New Yorker app - one big experience #fail

It usually takes a lot to convince people to rant online and I’ve just had that from the New Yorker app.

There are so many usability issues with this app that I could go for hours, but I’ll start with the top line item, and that is the complete lack of support for one-by-one magazine purchases.  For every bought digital issue of the magazine, I assumed that the purchase is stored as part of a user’s digital login.  In fact, I saw no such record or recognition in the app itself.  Reset your iPad to your factory settings and want to re-download the app?  Issues are gone, pouf, the interface is silent and a row of Buy buttons await.  Lost your iPad and replaced it with a new one?  Same thing.  As far as you’re concerned, these purchases might never have existed, except you actually have your credit card statement to prove it.  No thanks to the New Yorker for that. 

It’s ok, you think, I can go into settings, confirm my account, set up a record for future purchases, re-download old ones… Think again. This app has no Settings, no Help and no quick access to customer service except through the required link on the App Store.  Customer service takes its time and the first response I receive is:

“To receive issues on your iPad as a print subscriber, your subscription
must be active and paid.”

Somehow, asking for access to the purchases I made on the iPad, in order to read them on the iPad, is asking for special print privileges.  

But let’s continue to the rest of the experience. When you open the app, you can see a list of recent New Yorker magazines arranged by cover, at 1/80th the size of the actual magazine. Somehow, it is presumed that at this scale you see enough of the titles in the issue to make the decision whether to buy it or not.

At this point, after squinting fruitlessly at the issue, most users attempt to tap onto a magazine cover with the expectation of seeing a contents list.  Alas, no hidden experience gems, let alone fulfilled expectations await here.  A normal user quits right then and there.  A long-time New Yorker reader, who has no use for print issues, actually takes the trouble at this point to get out of the app, open Safari and visit newyorker.com where they offer the full table of contents for the latest issue. Convinced by the latest mention of Sedaris that this one is worth the $5, this user now returns to the app and clicks through to Buy it.

The purchase flow is the only decent experience here - I guess Conde Nast has its business priorities straight.

Now come the rest of the experience flaws.  For starters, the purchases you have bought are not stored separately, so if you actually bought an issue from a year ago, you have to scroll down the list of past issues and uncover the ones you actually own. This is bad enough, but any time you move between issues, you need to search them out all over again.

Forget that, you think, what I’m looking for is my issue with that Supreme Court story by Jeffrey Toobin, I’ll just search for it.  You could - on the website.  The designers have conveniently forgotten about placing a search field within this app.  Is this possible?  No search field in a reading app?  Yes, and yes.  Not only is there no search at the issue level, there’s not even a search within the issue that you’re browsing in detail.

Now on to the reading experience itself, which follows two straightforward rules - swipe down to read the length of a story, swipe left to move to the next story. There are multiple ways to actually move between stories - swiping at the page level, using the slider, zooming out and accessing the table of contents.

The fun begins when you actually want to engage with the material.  Let’s say you want to get the definition of a word - not available.  Or perhaps annotate or highlight a passage - nope, not here.  Or perhaps just share the whole article on any one of the major social networks - nope, that must require special programming skills.  So far I have seen only one instance of Facebook/Twitter integration and it was on the 3rd page of a 7-page article, embedded into the story against every single usability rule.  There’s no way to link to an article, or even its abstract, and not even any way to point to the issue as a whole. 

In short, despite a dismal welcome to return users what this app offers is a highly limited, one-time use focused, solitary reading experience with no connection to any of the tools that make digital reading so useful - no search, no definitions, no notes, no sense of a community and no sharing.  

—UPDATE—

After the latest exchange with the New Yorker app customer service, it is possible to recover your purchases using the below steps. 

What’s incredible is that this flow has obviously not been considered and was tacked on, seeing as a normal user would never confirm a new purchase two more times AFTER having bought it the first time.  But at least there is a back door.  Enjoy:

1) Download app on new/restored device
2) Select issue within app you’ve already purchased, but would like on your new iPad. NOTE, the issue will indicate that you have not purchased it yet and will have a “Buy” button. This is fine. Continue on.
3) Click on the “Buy” button to begin the “purchase”.
4) Apple will ask for you to sign in to your account in order to make the purchase, do so but make sure the account you use is the same as the account you originally purchased the issue on.
5) You will receive a pop up notification that states: “No Payment Necessary. You have already purchased the issue. Touch Download to load it to your device. OK”

6) Push “OK” and then the “Download” button.