[App Fridays] PaperBoy - An Indian FlipBoard and a Lot More

Mobiles are consumption devices and literature is the most consumed quantity on this medium. Over the last couple of years, we have seen a large uptake of apps in the space; book readers, news apps and digital magazines have had a great success in the various app stores of the world.

Today’s app, PaperBoy by Dotted Circle, is a news aggregator, not very different to a FlipBoard. Apart from being an app made in India, what qualified this app for this weeks App Friday is the pain points that it addresses. A lot of research has been put into the way Indians use smartphones and the app is optimized to

provide a brilliant user experience despite a flaky network infrastructure.I personally have used this app since its first alpha and the way it has evolved is really awesome. Being one of PaperBoy's longest users, here's what I think about it -

Function

As a news aggregator, the norm is that the app should provide the following things -

1. Provide a list of news sources for the user to choose from
2. Once the news sources are chosen, the user is provided with a homepage customized based on the choices
3. Sharing of articles from the app via social media

Paperboy does all of the above. Here are some extra functions which i believe sets this app apart from other apps in the category

1. Offline Reading - The app caches 20 most recent articles from a source which can be read with or without the network
2. Pocket Integration - This is an extension of the offline reading capabilities of this app. If you are a Pocket user, you can save articles on PaperBoy on Pocket and read it later on a desktop or any other device that supports it, again without the need of an internet connection
3. An in app recommendation feature where you can follow users of the app and read articles recommended by them. This is offered as another content source on the app

Effectiveness

Based on the above mentioned functions, we plotted its effectiveness. Here’s what we think -

1. The app has a limited number of news sources. (the developer has explained as to why this is so)
2. The chosen sources are listed on the main page and can be filtered based on category
3. 
   
4. Paperboy currently offers sharing on every social platform. Furthermore, it provides sharing on options via SMS, BarCode Scanner, DropBox etc.
5. We couldn’t tell the difference between online and offline reading.
6. Pocket integration works very well for an extensive user of Pocket, but not otherwise.
7. The in app recommendation feature really provides very relevant articles. If you’re following someone who shares similar tastes as yours, this feature helps find articles you’ve missed out on.

Innovation

The innovation in this app lies in how it has been specifically been made with India in mind. The app makers are looking to tie up Indian content providers, with an aim to make PaperBoy a FlipBoard of sorts for India.

The guys at Dotted Circle have focused on making the app network agnostic and it shows in its offline reading capabilities. From caching articles to pocket integration, the Indian user and the usage conditions of India have been

kept in mind all along the development of the app.And lastly, I think user delight has also been kept paramount. The look and feel of this app is very different to that of conventional Indian apps. The app runs much faster than FlipBoard or any other reader app for that matter and at the same time, it hasn’t compromised on the UX.

Battery Performance - By Little Eye Labs

Paperboy is a news aggregator that uses sources approved by the user to get relevant articles. As a news aggregator, the network usage is critical to its functioning and is expected to be the most power consuming component. But the network optimization for this app is quite good. The app makes a very good use of caching to minimize its network usage and has quite a low power footprint for the network component. The article preview feature also encourages the user to be judicious with the use of network, helping in low power usage.

The biggest pain point from a power perspective was the color scheme of the articles. The use of white background for the articles causes higher power drain than any other color scheme would have (eg. Black background and white text).

UI and UX

As mentioned before, this app has an international and premium look and feel which is very unlike an Indian app. I like how it looks and one of the main

1. reasons apps stay on a users phone is the way it looks. To be more specific here’s why the look and feel of this app works for me -A White background - Makes the app look very clean and reading is a lot easier
2. Beautiful and consistent typography - The headings and the body of text have standard formatting across all content sources and the fonts used are beautiful
3. Fast and fluid - This app is *very* fast. From the time it takes to load articles to navigation within the app, there is no lag whatsoever; top class user experience
4. Intuitiveness - There isn’t much of a learning curve for a first time user of PaperBoy. Menu’s are placed exactly where you’d expect them to be and intuitive gestures have been used to move between articles.

What We liked

PaperBoy is a very well made app. Dotted Circle has leveraged its knowledge on the Indian mobile ecosystem and has given back a top class app from India for India. Here’s what we liked about the app -

1. Great look and Feel - Paperboy looks good enough for its users to show it off to others.
2. Made for India - To make an app for India, it needs a lot more than good coding (which the app obviously has). A lot of user research and conditions research has gone into making PaperBoy and this probably gives it an edge in India over others.
3. Great User Experience - PaperBoy’s speed really provides a lot of user delight. On an average network connections, the articles still load quickly and the wait time is very little and this I think this is going to make the app go places.
4. Potential - If the app performs so well on average network infrastructures, it will only be that much better in more mature mobile ecosystems and might very well give other players in the market a run for their money.

What We Didn’t Like

Paperboy is still in its early stages and there are still some bugs in the app, but Dotted Circle have gotten back to us saying that they will be rectified in the

1. coming updates. Here are two things that were a blotch in the scenery for us -Few Content Providers - The developers of PaperBoy had shared with us that they wanted to have a listing of Indian content providers. As of now, the only Indian content provider on the app is YourStory.in. Yes, it is a little unfair to pick this out because the app is still in its early stages, but this is quintessential for the app’s success and it has to be given a high priority.
2. Article Image Quality - I don’t know if anything can be done regarding this, but different content providers use images that are not optimized for viewing on a mobile device. So on the app, we have enlarged or pixelated images on some articles.

Last Words

It is heartening to see such a good app come from the Indian mobile ecosystem. From design, to performance, this app delivers. This initial build has set up a platform for many a content provider to deliver their content to potential users with a great user experience. The app has been well thought out and delivered; kudos to Dotted Circle for that.Its success hinges on the quality of content on the app and getting that content on PaperBoy is going to define its success in the long run. For content providers like ourselves, I think PaperBoy is a great platform to be on. With the bulk of content consumption already happening on mobile devices, expect to hear the likes of PaperBoy making it big in the near future in the app ecosystem.

Check out YourStory.in's articles on PaperBoy.

Click here to download the complete Battery Report for PaperBoy.