Scrolling: A case study
An analysis of scrolling through a feed
I was scrolling through the Twitter feed on my iPhone recently. I found myself repeatedly lifting a finger to scroll through the content, trying to find posts that I wanted to read. It was too much for my lazy self. I wanted to find a solution to this problem.
In part 1, I looked at current products that featured auto scroll.
This is part 2 of 3 where I will analyze the interaction of manually scrolling through any feed like Twitter or Facebook.
In part 3, I will attempt to develop a better solution for auto scroll.
Pain point
I came across the idea of building auto-scroll while scrolling through my Twitter feed. All our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds accumulate content really quickly. Given our busy lives, we end up skimming through the feeds to find the most interesting content. The interaction that we use in order to do this follows a very interesting pattern.
Pattern
Does this feel familiar?
In feeds, a majority of the content is uninteresting. We keep skimming through it quickly until something catches our eye. At this point, you slow down, maybe stop scrolling, and quickly decide whether you want to follow the link, or like and re-share it, maybe even comment on it. Once done with this item, you again repeat the process.
In part 3, we will look at a solution that optimizes for this interaction. All the products I looked at in part 1 required the user to divide their attention between consuming and controlling the content. Ideally the control of the scrolling should be intuitive and fluid to be handled subconsciously, rather than requiring explicit actions by the user.
