers of the app cleverly created a flip animation to mimic the name of the app. With each flip, you are given one to two articles to look at minimizing distraction. 

To make it easier on their users, the Flipboard team allowed any part of the article square to be tapped in order to read it (obviously besides the heart, plus, and three dots on the bottom right). All of the touchable buttons are large enough targets that they aren't a problem to use.

The app also makes great use of Gestalt principles In the app menu on the bottom of the screen, the icons are spaced enough apart that they are seen as individual icons. In the notifications menu, there is enough spacing to separate the different updates without using a line. The same goes for the items in the list of passions under "What's Your Passion." Also in this tab, they follow cultural reading conventions by putting how many people are reading the magazine below the topic. 

Everything else is pretty intuitive, except one thing. I noticed that in the tabs marking your passions, the top article has a symbol that looks sort of like a broadcasting signal.

That is the icon you tap if you want to personalize the topic (choose subsections). I spent a lot of time looking for a way to get to that personalization page just for this blog post, but only stumbled upon it as I was looking for new functions to talk about. If you go into your account page, the personalization option is super easy to find because it is put with the other options under the three dots menu. 

OTHER USER

I had my friend Jada download the app and create their own personalized magazines. Jada is also a student-athlete who enjoys staying in the know about women's health, track and field, and music festivals, topics that aren't necessarily readily available on other popular news sites.

After informing her about what the app does, she got really excited and couldn't wait to personalize it for herself. I showed her how my app looked with customized tabs along the top and asked her to replicate it with her own sections.

After giving her the task, she was immediately confused. The options to add the tabs are not easy to find. She went to her account page, all of the menu buttons, and even the settings page, but with no luck. She finally used the hamburger menu, which come to think of it is unintuitively placed on the top right rather than the top left, where she finally found the option to add a topic to the top bar. 

After she added the tab, I asked her to personalize it one step further with the subsections. The wifi looking icon they use for personalization was still present but it didnt register for her as a signal for "Customize me!" She instead went to the account page because that's where she noticed the magazine appear as she was exploring post-tab-addition.

The same Gestalt principles applied making it easy for Jada to read the different menu icons and article separations. She found the structure to be visually pleasing and not too overbearing adding to the overall experience of the app. 

All in all, Flipboard isn't perfect, but its not bad in it's current state.