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Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

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51–60 of 77 posts

Re: Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

#51
So a satisfying green screen appears and the user congratulates herself -- she has finished reading all the tweets, all the news. But that's not possible, is it? Some tasks don't have a satisfying end. So introducing an arbitrarily created one just calls the whole task's meaning into question.

This idea was initially used well in Mailbox as some people do finish triaging their email. But even there completion congratulation had its problems. It was always quicker to leave mail in the inbox if it was needed later. That meant processing it just for the sake of 'completion' wasted time, and ruined the associated sense of satisfaction.

All that's not to say infinite scrolling is always perfect UX. If done without some signposts, or other way for the user to get oriented, infinite scroll can be terrible -- like infinite pagination.

Re: Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

#52
post #45

The one thing that never stops boggle our minds is the infinite. Nobody wants finite things, and I don't believe finite things are genuinely good for us.

An infinite football match might get a tad tedious. An infinite movie? Hmmm, I feel like I have actually seen a few of those. A couple of books I've read also felt like that. Besides,if the football match was infinite, I'd never get to read the book. And if I did, I'd only get to read one book. What if its rubbish? Im stuck with it. Sex? Infinite sex? Im getting on now, Im not sure I'd survive that. How much space would there be if we had infinite life? Not just humans, but all the animals... and plants.

No, I think I like lots of things to be finite.

Re: Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

#53
> That hollow sense of dissatisfaction needs to be replaced by the sense of achievement which can only be found by finishing something. By reaching the end.

Oh man, this is giving me a great idea! Content consumption needs to be gamified! Score points for actually reading an entire article. I could use something like that.

Re: Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

#56
post #27
post #23

> After spending hours scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Flipboard our mind feels tired. We feel intellectually bloated, and yet completely unsatisfied. Why? Because there is more out there. What if I’m missing out on something? What if there is some critical piece of knowledge just three flicks of my finger upwards? The author seems to be essentially describing an addiction, and suggesting that the c…

From experience, I can confirm that there is a pretty massive subjective difference between scrolling through a book vs. reading it in page size chunks. When I scroll through something, especially if it is dense, I tend to be continually moving the page so that I keep the sentence I am reading in the middle of the screen. Since I often scan up and down around a point in the text to gain context and solidify the meani…

I think you're not the only one. I feel sort of a sense of anxiety in that I have to keep scrolling while reading if I'm reading a book without discrete pages (infinite scrolling also becomes a distraction from the content). If the layout is reformatted as pages, I know when a page begins and ends and don't have that feeling any longer.

I'd never willingly implement or recommend infinite scrolling on a website or mobile app. If a client wants it, I would dissuade them at first with reasons against it, but if they insisted I would implement it reluctantly with a fallback to pagination.

Re: Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

#57
I recently came across another issue with infinite scrolling, no access to a websites footer. I found myself annoyed by the issue when was trying to get the RSS feed from some websites which infinite scrolling on their blog posts. The infinite loading of the site actively prevented me from ever seeing the footer, which is where the RSS feed URL was, so I could not subscribe on my mobile (I knew it was in the footer as I could see it on desktop layout). Coupled with the equally annoying no-zoom meta tag I had no easy way to get the URL. Absolutely braindead.

Re: Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

#58

What I hate the most is when I'm using a scrollbar and the infinite scroll adds more content to the bottom of the page and suddenly the scrollbar jerks up because I'm now 30% down the page instead of 15% down the page--then it takes me a minute to find where I was before the infinite scroll event. Happens to me ALL THE TIME. F-ing annoying. A "load more" button with some kind of ---------next page--------- line to de…

Also when infinite scroll is used on finite data. I have to spend 5 minuets awkwardly scrolling through pages to get to the end of a data set (I'm looking at you Soundcloud).

With pagination this is literally 1 click!

Re: Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

#59

> You reach the end of the feed, and a loading animation appears. More news loads. More pictures appear. You scroll again. The loading animation appears. More content loads. You continue scrolling Then your mobile browser starts to lag and fucking crashes because it exhausted memory. Not to mention breaking the back button and the footer-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow issue. This thing has to die. btw, Medium breaks text…

that site isn't actually Medium. Just a look-alike

Re: Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption

#60
This post seems more based on emotion than anything factual or statistics.

Real Talk, when infinite scrolling is bad:

1)When it moves your page location up when loading more.

2)When it loses your location because you clicked on a link.

when infinite scrolling is good:

1) Not clicking load more or next.

Also, Facebook already tries to show you what's important and it already gets users panties in a bunch because they don't understand edgerank.

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