AJC.com’s branded newsreader

###It's called ajc4me.com ... but who is it for?

Several weeks ago, the AJC launched a branded newsreader -- AJC4me.com. It comes preloaded with AJC top headlines, and a selection of feeds from the paper and other major news sources like CNN and New York Times.

It's a reasonable strategy against the gains of the other aggregators ... the Yahoos, the Googles ... but I wonder how effective it is. Specifically, I'm not sure what/who the audience for these readers is.

RSS nerds have their pet aggregators -- they can afford to be incredibly picky about their functionality, because there are a lot of readers on the market. That's an admittedly small group of folks -- 2-5 percent of the population, depending on your age bracket. (Read a synthesis of Forrester research here.)

So, you've got around 95-98 percent of the population to play with. Brand new market.

Makes sense for a newspaper, right?

##My take on ajc4me.com
Overall, I like the approach ... the site has its own URL, it uses the whole page (vs. the narrow column approach of the SeattlePI.com reader), and it allows users to import feeds from other sites. Moving stuff around is cool, as are the skins.

My main concerns are about audience (above) and design/functionality (below).

##Nitty-gritty edits

###What is it?
I know that it's a branded RSS reader ... but a lot of folks wouldn't. I asked two case studies ... my dad and a good friend ... to check out the site. (See their full reactions below.) Although my friend caught on that you could add AJC content, my Dad really wasn't clear at all what the page was.

A first-time splash page that explained -- in text -- what the page is, and what it allows you to do would be useful. I would also prominently link to the tutorial and the examples ... with more text explanations.

###Why are the "help" items multimedia?
Being a hyper computer user, I'm usually listening to music, cropping images, and checking email and IMing simultaneously while I'm online. Having to stop and pay attention to an audiofile/video -- or worse -- having to reconfigure my settings to get the content to work -- is frustrating. I would much rather read a FAQ, and then click on the multimedia items if I really needed help.

Audio-only items aren't disability-friendly, or friendly to people whose computers don't have speakers -- like lots of folks who use PCs at work. Multimedia also isn't very work-friendly -- it's difficult to browse surreptitiously if your computer is announcing it to your coworkers.

###What's with the avatar people?
Under "examples," we're treated to some flash people who tell us how they used the site. I know they're supposed to make a user relate to a way in which they can use the site, but having a strange little computer person talk to you is a little disconcerting. But, hey, maybe it's got some kitsch value. Personally, I'd relate more to a photo of an actual person.

I liked the examples of pages that the users have created, but it wasn't clear how to navigate to them.

###Adding "outside" content
Yikes! Here's where I ran into trouble. I couldn't figure out how to add more feeds without consulting the Tutorial, which told me to look for the item "GET MORE HEADLINES" on my page.

Only problem was ... that item was not on my page.

My fault for using Safari, right?

So I open up Firefox ... cut and paste my URL, and get confronted with a registration page. Apparently, I've never used AJC.com with this browser. Fortunately, I remembered my login info, but I can imagine that a lot of other people wouldn't.

Having passed that hurdle, I looked for "GET MORE HEADLINES." I don't see it ... do you?

I gave up on that approach, and just typed in my name "Laura Fries," which added a "weather" field to my page. Huh?

I tried it again, which popped up some categories of search results.

OK ... cool.

Clicking on pictures loads all images of me uploaded into Flickr with my name ...

.... clicking on "Social Bookmarks" pulled up an error ... which shouldn't be, cause there is LOTS of stuff tagged LauraFries in deli.cio.us ....

... the Google search pulled up all sorts of articles on "Laura"s and "Fries" (usually French), but not my blog, which a regular Google search pulls up as the first result ...

... but nowhere could I find the feed for LauraFries.com. Nor could I add it manually.

I imagine that some users would be really confused as to where the photos and social bookmarks were coming from. A big fat link to a FAQ on the "results" page would be really useful.

###Navigation
Neither I nor my two case studies found the "help" navigation (survey, examples, tutorial) on the first go around.

###Portability
As I found out, it's difficult to access this site even across different browsers on the same computer. Adding a section to the FAQ called "How to Access this Site on Other Computers" would be useful.

##But, hey, I'm a nerd
What do real people think?
To find out, I did an incredibly unscientific study. I called up two people, and asked them to try using this aspect of the site ... without telling them what it was. I then asked them over the phone to tell me about their experience. I chose them specifically because of their habit of reading daily newspaper sites, their unfamiliarity with the technology, and their divergent levels of comfort when it comes to computers.

###Case #1: My dad
Dad is a lawyer in his 50s. He's read the daily newspaper for years, but now finds that he reads its website more than than the newsprint, which piles up unread on the kitchen table at home. Dad uses the Internet for work, but he is not familiar with sites like Google News or with RSS technology. He is using an older PC, with Internet Explorer.

Although he was looking for "personalize your AJC," it took him several minutes to find it.

At first, he was confused by the layout of the page: lots of text, with open space. He clicked on "customize this page," but his computer didn't have Flash or Javascript-enabled. He didn't feel tech savvy enough to install those items -- wasn't sure whether they came from his computer or the web. He did not end up customizing his page.

He didn't understand why the stories were presented in a "gray" format without images. He noticed the option to add CNN News, but didn't understand why he would get content from other sites on this site. He was used to bylines and other items indicating a story was from another source, but didn't understand this presentation.

He found stock prices under "cool stuff" ... and wondered if stock prices were really cool, or if that was where one would go looking for that information.

He did not notice or click on the orange "help" items.

###Case #2: My friend
My friend is a reporter in his 20s. He grew up in a newspaper family, so news has been a way of life for him. He reads a daily newspaper website multiple times a day. He spends a lot of time online -- with sites like MySpace and on blogs. He doesn't use RSS feeds, but he has heard a lot about them. He is browsing on a brand new Powerbook, running OS 10.4.

My friend had no problem finding AJC4me.com, and no problem getting started adding feeds. He thought the page was a repackaging of AJC.com content, where a user could reprioritize the newspaper content. He had some trouble moving the boxes around on the page, and noted that this page wouldn't work well on his (older) work PC.

He clicked on "customize this page" but was leery of being forced to listen to audio or watch video.

Once alerted to the presence of orange "help" items, he clicked on them, but thought the profiles of animated cliched readers were absurd.

When asked if he would use the page, he indicated that he wasn't sure ... he was concerned that he might miss important stories -- he liked the editorial packaging and prioritization of the regular homepage. Although, for example, he did not generally read stories from the Religion section of NYTimes.com, he occasionally would click on a headline that was interesting to him.

I asked him if he was likely to use the page to keep up with news from his hometown, or from his favorite blogs (like this one!). He said he didn't read too many blogs, and that he would rather visit his hometown paper's website, because he would be afraid to miss a story.

##Alright, those are two people ...
###What do bloggers think?
It's unclear. A technorati search for ajc4me came up blank, and a blogsearch.google.com search turned up one post about the technology.

The blogger in question ... Daniel Moore of Atlanta.Metblogs, suggested adding POP email functionality. Now, that's a neat idea.

##Suggestions

• Create user-friendly splash page with text explanations of the site's features, with multimedia augmentation. Consider adding a "tell your story" comment field so that users can tell each other how they use the page. Strongly encourage users to submit feedback on "tools" they'd like to develop (a la the sex offender and home sales tools).

• Create a user friendly FAQ that explains each step of the technology, using metaphors and diagrams. ("It's the TiVo of websites.") Segment the FAQ into "beginner" and "advanced" to give each group the information they need

• Decide who the audience for this reader is and then aggressively market to them. Get their feedback at every step with usability testing and focus groups

• Work on the user interface of adding new feeds.

• Make it easy for the user to get help by prominently displaying the customer service number on this page.