We are exited to announce that we have just released MyNews.is for iPhone. With a new search functionality, as well as with the horizontally paginated layout, it will be easy to use the app one-handed. We also refined our discovery algorithm, in order to provide you with even more interesting articles. The App will be free for a few days.

MyNews.is for iPhone also brings full compatibility for iOS8 as well as for the new iPhone 6, and 6 Plus.

Finding the best UX for the iPhone

We thought and tested a lot about what would be the best browsing experience for reading news on the iPhone. Most apps use the traditional vertical scrolling. We thought that this relict from the web, and that it should be a better way to browse on a phone. So we decided to test different approaches: 

• the traditional scrolling layout, that we tested with the a thematic app about football (worldfootballapp.com)
• the “Tinder” card swiping layout, that we tested with iQ News
• a vertically paginated layout
• a horizontally paginated layout

The main goal was to identify a UX that would allow the user to:

•  get through a lot of news fast, 
• be very easy and confortable to use one-handed

The results of our study showed us:

In the scrolling layout users usually scroll through a lot of articles very fast, but they usually don’t read every title and so might miss important articles. This is due to the fact that the screen is often in movement, and the eye needs to refocus on different parts of the screen.

The card swiping layout, received good feedback, and provided good engagement, but the user could not go through a lot of news fast.

In paginated layout the user could go through the news fast, while not skipping headlines like in the scrolling layout. While almost all user found it initially unintuitively to browse the page horizontally, we saw that they quickly started to like the horizontal page flipping better as it requires a more natural movement of the thumb. So we decided to go with the horizontally paginated layout.

Read the articles natively in the app

Until now when you wanted to read the full article, you was redirected to the publisher’s website. Even with a mobile optimized website it is never as great of an experience as it would be to read the articles natively. And it is also much slower, as the website will send beside the content also a ton of css and javascript that will make the request take much longer than if it would just request the text. So we are excited that in the coming weeks we will start testing with some selected publisher a native integration of their content into MyNews.is.

Our Plan for the Months Ahead

While launching on the iPhone is a big step for us, as we are still a small team; we will of course not stop here. This is what is next.

Improve the iPhone app with the feedback from you

We would really appreciate if you could send your feedback to feedback (at) mynews.is ☺
A new version, with a iOS Today Widget, is already in the Apple review queue and will be available for download in a few days.

Launching on Android

Yes, we are already working also on a Android version. Register here to become a beta tester and get early access: http://mynewsisandroid.launchrock.com/

Expanding Internationally

Unfortunately it is not straightforward to just add a new language, as our semantic technology is language specific. But we will give the best to add new languages soon. Also we are searching country managers. Get in touch if you want to join us!

We hope you’ll like MyNews.is for iPhone, and will suggest it to your best friends!

Now you just need to download the app!

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