3 ms·

I recently seen a trial of this concept on the BBC News website, where you could choose between in-depth and summarised, simplified coverage of various aspects

by davb 8y ago

I recently seen a trial of this concept on the BBC News website, where you could choose between in-depth and summarised, simplified coverage of various aspects of the story. It was at the section level, so you could read a detailed account of one part of the story but a summarised version of another. I can't find a link to the story, but it was within the last couple of months. In my case, I actually flipped between both versions to see the different ways it was covered.

stevenwliao 8y ago
Axios also puts this to great use with a "go deeper" button. It's very helpful for deciding how much of each story to consume. Screenshot: https://i.postimg.cc/SKkKc85H/Screen-Shot-2018-12-10-at-11-54-43-AM.png https://i.postimg.cc/SKkKc85H/Screen-Shot-2018-12-10-at-11-5... Site: https://www.axios.com/technology https://www.axios.com/technology
- kaycebasques 8y ago
  Thanks, I'll add to the "prior work" section. On one hand, forcing users to click a button to see content is kind-of user-hostile, IMO. It's appropriate for a homepage, though. I don't like it when a homepage shows the full content of each post because it forces me to do a lot of scrolling if I'm not interested in a post. So my first impression is that Axios is doing it well and thoughtfully. But on the other hand, the interaction enables me to track what percentage of users actually care about the content, which is really useful data to me as a documentation author. I'm not saying we should do it --- I'm firmly on the "put the user first" side of the debate --- but I just wanted to point out that the current state of documentation is kind of a dark age. We have no idea what our readers actually care about.
  - stevenwliao 8y ago
    I agree that "show more" is not the right form of interaction for a documentation page. Have you considered measuring engagement in other ways (tracking search results, link clicks, anchor clicks, short "is this page helpful" inline surveys, etc.)?
    - kaycebasques 8y ago
      I'm doing a big investigation at the moment to find out if "was this page helpful?" meaningfully correlates to quality. I do track the other interactions you mentioned, but it's difficult to map them to actionable ways to improve quality. And then even if we do make them actionable, it's hard to prove that they have actually improved quality. I'm just starting out a rigorous study of this field, though, and am hopeful that we can make advances.

by davb 8y ago

stevenwliao 8y ago

Axios also puts this to great use with a "go deeper" button. It's very helpful for deciding how much of each story to consume. Screenshot: https://i.postimg.cc/SKkKc85H/Screen-Shot-2018-12-10-at-11-54-43-AM.png https://i.postimg.cc/SKkKc85H/Screen-Shot-2018-12-10-at-11-5... Site: https://www.axios.com/technology https://www.axios.com/technology

kaycebasques 8y ago
Thanks, I'll add to the "prior work" section. On one hand, forcing users to click a button to see content is kind-of user-hostile, IMO. It's appropriate for a homepage, though. I don't like it when a homepage shows the full content of each post because it forces me to do a lot of scrolling if I'm not interested in a post. So my first impression is that Axios is doing it well and thoughtfully. But on the other hand, the interaction enables me to track what percentage of users actually care about the content, which is really useful data to me as a documentation author. I'm not saying we should do it --- I'm firmly on the "put the user first" side of the debate --- but I just wanted to point out that the current state of documentation is kind of a dark age. We have no idea what our readers actually care about.
- stevenwliao 8y ago
  I agree that "show more" is not the right form of interaction for a documentation page. Have you considered measuring engagement in other ways (tracking search results, link clicks, anchor clicks, short "is this page helpful" inline surveys, etc.)?
  - kaycebasques 8y ago
    I'm doing a big investigation at the moment to find out if "was this page helpful?" meaningfully correlates to quality. I do track the other interactions you mentioned, but it's difficult to map them to actionable ways to improve quality. And then even if we do make them actionable, it's hard to prove that they have actually improved quality. I'm just starting out a rigorous study of this field, though, and am hopeful that we can make advances.