Users Choice
Main Idea:
Our main idea is to distribute news like it is done by social contacts. You meet a friend and he tells you about his topic of the day: "Have you heared that great news about...?" You decide how deep you want to get into this topic. But perhaps you come from one topic to another altough they are not linked by categories. A catchword can lead to the next one.
Description of the engine:
All the news are linked together. Some links are weak, some are strong. Related news usually have strong links, contrary topics weak ones. In the center of the newspage you see centernews, around it are the news with the strongest links to the news in the center. When you click on one of the news around, it will get to the center and the news around it will change - to the news with the strongest links to the one in the center. The links between the news are primarly defined by the journalist or double-keyword text analysis and other weigthings (see below).
Every users click will change the strength of the links. When you klick on one of the news around the centernews, the link between those two gets stronger. So you will get all those news around the center, which the most people are interested in connection with the centernews. The interconnection between the news are to be changed even over an sequence of clicks.
Example: When a user sees news 1 in the center.
Then he clicks on news 2, after that on news 3 and after that on news 4, then also the link between news 1 and news 4 gets stronger. In other words, they get 'closer'.
To enhance the usability, there should be more criteria than the simpel link-strength from the clicking. The age of the news, the relevancy by topic and theme and as above mentioned, the popularity of the news and a double-keyword text analysis. The double-keyword text analysis classifies the news by searching every text with linked keywords. Thus two texts where the words 'Blair' and 'Football' are often and nearby mentioned, will be more related together.
To counteract an extreme unification of the displayed news and to keep the system flexibel, one or two of the 8 news around the centernews should be selected in a more random way. The algorithm could randomly heavyweight one criteria, like the theme (sports, politics), so new or marginal-interested news have a chance.
In a nutshell, the selection of the shown news is not only performed by theme and journalists sense, but by the users themselves. They decide what is linked together and what is interesting. For example, if the users often look for articles about 'irak war' and after that for articles about 'Michael Moore', those news will be shown together. In ordinary newspages they usually can only be found in very different places, like politics and entertainment.
Description of the User Interface:
The starting screen has the 9 eight most weighted topics. There is also the ordinary split-up in themes, like politics and sports, which have their one starting screen. When the users clicks on one of the news, the news around it will be the related ones. To read an artikel, you have to click on the one in the center, perhaps a direct button can be provided. The article should be shown very clearly to enhance reading, like shown in the user interface prototype.
There could also be a 'read more' button in the article to provide background information and if desired, similar articles from different sources to provide different views about the topic.
The nine-parted interface provides also enough places for advertising.
Additional concepts:
The above mentioned idea unifies the content. If desired the 'link-tables' can be personalised or divided in a limited variety of kinds of users like 'have no time'-readers which only want the most important news or 'breakfast'-readers, which have a lot of time and read for leisure.
Using the Prototype:
We set up a prototype in flash - just to be able to implement it fast but without having real content. The idea could be implemented with HTML, scripts, and so on.
Scenario Steps:
1) Click on the topic "London Bombings not preventable" which is on the left side. The topic then moves to the center. You can have a overview over the topics linked to "London Bombings" at the moment.
2) Click again on the "London Bombings not preventable". As it is in the center, you now get detailed information.
Greetings
Mark Sven Kaczkowski
Gert Kauntz
Elian Schweizer
Kay Weckemann
- 24 May 2006 17:27
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