Designing and evaluating the calm electronic newspaper

This paper reports from an ongoing action research study concerning the design of the future enewspaper, i.e. a newspaper on e-paper technology. The e-paper innovation is of great importance to the newspaper publishers since it has the potential of eventually replacing the printed newspaper due to its readability and high contrast. This study addresses the challenge of how to design calm user experience of the e-newspaper. The action research approach followed the canonical action research method, in collaboration with publisher, reader and advertiser clients. The activities include a range of data collection techniques such as project meetings, workshops, interviews and prototype testing. In the diagnosing phase we identified the core challenges for designing the e-newspaper which directed us to the literature of calm technology. Three design principles for calm user experience were formulated in the action planning phase, followed by designing three e-newspaper prototypes, which embeds the design principles, in the action taking phase. The prototypes were evaluated with 36 readers in the evaluating phase and the outcome of these evaluations was later assessed in collaboration with newspaper designers for specifying learning. The results indicate that the design principles support calm user experience.